Best Dishes of 2007

I entertain visiting restaurant critics and super-power foodies pretty often over the course of a year, and I've noticed two things: One, they always want to go to 112 Eatery. (Which I ate at four or five times this year, and, frankly, I find it less than it was when it opened. Am I just poisoned by opening memories? It's not like there's anything wrong with it, it's just that all year I find the place superior but never spectacular. Maybe I'm just ordering wrong. I don't know. It's probably me, not them.) And two, I always want to show off the wine bar at Heartland, which I find nothing short of spectacular, and spectacularly reliable. One unforgettable bunch of appetizers featured a house-made duck breast prosciutto that had a salty, gossamer-berry intensity; a hedgehog-mushroom wild rice soup that tasted like everything I love about shade-saturated Minnesota wild lands, focused to a laser-like intensity and shot through with cream; and smoked lamb ribs so meaty, so big-flavored, so intense and pleasurable I wanted to pound my fist on the wine-bar counter in satisfaction with just how show-offable the great foods of the upper Midwest really are. Heartland Restaurant, 1806 St. Clair Ave., St. Paul, 651.699.3536; www.heartlandrestaurant.com.

6) Pasta with wild boar at Broders' Pasta Bar

When I asked readers for their recommendations for the most essential, can't-miss restaurants for an ongoing project, one answer came thundering in: Broders', Broders', Broders'! Well, thank you, readers, because were it not for your letters I would have missed one of the best pasta dishes of my life, namely the "Fettuccine con cinghiale": soft, silky house-made fettuccine topped with staggeringly concentrated, spoonably soft bits and shreds of wild boar cooked with porcini mushrooms, chestnuts, and caramelized onions. Mmm, it was like eating the atmosphere in a Brothers Grimm fairytale: big, dark, wild, unknowable, irresistible. Broders' Pasta Bar, 5000 Penn Ave. S., Minneapolis, 612.925.9202; www.broders.com.

7) Beef ribs at Big Daddy's

When I got my beef ribs at the outdoor barbecue stand on the corner of University and Dale in St. Paul last summer, I waited about 20 minutes. Plenty of you wrote in to tell me that my article bumped that wait up by about two full hours, and for that I am deeply sorry. Still, I'd be lying if I said those beef ribs weren't some of the best I've ever had in my whole, entire, barbecue-saturated life: beefy like pot roast distilled to its most intense possible super-beef-guise, fatty and gelatinous and devourable like nothing else. Are they even out there this late in the winter? I put in some phone calls to the Big Daddy crew, and hallelujah, yes they are! They've taken over over the the former Abundant Bistro space next to their parking lot, and are cooking outside and delivering the gorgeous goods to customers who wait inside at warm, cozy tables. If you wrote in to tell me that you kept driving past the Big Daddy's tent but were intimidated by the lines, take heart, you've got all winter to get the ribs of the year, if not the decade. But the spot they're in is scheduled for demolition in July of '08, so you snooze, and you just might really lose. Big Daddy's: The Giants of Outdoor Cooking, 651.276.3101.

8) Roast pork at Brasa

If I was going to name the Most Important restaurant of 2007 I'd probably crown Brasa, the quick-serve spot that renowned white-tablecloth chef Alex Roberts opened in northeast Minneapolis last summer. Why? Because I think Brasa is brilliantly forging a path for the future of Minnesota cuisine, showing a way that the best, most naturally fitting products of our local family farms (chickens, pork, veggies) can be minimally but brilliantly gilded for happy consumption by our great urban metropolis. However, since I'm not crowning Most Important, but Tastiest, I'll highlight this aspect of Brasa: Holy cow, do I love their roast pork! That 12-hour-roasted local Berkshire pork shoulder is just phenomenal: rich like fudge, spicy and salty enough that you want to eat it by the pound, real and elemental enough that eating it by the pound seems reasonable. And yes, I'm head over heels for their grits and cole slaw, too, thanks for asking. Brasa, 600 E. Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, 612.379.3030; www.brasa.us.