Some weeks, my job is better than others.

This was a great week.

Last week, I hit up some of my favorite spots in St. Paul for meetings and friend hangs, but this past seven days was about a few new experiences, including a new favorite fish fry.

Friday fish fry at St. Paul Brewing

This isn’t really a secret — I’ll tell anyone who asks — but I am not a fan of beer-battered fish. Not only is it nearly impossible not to find some uncooked batter under the crust, but it also hides the flavor of the fish.

I grew up eating lake fish on Fridays — mostly perch and sunfish — lightly dredged in a breading and pan-fried to crispy perfection. I love that version of a fish fry so much that almost every time I visit family there, I leave with enough time to hit a supper club or bar for a Friday dinner.

So imagine my delight when I found out that St. Paul Brewing is serving perch and sunfish that are breaded, not battered!

My husband and I arrived on a very busy pre-St. Patrick’s Day Friday. Live music from a Scottish duo was happening in the main taproom, and because of some unseasonably warm weather, the patio was open. This all meant that staffing levels were a little below what’s optimal and that brings me to make this point: If you’re dining on a patio before May, it’s unlikely that the restaurant will have had time to properly staff up to increase its capacity. In other words, be patient.

Our fish fry, a small pile of super-crisp panfish atop a generous portion of steak fries and served with a pile of coleslaw and some homemade tartar sauce, was worth every second of the wait.

We’ll be back as frequently as we can manage.

One small piece of advice: If you like ketchup with your fries, you have to order it as a separate side for an additional 75 cents. Order it when you order your food (via QR code at the tables) or you won’t get it in time to enjoy your fries hot and with ketchup.

St. Paul Brewing: 688 E. Minnehaha Ave., St. Paul; 651-698-1945; stpaulbrewing.com

Night at the Gas Station #12 at El Sazon in Eagan

I can’t believe I hadn’t been to one of these fancy-pants, multi-course dinners in a not-fancy Eagan BP station before!

El Sazon, which will open its fourth location in Eat Street Crossing any day now, celebrated its third anniversary slinging tacos and other Mexican favorites out of a window in that BP with an amazing five courses.

It’s the 12th time they’ve closed the interior of the station and put out long tables and folding chairs to serve some of the best Latino food in the Twin Cities. It started, chef Cristian de Leon said, as a joke. The trio who started the operation were brainstorming places to hold a pop-up dinner and someone said, “We could do it at the gas station!” And while de Leon initially envisioned tables outside, they ended up doing it inside, amidst the aisles of cold medicine, salty snacks and energy drinks. And it caught on like wildfire.

They sell out most dinners, which happen “when they have time.” The first one was just 22 people, but now they can accommodate 50. Follow them on social media to find out when the next one might be.

Our dinner was fabulous, from an unforgettable, creamy corn gazpacho with olive-oil-poached lobster, to pillowy masa and potato (gluten-free!) gnocchi with wild mushrooms and an ultra-creamy ricotta to a burnt cheese plate to a masa and yuca (also gluten-free) beef wellington that was insanely tender and flavorful. We ended with capirotada, the Mexican version of bread pudding, spiked with raisins and coconut and some of the best horchata I’ve tasted.

Because it’s served in a gas station and they quite understandably don’t have a liquor license, each course was paired with a delicious non-alcoholic cocktail, which was funny because we were indulging on what has become a national drinking holiday: St. Patrick’s Day.

For a more traditional pairing experience, the outfit hosts a taco omakase experience at its Stillwater location (Xelas by El Sazon, 1180 Frontage Road, Stillwater) three days a week. It’s a ticketed dinner, so check their website for availability.

El Sazon: Three (soon to be four) metro locations. Find them all at elsazonmn.com.

Related Articles

Dining Diary: Potato pancakes and spätzle at Waldmann, dumplings at Ruam Mit and Sunday specials at Brunson’s

Dining Diary: Saint Dinette, Bar La Grassa and cocktails at Berlin make for a tasty week

Award worthy: Visiting St. Paul’s three James Beard semifinalist restaurants

It’s fish fry time! Here’s your 2025 list of restaurants and organizations with Lenten specials

Welcome back! Six St. Paul restaurants that are finally back after pandemic, construction

Bakers from Cossetta have never won the panettone world cup — or, at least, not yet.

In late 2023, head pastry chef Jaime Martinez took first place at the U.S. qualifying tournament, which landed him a slot at the 2024 International Coppa del Mondo del Panettone, the world championships, in Milan last November.

Ultimately, he did not make the top three. But who better to call for advice than Barcelona baker Ton Cortés, the guy who won?

So from March 18 through 23, Cortés visited St. Paul’s Italian culinary institution, helping Martinez and the Cossetta team test batches and try new techniques for making panettone, the airy, buttery, fruit-filled Italian bread typically eaten around Christmas.

“We’re looking for perfection,” said Rafael Morán, a pastry chef at Cossetta who works closely with Martinez on panettone. “Our panettone is good — we’re trying to be perfect. When we reach that point, we’ll be happy.”

“Or dead,” added Cossetta’s research and development chef, Elizabeth Drake, with a laugh.

A batch of panettone loaves hang upside-down to cool in Cossetta’s underground bakery on March 22, 2025. Panettone loaves are baked and cooled on specialized racks that rotate, so the butter-heavy bread does not collapse in on itself as it cools. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

She’s only mostly kidding: It’s something of an inside joke among old Italian panettone masters that it takes 20 years just to nail down your personal recipe, Martinez said. At Cossetta, they’ve been at it for about 14 years so far, he said.

And making a single batch of panettone can take up to 72 hours. Like sourdough bread, it begins with a fermented “mother” dough. The dough is flavored with orange, vanilla and other ingredients, mixed with candied fruits and set into paper wrappings to bake in a rotating oven. Then, the loaves are moved to specialized racks that flip upside down, so the loaves can cool without collapsing in on themselves — but they have to be flipped back and forth every six hours or so to avoid becoming more dense on one side than the other. Many chefs, including Martinez, use baby monitor-like cameras to watch the process from home when they’re not at work and rush to the kitchen when needed.

“It’s a balance between philosophy and science,” Drake said. “You can follow the same recipe every day and get a different result. You have to get a feel for it; you can’t just rely on the ratios in the recipe.”

Currently, Cossetta’s bakery team only sells panettone at Christmas — and a similar dove-shaped bread called colomba for Easter, on sale now — but they’re considering ramping up to year-round panettone production if customers are interested, corporate executive chef Casey Leick said.

“We’re planning to go big, but Minnesotans have to know what it is,” Martinez said. “We want to build a laboratory just for panettone, but not many people know panettone and what goes into it, so that’s our focus.”

A lineup of several varieties of panettone, made using world champion baker Ton Cortés’s recipes, sit on a counter in Cossetta’s bakery on March 22, 2025. Although the bread is typically only sold at Christmas, Cossetta bakers prepare tests all year round to improve their recipes for the every-other-year international competition. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

For a long time, Cortés said, making panettone has been “mystic knowledge kept by just a few Italian masters,” but the world of panettone is opening up. At the 2024 world cup, non-European competitors hailed not just from the U.S. but also Peru, Brazil, Japan and Australia. And Cortés himself, originally from Mexico, did not grow up a baker: He moved to Spain for a well-regarded university program in 14th-century music but graduated, very inconveniently, amid the country’s economic crisis in 2009. He now runs his own bakery, Suca’l, in Barcelona.

And yes, it’s true that making good panettone takes time and practice, he said. But to the extent that he has a “secret” for his world-class bread, it’s to avoid getting bogged down in the process.

“People think that, if something is difficult to do, it’s better, and I think that’s not the case for panettone,” Cortés said in Spanish. “I like to keep things simple and focus on the things that are actually important, like the mother dough: Having a mother dough that’s strong, healthy, well-hydrated, treated with care and attention.”

A loaf of traditional panettone is cut at Cossetta on March 22, 2025. Panettone, typically eaten at Christmas, is fermented with a “mother dough” like sourdough but is sweet, flavored with orange and vanilla and containing candied fruit. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

The health of the mother dough is evident when judging the interior of a good panettone, too, he said. The crumb should be light and craggy and the air pockets should be different sizes, signs of good fermentation. The dough needs to be soft, yet strong enough to hold plenty of butter and eggs: Cortés said you should be able to take a slice of panettone and gently tear off a vertical strip in one piece, like you’re ripping a piece of paper — a test called “filato,” or thread, in Italian.

The International Coppa del Mondo del Panettone, the panettone world cup, takes place every other year, so Martinez hopes to compete again in 2026. A team competition, the Campionato Mondiale del Panettone, takes place during the off years, including this October — Cortés is set to captain Spain’s team — but Cossetta is not competing in that tournament.

With his bakery in Barcelona and, increasingly, his panettone-related travel to far-flung places like St. Paul, Cortés’s main goal is to show how versatile panettone can be; that it can be eaten year-round, not just at Christmas.

“What I enjoy the most of making panettone is that it’s about sharing,” Cortés said. “It’s a big celebration bread that you can share with your loved ones, and that is the part I like. And yes, there’s also the freaky part with the temperatures and acidity and baby monitor cameras. You have to be a bit neurotic.”

Related Articles

USDA food aid cuts impact Minnesota schools, child care centers

Do you eat a meal in 20 minutes or less? It might be time to slow down

Lean Cuisine and Stouffer’s meals recalled for ‘wood-like material’ linked to choking

Dining Diary: Potato pancakes and spätzle at Waldmann, dumplings at Ruam Mit and Sunday specials at Brunson’s

Pearl-shaped bubble foods are adding pop to all kinds of menus

Chef Abraham Gessesse walked into the kitchen of his Grand Avenue restaurant Hyacinth on a Wednesday in January to find his sous chef Connor Barth wearing a giant smile.

“What are you so happy about?” Gessesse asked, suspiciously.

Barth was shocked that the chef didn’t know — he’d been named a semifinalist for a prestigious James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef Midwest that morning.

Chef Abraham Gessesse of Hyacinth is a James Beard Foundation nominee for Best Chef Midwest in 2025. (Courtesy of Jacqueline Hanson)

After spending a little time with Gessesse, who took over St. Paul’s Hyacinth from original chef/owner Rikki Giambruno about a year and a half ago, it’s not surprising to learn he wasn’t waiting on pins and needles for that list to come out. It’s just not his way.

“The way that I approach food, the ingredients, I just treat them as already perfect,” Gessesse said. “I’m not trying to manipulate what God or nature has come up with. I’m just trying to appreciate and enjoy it. Also, for me, it’s about being accountable and also trying to do the best for the people around me and be the best kind of person I can. That comes before a restaurant or career or anything. But luckily I get to do this, too.”

Gessesse, 34, was born in Boston and raised in the Twin Cities. He’s the son of Ethiopian immigrants and didn’t speak much English until he started grade school.

“There’s such a tight group of Ethiopian people here that you could just never speak English,” Gessesse said.

He caught on quickly, though, and after high school, the chef studied theology and history at the University of Northwestern in Roseville, eventually dropping out after his interest in cooking began to grow. At the urging of his mother, he attended the Hubert H. Humphrey Job Corps, a U.S. Department of Labor job training program, for culinary arts.

His résumé includes two years of study in Norway, staging at Restaurant Kontrast, which boasts two Michelin stars, and two years at Kado no Mise, the lauded Minneapolis Japanese restaurant owned by chef Shigeyuki Furukawa, a fellow nominee for the Beard this year.

It might seem odd that Gessesse now owns an Italian restaurant, but to him, it’s completely natural.

An Ethiopian platter at the Injera Circle pop-up at Hyacinth in February 2025. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

“Due to conflicts and colonization, a lot of Italian culture made its way to Ethiopia and Eritrea,” he said. “There are a lot of pasta factories, bakeries, gelato shops that Ethiopians have continued to operate and make their own.”

The chef, dressed in a dapper navy blazer and a tweed newsboy hat, said Italy’s influence on Ethiopia extends to culture, style, cars and more.

“There’s a lot of shared culture and expression,” he said.

Additionally, the chef spent a few years working with chef Jason Stratton at Spinasse, a tiny Piedmontese eatery that seems quite similar to the 35-seat Hyacinth.

And though Gessesse has been careful not to change Hyacinth too much — “There’s a lot of things we all love about Hyacinth, and it’s important that we keep it that way” — he is also always adding things. The menu changes every few weeks, and to his surprise, a new dish on the menu, fusilli with a bolognese spiked with the Ethiopian building block spice berbere, has been a best seller.

Gessesse has also launched a pop-up operation called Injera Circle with Minneapolis chef and fellow Ethiopian Yon Hailu. They held their first dinner, which I was lucky enough to attend, at the end of February.

The dinner was surprisingly similar to Ethiopian food I’ve had around town, if a little more upscale, and that’s by design, Gessesse said.

“We are hoping to create a genuine cultural experience done at a high level,” he said.

A sambusa at the Ethiopian pop-up event Injera Circle, held at Hyacinth in Feb. 2025. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

The pop-ups will continue to evolve as the chefs get more comfortable pushing the envelope of the cuisine they grew up enjoying, but for now, they’re happy cooking and sharing what they know.

Injera Circle will host another dinner on April 27 at Hyacinth. For reservations, go to https://resy.com/cities/minneapolis-mn/venues/hyacinth/events/the-injera-circle-2025-04-27.

Otherwise, Gessesse continues to focus on the tiny restaurant and congenial environment he and his co-workers have created at Hyacinth. And he might have a peek first thing in the morning at the James Beard finalist list, which comes out April 2, but it’s not the first thing on his mind.

“As far as ego, I don’t really have time or energy for all that stuff,” Gessesse said. “I’m in service to Hyacinth and community first.”

Hyacinth: 790 Grand Ave., St. Paul; 651-478-1822; hyacinthstpaul.com

Related Articles

As Ramadan ends, a new cookbook sheds light on Pakistan’s varied cuisine

Blend your way to better chicken vindaloo

With March Madness underway, it’s game time for newly opened women’s-sports bars across the US

24 easy pastas to welcome spring

California’s wine industry leery of tariffs, but some growers hope they help

Which bread box is best?

Whether your bread is homemade or store-bought, it can still go bad if you don’t eat it fast enough. Considering loaves of bread are usually fairly large, this can be a considerable problem, especially in one-person households. Thankfully, bread boxes are available to not only keep your bread fresh for a longer period of time but also add a little touch of design to your kitchen.

The best bread box is the Brabantia Roll-Top Bread Box, which is big enough to hold two or more loaves at once, and the lid magnetically seals for maximum freshness.

What to know before you buy a bread box

How a bread box works

Bread boxes help to control the humidity that surrounds your bread by allowing proper air circulation, far better than the plastic that store-bought loaves come in. This helps to slow both the chances of mold growth and the onset of staleness. You’ll want to make sure the bread box has an airtight seal in order to reap its maximum benefits.

Materials

Bread boxes can be made from many types of materials, but the most common are wood, plastic, stainless steel, enameled metal and ceramic.

Wood: Wood is a popular material thanks to its rustic aesthetics. These boxes are usually large enough for two or more loaves.
Plastic: Plastic usually has the benefit of being translucent, allowing you to check the status of your loaves without opening the box. It’s also light and easy to clean.
Stainless steel: Stainless steel is a highly durable and elegant material. If you don’t like smudges and fingerprints, make sure your prospective bread box is resistant to them.
Enameled metal: Enameled metal makes for a more traditional, farmhouse-style bread box. It’s easy to clean but has a tendency to chip.
Ceramic: Ceramic is one of the most aesthetically pleasing options, but it is easily the least durable material.

What to look for in a quality bread box

Size

While you might think storage capacity is the most important aspect of size, it’s actually better to consider your counter space. Even a smaller bread box can eat up a lot of space, so try to look for an option that fits in best with the available space you have.

Expandability

Certain, harder-to-find bread boxes are constructed almost like an accordion, able to be pulled apart or pushed together to adjust to the size of the bread you currently need to store. These options can be a lifesaver for smaller kitchens.

Mountability

If you really need to save some counter space, you can also shop for mountable bread boxes. These can be attached to the undersides of cabinets or directly to a wall.

How much you can expect to spend on a bread box

Bread boxes can be very affordable purchases, but they can quickly become very expensive. Most of them will only cost between $25 and $40, though bigger boxes can cost $50 or more. Designer bread boxes can frequently cost more than $75.

Bread box FAQ

How long will bread stay fresh in a bread box?

A. Bread will typically stay fresh inside a bread box for about a week, but it will be the freshest during the first half of that week. The bread box itself can add or subtract a few days from the freshness. Other factors also play into this, like whether the bread was homemade or store-bought and the general environment of your kitchen.

Can I just put my bread in the refrigerator?

A. You can, but doing so can result in a fairly significant con in addition to a small pro. The downside of storing in the refrigerator is the speeding up of the retrogradation process, meaning it will become less fluffy and moist much faster. The upside is that it slows down the growth of mold. Keep these facts in mind when making a decision.

Can I safely eat moldy bread?

A. The short answer is no. The specific mold on your bread may be dangerous to your health, and simply tearing away the mold doesn’t guarantee that all traces of it are gone. For your safety, always trash moldy bread.

What are the best bread boxes to buy?

Top bread box

Brabantia Roll-Top Bread Box

What you need to know: This bread box is a perfect combination of fashion and function.

What you’ll love: It’s big enough to hold two loaves or more, and the lid is magnetically sealed for maximum freshness.

What you should consider: It’s a bit costly for a bread box and a little lightweight.

Top bread box for the money

RoyalHouse Bamboo Roll Top Bread Box

What you need to know: This is an excellent, eco-friendly bread box packed with natural resistances to odors, stains, heat and bacteria.

What you’ll love: This bread box has a lovely design that fits in with any kitchen, plus a spacious, two loaf capacity rounds out this selection’s features.

What you should consider: Some have said that certain pieces don’t fit perfectly, which can upset the aesthetics of the bread box.

Worth checking out

Laura’s Green Kitchen Double Layer Bread Box

What you need to know: This extra-large bread box can hold several loaves and any other baked goods you might have.

What you’ll love: Air vents limit airflow to only what’s needed for maximum freshness, and the two-floor design maximizes counter space.

What you should consider: The magnetic lock can be a little difficult to get to latch the doors closed.

Prices listed reflect time and date of publication and are subject to change.

Check out our Daily Deals for the best products at the best prices and sign up here to receive the BestReviews weekly newsletter full of shopping inspo and sales.

BestReviews spends thousands of hours researching, analyzing and testing products to recommend the best picks for most consumers. BestReviews and its newspaper partners may earn a commission if you purchase a product through one of our links.