Myriel

Myriel sits on South Cleveland Avenue in Macalester-Groveland, in the residential middle of Saint Paul rather than in any of its restaurant districts, and it works as a tasting-menu room with a short a la carte alternative and a handful of bar seats kept back for walk-ins between 4:45pm and 9:30pm. Karyn Tomlinson is the chef-owner. In June 2025 she won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest, beating Shigeyuki Furukawa of Kado No Mise and Diane Moua of Diane's Place, and accepted it wearing a coral dress her grandmother had worn in 1941; the cooking that got her there is rooted in Midwestern produce, preserving and dairy rather than in imported luxury.

For a non-drinker the relevant fact is that Myriel runs a genuine non-alcoholic pairing against the tasting menu, course by course, rather than treating spirit-free as a substitution to be handled on request. The drink at the centre of it is a dry sparkling tea, brewed deliberately past the point where most kitchens would stop: the extra steeping pulls more tannin, which gives the liquid weight in the mouth and a drying finish, and the effect is that it functions structurally the way a dry white wine functions in a pairing — it clears the palate between courses instead of coating it. A sober restaurant critic writing for Beyond Beurre Blanc in January 2026 called it their favourite non-alcoholic cocktail in the Twin Cities, noting that it is "slightly oversteeped, giving it body and the mouthfeel of a good wine." Two sweeter non-alcoholic options sit alongside it for anyone who wants something less austere. The restaurant is licensed and pours wine, so this is not an alcohol-free room; what distinguishes it is that the non-alcoholic side has been designed as a parallel pairing rather than an accommodation. Service runs Wednesday to Saturday only, and reservations are strongly advised for the dining room.