As the year comes to an end, it’s time to take a look back on what happened in the east metro restaurant scene in 2025.

So here are restaurants past (closed this year), present (notable 2025 openings) and yet to come.

If you’re sad about any of the closings, remember that these restaurants can’t survive without us. Take this as a cue to make a reservation at your favorite place.

Merry Christmas! We hope your holiday table was full of all the delicious things.

Notable 2025 restaurant openings

The Commodore: This gorgeous art deco bar in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood has thrown open its doors again, and its fans are legion. Honestly, though, on the Saturday we visited, the staff did not seem quite ready for prime time, and they are not yet accepting reservations. The food and drinks are decent if you have the patience to wait for them. If you’re hoping to eat a full meal, arrive early and ask for a table that’s not made for children. We couldn’t see cutting into a steak at the tiny table we were able to procure. (79 N. Western Ave., St. Paul; 651-842-9098; thecommodorebar.com)

Mafaldine at Liliana in Woodbury. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

Liliana: The people behind Estelle and Mario’s in St. Paul went full Italian with this suburban restaurant. They hired Kenzie Edinger, formerly of Saint Dinette and Mucci’s, to helm the kitchen, which is putting out creative pasta dishes, antipasti and even a few sandwiches and meat entrees. The space is airy and modern, and don’t skip dessert — pastry chef Nok Piyamaporn’s carrot cake and tiramisu are fantastic. (10060 City Walk Drive, Woodbury; 651-493-9089; lilianamn.com)

Indian Kitchen Bar & Grill: We were very sad to see Chip’s Clubhouse, home of my youngest’s favorite cheeseburger, go. But! When we visited the space, which has been transformed into a (maybe too) bright Indian restaurant, we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the curries, house-made naan and floral, flavorful biryani. (272 S. Snelling Ave, St. Paul; 651-350-7111; indiankitchenmn.com)

The Perfect Coffee: It was great to see this iconic North End space (formerly Coffee Cup) back in business. They’re still serving excellent breakfast and lunch items, but have added a bit of a Latin flair, because of the new owners. Oh, and the coffee is now legitimately good — they’re serving Peace Coffee and espresso drinks along with fresh-squeezed juices. (1446 Rice St., St. Paul; 651-348-2971; theperfectcoffeemn.com)

Dark Horse Bar & Eatery: This was one of the first (and saddest) closures of 2025, but we are happy to include it in the newly opened category, too. Because chef Shane Oporto and the folks behind Can Can Wonderland and St. Paul Brewing decided to bring it back! And we’re sorry, former Dark Horse, we really did love you, but the food here is better than ever — particularly the burger, which has risen to the top of our list. The cocktails are super delicious, too. In other words, if you haven’t been yet, what are you waiting for? (250 E. Seventh St., St. Paul; 651- 478-7139; darkhorsestp.com)

Khue’s Kitchen: If you haven’t yet found this little slice of Vietnamese heaven just off University and 280, I highly recommend going — but make sure you get a reservation, because there’s been a lot of (deserved) hype around it. Chef Eric Pham is putting out modern versions of the food he grew up eating, but with a modern, fine-dining bent. Pham’s mom, Khue Pham, is behind the Minneapolis institution Quang, and he cut his chops working for Gavin Kaysen at Spoon and Stable. The spicy chicken sandwich is legendary, but the sticky jicama ribs (more on those next week) are the sort of culinary wizardry that I’ve been thinking about for the entire six months since I tried them. (693 Raymond Ave., St. Paul; 612-600-9139; khueskitchen.com)

Petey’s BBQ in Alary’s: Unfortunately, this temple to smoked meats goes in both of the first two categories. It opened this spring and closes this week. It was great while it lasted. Alary’s is still kicking, though, and will announce a new culinary partner soon. (139 E. Seventh St., St. Paul; 651-224-7717; alarys.com)

A mole and plantain dish at Xelas by El Sazon in Stillwater. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

Xelas by El Sazon: This Stillwater restaurant is serving fantastically creative Mayan food, available in prix fixe or a la carte. It’s from chef Cristian De Leon, who earned a cult following for his excellent taco window, in an Eagan BP gas station. They were holding pop-up fine-dining dinners in the gas station and decided to take the concept brick-and-mortar. The creative cocktails here are excellent, too. (1180 W. Frontage Road, Stillwater; 651-571-3170; elsazonmn.com/xelas)

Steven D’s: This fall, Kim Reid and Steve Fiebiger decided to take things up a level — literally — when they turned their food truck, Steven D’s, into an everyday skyway lunch spot in the Town Square center. Now, they’re slinging burgers, crispy chicken, baked potatoes and more. (Real ones know: The true treats here are the soups, made fresh by Fiebiger every morning.) When longtime skyway lunch spot Cassie’s Deli packed up earlier this year, we weren’t sure how long its large footprint would remain empty — and we’re excited to see how Steven D’s continues to grow into the space. (444 Cedar St., St. Paul; 651-399-7459; facebook.com/StevenDsmn/)

A row of spirit bottles sit on a shelf at the new Volière Spirits distillery on Nov. 22, 2025, in a building within the historic Hamm’s Brewery campus. The distillery, which is also operating an attached cocktail room, took over barrel inventory from the now-closed 11Wells Spirits, allowing them to open with a broader range of products than most startup distilleries. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

Volière and CrowBar: It’s no small feat to open a new distillery and cocktail lounge — and it’s more impressive still to create a space that feels homey, cozy, lived-in, already nostalgic from day one. Volière Spirits distillery and its counterpart CrowBar took flight just after Thanksgiving in the former Hamm’s Brewing blacksmith shop on the East Side, just across the parking lot from St. Paul Brewing. And, to put it quite simply, founders ReGina Clapp and Liza Sterletske, alongside lead distiller Seth Reid and beverage director Grete Bergland, make good drinks. (704 E. Minnehaha Ave., St. Paul; 651-571-9276; crowbarstp.com)

The Eagle Street: There’s no more Eagle Street Grille across the street from the Xcel Energy Center — now, The Eagle Street faces Grand Casino Arena. The restaurant’s original iteration closed in 2023 but was resurrected in September in the former Apostle Supper Club space, which has swapped out the tiki furnishings for plenty of TVs and sports memorabilia. It’s now run by the guys behind Pauly’s Pub and Grill, which includes original Eagle Street owner Joe Kasel, so it all feels very full circle, and very St. Paul. (253 Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; 651-300-5740; theeaglestreet.com)

Río 1854: Based on the Ramirez family’s other projects — Taco Libre locations around the metro and the Mexatlan Supermercado in South St. Paul — it’s clear they know good Latin American food. And the menu at their new all-day spot Río 1854 in Stillwater pulls in a variety of influences, from classic Mexican flavors to Venezuelan and Colombian arepas to Peruvian ceviche. The space has been refreshed from its previous life as The Dock Cafe, and the owners have plenty of plans to use the large patio once the weather warms up, too. (425 Nelson St. E., Stillwater; 651-571-3103; rio1854.com)

Golden Thyme(s): Longtime Selby Avenue staple Golden Thyme has had a bit of a bumpy couple of years but appears to be back on its feet, plural — because now there’s not just one Golden Thyme, but two. In 2023, Stephanie and Mychael Wright sold their cafe to the Rondo Community Land Trust, which tried a variety of ideas for both the original Golden Thyme space and another storefront a block away. But with the current arrangement, they appear to have found, well, the golden ticket: The original Golden Thyme space is now a New Orleans-inspired restaurant, a nod to the Wrights’ Selby Avenue Jazz Fest; nearby, Golden Thyme Cafe serves coffee and hosts the Rondo Exchange small-business incubator. (Golden Thyme Restaurant & Bar: 934 Selby Ave; Golden Thyme Cafe: 856 Selby Ave., St. Paul; goldenthymeco.com)

Potter’s Pasties in Beer Dabbler Depot: We love a pasty, and Potter’s Pasties are the best! The eatery moved into the former doughnut and coffee space in the Beer Dabbler Depot a few weeks ago, and though we haven’t gotten there yet, we’re told they have vegan and gluten-free options for the first time as well as their classic, delicious savory hand pies with creative flavors like Thai, Reuben and mac and cheese. (1545 W. Seventh St., St. Paul; 763-447-8338; potterspasties.com)

Restaurants that closed in 2025

Guests enjoy brunch as they watch a late morning thunderstorm from the windows of Saint Dinette in St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Saint Dinette: It still hurts to write that this finer diner in Lowertown is no more. But the burger did pop up recently for a few days at Nova Bar in Hudson, Wis., so it might not be dead forever.

Petey’s BBQ in Alary’s: As we stated above, this barbecue joint has decided to call it quits. It was good and we’ll miss it.

Tommy Chicago’s: This Mendota Heights pizza spot served neighbors and sports teams for 18 years before the owners retired and the restaurant closed this month.

LW’s Bierstube: This German-ish pub in Inver Grove Heights closed after 42 years. That’s a pretty incredible run by any measure. The Oakdale and Hastings locations are still kicking, though.

Osteria I Nonni and Buon Giorno: The upscale Italian restaurant Osteria I Nonni and its sister deli, Buon Giorno, opened in Lilydale in 2002 to great fanfare. In October of this year, both closed, but the owners said Buon Giorno was looking for a new location. Time will tell.

Owners Thomas Boemer, left, and Nick Rancone, surrounded by an antique capiz shell chandelier, leopard print wall paper and glass behind the bar at Revival on Selby Avenue in St. Paul on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016. (Pioneer Press: Jean Pieri)

Revival: The shocking closure early this year of the southern-themed restaurants from chef Thomas Boemer and front-of-the-house guru Nick Rancone was softened a bit by Jester Concepts acquiring the brand and recipes. The food truck was out and about this summer, and they’re reportedly looking for a brick-and-mortar location.

Apostle Supper Club: This “supper club” across from the Grand Casino Arena was a mishmash of bad ideas from the start. Poor execution, worse drinks and high prices were the nails in the coffin. The outfit finally closed in June.

The burger at Chip’s Clubhouse in St. Paul. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

Chip’s Clubhouse: The burger at this Snelling Avenue restaurant was the stuff of dreams. Unfortunately, dreams don’t last forever. We’re loving Indian Kitchen, which has taken over the spot, but this closing will always leave a cheeseburger-sized hole in our hearts.

Dark Horse Bar & Eatery: We loved this Lowertown bar. It closed. We were sad. But now it’s open again, and it’s better than ever. We are happy. Long live Dark Horse!

Kopplin’s: The snug Marshall Avenue shop opened as an even more snug Highland Park cafe almost 20 years ago and was an early player in the local specialty coffee scene. Owners Andrew and Amanda Kopplin will still continue roasting coffee for wholesale, but the cafe and walk-up window days are over.

Big River Pizza: After 10 years, owner Steve Lott decided not to renew the lease on his Lowertown pizzeria Big River Pizza, blaming “the current political and policy landscape in St. Paul.”

Burning Brothers Brewing co-owners Dane Breimhorst, left, and Thom Foss toast with their Pyro American Pale Ale in their St. Paul brewery on Thursday, March 27, 2014. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

Burning Brothers Brewery: The state’s only gluten-free brewery, run by longtime friends and former Renaissance Festival fire-breathers Dane Breimhorst and Thom Foss, poured its last pint in May.

Cassie’s Deli: The skyway lunch staple, around since 1997 — though until 2015 known as D. Brian’s — served its last sandwich in April, when owner Steve Olson retired.

The Dock: Once a car wash building transformed in the 1980s by late architect Michael McGuire, The Dock Cafe was a longtime Stillwater favorite that had a bit of a rocky ending. After a two-year closure spurred by Covid, it reopened as The Dock in 2022 but closed less than three years later.

Handsome Hog: This Cathedral Hill restaurant, formerly linked to disgraced celebrity chef Justin Sutherland, will close Dec. 30. Sutherland has not been associated with the restaurant for more than a year. He moved to Los Angeles shortly after his felony conviction related to charges of pointing a gun at his girlfriend.

Restaurants we’re looking forward to in 2026

Bjorn and Megan Jacobse of Aubergine, the upcoming French restaurant on Selby Avenue in St. Paul. (Courtesy of Aubergine)

Aubergine: This French restaurant from Gavin Kaysen protégés Bjorn and Megan Jacobse is expected to open in the former Revival space early in 2026. (525 Selby Ave., St. Paul; restaurantaubergine.com)

Maison Rose: The gorgeous Lilydale building that long housed Osteria I Nonni and Buon Giorno Deli is becoming a cafe and bakery from chef John Kraus and Elizabeth Rose, the team behind Rose Street Patisserie in St. Paul and Patisserie 46 in South Minneapolis. The space will also be home to the Bread Lab, Kraus’ wholesale production and experimentation headquarters. Look for a spring opening. (981 Sibley Memorial Hwy., Lilydale; patisserie46.com)

Jenni’s Cafe: A new breakfast and lunch spot is getting ready to set up shop in Landmark Center downtown. Expect a sizable menu of paninis, quiche, soups, ice cream, and plenty of baked goods, plus an espresso bar. An exact opening date has not been announced but appears likely to be in the near future. (75 W. Fifth St.; jennis-stp.com)

Pho Oanh: Details about this new University Avenue spot are few and far between, but it appears set to open soon in a remodeled office building with traditional Vietnamese fare. (774 W. University Ave., instagram.com/phooanhmn)

New OG Zaza on Grand Avenue: The local pizza chain OG Zaza has announced it will take over the spot next to Grand Ol’ Creamery that was formerly occupied by Big E, chef Justin Sutherland’s egg sandwich restaurant. They were aiming for a Jan. 1 opening. (750 Grand Ave., St. Paul; ogzazamn.com)

Gambino’s Coal Fired Pizza (formerly known as Prince Coal Fired Pizza): The folks behind Tono Pizzeria + Cheesesteaks are behind this new restaurant in the former Black Sheep space on Robert Street in downtown St. Paul. It’ll be a full-service establishment, offering a full bar. (512 N. Robert St., St. Paul)

Savory Bake House: This Longfellow neighborhood bakery recently announced via social media that they will be moving across the river to St. Paul. No word on where or when yet — we’ll let you know as soon as we know.

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Today is Thursday, Dec. 25, the 359th day of 2025. There are six days left in the year. This is Christmas Day.

Today in history:

On Dec. 25, 2009, passengers aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 foiled an attempt to blow up the plane as it was landing in Detroit by seizing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (OO’-mahr fah-ROOK’ ahb-DOOL’-moo-TAH’-lahb), who tried to set off explosives in his underwear. (Abdulmutallab later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.)

Also on this date:

In 1066, William the Conqueror was crowned King of England.

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In 1818, “Silent Night (Stille Nacht)” was publicly performed for the first time during the Christmas Midnight Mass at the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson granted unconditional pardons to “every person who directly or indirectly” supported the Confederacy in the Civil War.

In 1776, Gen. George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River for a surprise attack against Hessian forces at Trenton, New Jersey, during the American Revolutionary War.

In 1926, Hirohito became emperor of Japan, succeeding his father, Emperor Yoshihito.

In 1989, ousted Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu (chow-SHES’-koo) and his wife Elena were executed following a populist uprising.

In 2021, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope, was rocketed aloft from French Guiana in South America on a quest to see light from the first stars and galaxies and search the universe for signs of life.

Today’s Birthdays:

Football Hall of Famer Larry Csonka is 79.
Country singer Barbara Mandrell is 77.
Actor Sissy Spacek is 76.
Former White House adviser Karl Rove is 75.
Actor CCH Pounder is 73.
Singer Annie Lennox is 71.
Country singer Steve Wariner is 71.
Model and businesswoman Helena Christensen is 57.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is 54.
Actor Jeremy Strong is 47.

I first encountered Leszek Kołakowski, the Polish political thinker, as an undergraduate. It was he who warned of “an all-encompassing crisis” that societies can feel but cannot clearly name.

His insight reads less like a relic of the late 1970s and more like a dispatch from our own political moment. We aren’t living through one breakdown, but a cascade of them — political, social, and technological — each amplifying the others. The result is a country where people feel burnt out, anxious, and increasingly unsure of where authority or stability can be found.

This crisis doesn’t have a single architect. Liberals can’t blame only President Donald Trump, and conservatives can’t pin everything on “wokeness.” What we face is a convergence of powerful forces: decades of institutional drift, fractures in civic life, and technologies that reward emotions over understanding. These pressures compound one another, creating a sense of disorientation that older political labels fail to describe with the same accuracy as before.

For generations, the institutions that shaped everyday life acted as the community’s informal infrastructure, propping up society. Churches didn’t just offer a place to worship, but also offered childcare, shared meals, and weekly bingo nights that gave people a place to gather. Local newspapers kept residents informed about school tax referenda, zoning disputes and neighborhood issues. Political party associations held fish fries and ward meetings where voters could meet the candidates seeking their support.

Today, many of these anchors have thinned out or disappeared. A church that once ran a weekly food pantry shutters after membership declines. A small-town paper closes, leaving residents dependent on cable news and social‑media rumors. Local parties dissolve into little more than automated fundraising emails. Screens replace shared spaces, and as those real-world ties fade, so does the trust and connection they once made possible. None of this should surprise us — Neil Postman and Robert Putnam warned more than two decades ago that these civic foundations were eroding — and why — and that the consequences would be far-reaching.

That erosion leaves citizens mentally exhausted. Protest movements draw millions, but engagement rarely translates into sustained civic renewal. People show up in the streets, go home, and feel just as unmoored as before. The vocabulary of past ideological battles — left vs. right; big government vs. small — doesn’t capture the hollowing out of confidence that Kołakowski and others identified. This moment is about something deeper: a frayed sense of meaning. The connective tissue that once gave politics its purpose has worn thin.

Technology has accelerated this shift. What once promised connection now delivers outrage cycles instead. Social platforms sort people into warring tribes, reward the loudest voices, and spread half-truths faster than accurate reporting can catch up. Algorithms built to keep people engaged now drive wedges between them. Instead of broadening public debate, digital platforms splinter it into hostile enclaves. As misinformation grows easier to produce — thanks to AI — and harder to correct, trust in both institutions and each other falls further.

Some remedies are already visible. Stronger privacy protections in Europe have curbed the most aggressive forms of surveillance advertising. Experiments that reduce the reach of engagement bait show real drops in viral misinformation. Several cities that invested in community journalism, public libraries, and adult media-literacy programs report higher turnout and more civic participation. These may be small steps, but they show how concrete local initiatives can rebuild public life.

At the national level, the work begins with restoring competence and clarity to the federal government. Congress can reestablish its role by passing a real data privacy law, strengthening oversight of digital platforms and updating antitrust rules so a handful of companies cannot dominate public discourse.

The White House can improve public confidence by speaking consistently, limiting policy whiplash and giving agencies the stability they need to do their jobs. The courts can help by strengthening judicial ethics rules and explaining major decisions more clearly, closing the distance between legal reasoning and public understanding.

Trust grows when institutions do what they claim to do. People notice when benefits arrive on time, when rules are applied evenly and when large projects move forward without years of delay. Visible competence matters. It’s one of the few things that reliably cuts through polarization.

But the deeper work to be done concerns meaning. No policy — however well-crafted — can endure without a public that believes in the institutions carrying it out. Technology transformed how Americans live together; now those institutions must shape the conditions under which technology operates. They must reward behaviors that strengthen the civic commons rather than erode them. And they must do so in a way that benefits ordinary people, not just the already powerful.

Kołakowski’s point remains as urgent now as it was then: a crisis without a name is still a crisis. The task ahead is more than fixing broken systems. It is rebuilding a politics capable of producing meaning rather than noise—one that encourages people to trust one another enough to act together. If we fail at that, the crisis will no longer be unnamed. It will simply feel permanent.

Robert Cropf is a professor of political science at Saint Louis University. He wrote this column for, The Fulcrum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news platform covering efforts to fix our governing systems.

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In the realm of horror, it was hard to beat the headlines last February that you were carrying around the equivalent of a plastic spoon’s worth of microplastics in your brain. The findings, reported in Nature Medicine, generated lots of outrage on morning talk shows and were even repeated as fact by would-be surgeon general Casey Means.

A number of chemists were initially skeptical of the study, which was based on analyzing brains from a small sample of cadavers. In a rebuttal published last month in Nature, a group of chemists argued that the technique used couldn’t accurately distinguish fat particles that are a normal part of the brain from microplastics, and that the study didn’t include the necessary validation steps to ensure they weren’t simply seeing post-mortem contamination or otherwise misleading themselves.

When I wrote to chemist Fazel Monikh at the University of Padua in Italy, an author of the rebuttal, he responded that the initial claim was extraordinary because “such particle loads would cause catastrophic occlusion, inflammation, and tissue destruction incompatible with life.” And the analysis didn’t constitute extraordinary evidence — or even reasonably good evidence.

That’s not to say the proliferation of tiny plastic particles isn’t a serious problem. A review paper published last month lists ways microplastic particles might damage your brain and increase the risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. However, it also lost credibility by citing the plastic-spoon claim without caveats.

This raises an important ethical question: Is it OK for scientists, science journals and journalists to be less rigorous or critical of extraordinary results if they raise awareness of serious problems or otherwise contribute to the greater good?

Mark Jones, a retired chemist who has independently studied microplastics, drew my attention to the Nature follow-up, which the journal did not publicize as heavily as it had promoted the initial findings with a splashy press release. Jones said he’s deeply concerned about scientists and journals failing to maintain high standards of evidence. He is worried about eroding public trust, as evidenced by the rising resistance to essential vaccines.

Before the plastic spoon image, there was another alarming statistic: that the average person ingests enough plastic each week to make up a credit card. That claim was based on a 2019 study that used several models to estimate that the average person consumes either 0.1 g, 0.3 g, or 5 g (the credit card amount) per week.

Jones noted that other scientists questioned the assumptions in that model, and a couple of studies found that the 5-gram figure was about a factor of a million too high, meaning it would take roughly 23,000 years to consume the amount of plastic in a credit card. Nevertheless, the credit card estimate continues to be propagated in popular media, policy circles and other studies.

In the “plastic spoon” study, the initial intentions were good. Researchers from the University of New Mexico designed the study to solve a significant problem. There’s longstanding evidence that our food and water are contaminated with microplastics, but scientists don’t know where they go in the body, whether they’re excreted or get lodged in our organs, and how they affect our health.

Those questions have been difficult to answer because plastic inside the body is tough to measure. The team approached the problem by taking samples of organs from cadavers and dissolving them, removing presumably normal tissue and leaving behind a residue of what might be plastic. They analyzed the residue with a technique called pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry — a way to identify what’s there by the masses of broken-up fragments.

The end result was a wide range of plastic concentrations in the different bodies. It was surprising that the brain appeared to take up much more plastic than the other organs, as if it were preferentially absorbing it. Almost all the plastic was one type — polyethylene — with a notable absence of other common forms, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which makes up plastic water and soda bottles.

The analysis could have been described as a good start — a first attempt at answering a difficult question. Some skeptical chemists were quoted in the media, but most of the public just saw clickable headlines or TV outrage, taking these very preliminary findings as fact.

“Who bears responsibility when extraordinary claims enter science and policy without solid evidence?” Monikh wrote in a LinkedIn post. The journals Nature and Nature Medicine deserve some blame for the way they publicized the paper on the plastic spoon, but not for the follow-up. Journalists also deserve blame for uncritically promoting a single study as fact.

In the end, there’s no ethical justification for selective hype by journals or for the lack of skepticism among journalists and researchers. We don’t need to exaggerate claims to generate concern over microplastics and their potential harm to us and other living things. And promoting studies lacking rigor could backfire and breed cynicism or a sense of doom, rather than care or action. None of us is in a position to judge which falsehoods might benefit people. We should stick to the truth as best we understand it, and still do what we can to fight the pollution of our environment by plastic.

F.D. Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering science. She is host of the “Follow the Science” podcast.

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