HeyJaredbeyond beurre blanc.
the home for gutsy, independent restaurant criticism in Minnesota & Madison, Wisconsin.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 15
- Latest publication
- Sep 28, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Sep 2, 2026
Latest issues
Every Girl Needs a First Date Playlist. Here’s Mine. (opens the original)
Read excerpt
When there’s a group of single people talking about how much they hate dating, you can often hear me in the chorus, with my own horror stories (a man who went 11 drinks deep on a first date at a tasting menu and then told me he left his wallet at home) and battle scars (accidentally dating someone with a cancer fetish) and yearning (for someone who brings their wallet on a date and doesn’t have a cancer fetish). But when it comes down to it, I don’t actually hate dating. I kind of… like it. Most
My Go-To Order at Al’s Breakfast (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Al’s Breakfast is an important restaurant to many Minnesotans, and I’m no exception. I go to Al’s on weekday mornings, including every almost single morning before I left for Rochester for my chemotherapy appointments earlier this year. It’s a landmark for me that marks my treatment, but it’s also an institution that shows that sometimes restaurants really can stand the test of time.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6y2_!,f_auto,q_auto:goo
At Restaurant Aubergine, Pastry is the Point (opens the original)
Read excerpt
I can almost always tell when a restaurant doesn’t have a pastry chef. The “tell” is in the dessert menu’s construction. It’s full of things that I call “chef desserts,” often easily executable without much vision or inspiration. Take, for example, the rise in panna cotta. It feels directly correlated to the decline in restaurants hiring pastry chefs as margins grow thinner and thinner every year. Panna cotta, and its cousins, are not too hard to execute. It requires very little skill.Or, there’
On Kissing Men in the Death Knells of Their Marriages (opens the original)
Read excerpt
The thing about kissing men in the death knells of their marriages is they kiss like they want to swallow you whole. They touch you like they never wanna let you go, even when you’re a stranger. They know the trappings of marriage, like muscle memory. If you cook them dinner, they do the dishes. If you’re sick, they bring you pho and kiss your forehead. They wrap their arms around you the way that you would wrap your arms around someone you have known for a decade when you have known them for 10
What’s your favorite burger? (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Last year, I gave my paid subscribers a Christmas gift: I named my favorite burger in Minnesota. Just one, singular burger. I did this because I feel like almost every burger sits on a “best burger” menu in the Twin Cities. It drives me bananas and it means that you actually don’t ever hear from writers about what their actual, legitimate favorite burger is. I get why outlets do this. It makes money. If my singular burger piece was one of my highest grossing of the year, I’m sure that those mult
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.