Khâluna

Khâluna is chef-restaurateur Ann Ahmed's upscale Laotian flagship, opened in 2021 at 40th and Lyndale in the Kingfield neighbourhood of southwest Minneapolis. The dining room is styled after a Southeast Asian resort, and the building also houses a shop and a demonstration kitchen used for cooking classes. Eater named it one of the fifteen best new restaurants in the United States for 2022, which for a Laotian restaurant in Minneapolis is the kind of recognition that changes a city's sense of its own food scene.

For a non-drinker it is a genuine destination rather than a safe choice, because Khâluna carries one of the largest dedicated non-alcoholic drink menus in the Twin Cities. The Star Tribune's Sharyn Jackson made the point that most clearly identifies what is unusual here: "The nonalcoholic drink menu at Khâluna is longer than the regular cocktail list. The inventive drinks make use of spices, yogurt, sugar cane, roots and more." A zero-proof list longer than the spirited one is rare anywhere, and it inverts the usual experience of scanning a menu hoping to find one thing you can order.

The builds lean on alternative spirits — Dhos, Aplos and The Pathfinder — combined with house syrups, ginger, citrus, cucumber and calamansi, the sharp Filipino citrus that gives several of the drinks their acidity. Named spirit-free cocktails include the Last Love and The Elixir, alongside a No Dhos Margarita and a Spritz 75, plus a trio of medicinal iced teas. Many of the drinks are sweetened with erythritol rather than sugar, which is a deliberate choice worth flagging: it keeps them lighter across a long meal, though anyone sensitive to sugar alcohols will want to ask. Lunch service runs at weekends and dinner nightly, and the room is busy enough that booking is sensible.