Gorgeous ‘Grandma Chic’ Is at Play at Karyn Tomlinson’s Restaurant, Myriel, in St. Paul

Restrained and subtle, precise and sophisticated, Karyn Tomlinson’s food is brave in its minimalism. “It’s not showy,” she says of her cooking. “But the technique is there to make simple ingredients taste as delicious as possible.” Tomlinson weaves together many influences at Myriel, her intimate restaurant in St. Paul. She gracefully combines provincial French–inspired cuisine; a hyperlocal, nearly neo-Nordic ethos; and traditions of economy and preservation gleaned from her rural Swedish immigrant farming heritage in Minnesota. There’s also a dash of church basement. She has contemplated calling her cooking style “grandma cooking nouveau.”

Myriel is named after Tomlinson’s favorite character in the novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, in which Bishop Myriel welcomes ex-convict Jean Valjean into his home, showing him dignity through a meal. She thought, “This is a beautiful picture that I want to evoke.” This simple act of kindness connected with Tomlinson early in her cooking journey and inspired the model of Midwest hospitality infused into the restaurant.

You can go one of two ways at Myriel. You can order à la carte, with simple dishes a weary traveler might find at a roadside French country inn, like stewed lentils, carrots cooked in whey, a heartwarming cassoulet, and a phenomenal apple pie. On the à la carte menu, you can add a few modest extras to a dish: a confit duck leg, a poached egg, or fresh housemade curd, which is Tomlinson’s idea of luxury. The curd is remarkable, velvety, and rich. “We know exactly where the milk is from,” says Tomlinson, a champion of small farming communities. “We know what cows it came from. And to me, that is much more special.”

Or, you can get the ticketed tasting menu, with around a dozen or so courses that present a deeper dive into ingredients. “It’s built like a story,” she says. It’s a showcase of “the true seasonality that comes from working with real farmers who are working with real seasons and the challenges that come with that.” It’s also where you’ll come across offal (the restaurant focuses on whole-animal butchery) and many foraged ingredients that Tomlinson gathers herself in the countryside, like birch bark, mushrooms, or wild grapes. 

A lot of effort goes into the simple dishes at Myriel: The restaurant operates in a labor-heavy fashion, with ingredients that “take a lot of time and planning and hands-on work.” Many meetings center around a constantly changing menu and topics like “What are we doing with this whole animal that we just got in?” But all these meetings and checkpoints give staff an opportunity to speak up and know they can be heard. Myriel was built with a positive culture and accountability in mind, where the kitchen leans “more into propriety, but in a warm and nurturing way,” where people are treated with respect and trust.

Myriel could have taken an austere, minimalist direction. Instead, you’ll find warmth and light, grace and hospitality, life-changing lentils, and a soul-satisfying apple pie. Whether you do the à la carte or the tasting menu here, a meal will quietly sneak up on you, building slowly, wave after soothing wave, leaving you stunned by the end.

The perfect order at Myriel 

Lentils

On the menu at Myriel since day one, the electrifying lentils just might change your life or, at the very least, your relationship with legumes. Cooked in water so the restaurant can accommodate allergies, “they’re later stewed in good stock,” says Tomlinson, “and finished with a bit of crème fraîche, butter, and toasted mustard seed.” You can keep it simple or go all out. “We love when people add duck legs, fresh curd, or an egg,” says Tomlinson about the optional add-ons. “And when they add all three, we’ve nicknamed it ‘loaded lentils.’”

Duck breast

When a dish on the à la carte menu at Karyn Tomlinson’s Myriel reads “duck breast, black garlic beurre blanc, chervil,” that’s all there is to it. There are no complicated garnishes, no elaborate tuiles. Nothing to hide behind. Here, you’re met with a beautiful, tender, and rosy duck breast sporting expertly crisped skin, a small pool of sauce, and some herbs. That’s it. And it’s wonderful.

Pie

Tomlinson’s flaky, otherworldly, incredibly comforting pie uses her grandmother’s recipe (and lard rendered from the hogs butchered for the restaurant). The pie is apple in the fall and rhubarb in the spring. And it’s all about the touch and the heart behind it. They make the crust by hand using old pastry cutters, not with a food processor, because it’s a “good grandma tradition” that “takes time and love and effort.” These sort of discreet techniques — built around a foundation of tradition, pragmatism, and resourcefulness — help create not only the brilliant food, but also the happy, nostalgic moments that get channeled into everything Tomlinson does at Myriel.

In praise of “grandma plates”

Most of the food at Myriel gets served on special-occasion vintage china, evoking an Old World charm and ceremony, to “a time where different servingware had very specific purposes,” Tomlinson says. “And people used gravy boats.” The plates only enhance the generous style of hospitality at Myriel. “I think that plateware can signal a departure from the fast nature of our lives right now, and it shows people that they’re stepping into a curated moment.” Tomlinson gathered most of the plates from Goodwill and antique stores, but recently, neighbors have been reaching out to offer their sets. “We’re using a lot of people’s grandmother’s china or things that have meant something to people in generations past but just don’t have a place, and we’ve made a place for them at Myriel ... It’s in sync with how we source a lot of our things to have a personal connection. It’s an honor to be able to use something that has been so special to a family.”

Three things about Karyn Tomlinson

A love for the local

Tomlinson spent three formative months working at Magnus Nilsson’s daring, acclaimed restaurant, Fäviken, in remote Sweden: “It validated this idea of leaning into the challenges of the climate that we’re in, really working with what we have around us.”

Current post-work ritual

“I have a cup of cereal, and I sit on a stool in my kitchen ... Right now it’s Rice Chex with some banana slices on top. Before that, it was Golden Grahams. I’ve tried to get into ‘responsible’ cereals, but they’re just not the same.”

Secret talents

“Music was kind of my first love, music and visual art. I do watercolors for the restaurant. My other grandpa was German; he was in a polka band for a long time, and none of his grandkids were interested in that, but I was, and he loved it. So he got me an accordion. He taught me how to play, and it’s just a thing.”