The Kitchen
Cameron Cecchini and Grisha Hammes opened Tenant in 2017 in the old Piccolo storefront on Bryant Avenue South in Kingfield, taking the lease from their former employer, Doug Flicker. The room is a six-seat counter around an open kitchen. The chefs cook and serve and explain each plate themselves; there is one seating a night, and the evening starts and ends together. It is the most personal table in the Twin Cities, and it means it.
The format is a six-course seasonal tasting at a flat $100, with an optional wine pairing at $50. Tenant does not take tips — the price covers everything but tax — which is rarer than it should be and lets the meal close on the food rather than the maths. The cooking is produce-driven and technically tight, but the pasta course is the signature and the reason to come. It rotates with the season: a single hand-rolled raviolo, saffron-yellow under charred broccolini one month, sweet-corn raviolo with aged balsamic the next, ricotta cappelletti in winter. It is, reliably, the best plate of the night.
What sets Tenant apart is the format as much as the cooking: six guests, a handful of cooks, a couple of hours of synchronised pacing, and conversation that crosses the counter without effort. For a diner who wants to understand a kitchen rather than be waited on by one, this is the seat. More in our Minneapolis dining guide.
Why This Is Minneapolis’s Solo Dining Pick
Book Tenant for solo dining for three reasons: the six-seat counter makes eating alone the natural posture rather than the awkward one, the chefs' running commentary on each course gives a single diner something better than a phone to attend to, and the flat $100 no-tip price is the fairest transaction in Minneapolis fine dining for a party of one. You sit with the kitchen, not apart from it. More in Best Restaurants for Solo Dining.
Skip it for a group, a private conversation, or a picky eater. There are six seats at a shared counter, no menu choices and no à la carte, and one seating a night Tuesday to Saturday. If you want a table for six or a meal you can steer, this is the wrong room.
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