*Due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions and city mandates, Tullibee may be temporarily closed or offering a limited menu. Please check with them before making plans to visit.
In January of 2020, Executive Chef Nyle Flynn took over at Tullibee Restaurant at the Hewing Hotel. He revamped the Scandinavian-inspired menu and brought his passion for food, his Michigan heritage, and interest in the slow food movement to Minneapolis. Then, the pandemic hit and restaurants closed.
Flynn, originally from Detroit, took this time to brainstorm the most effective – and delicious- way to serve a limited menu when they would be able to reopen. With his extensive butchering experience, he was able to grow the restaurant’s in-house butcher program, which includes house-cured meats and fish, and dream up inventive dishes that would best utilize consciously-sourced foods, and allow the kitchen to create a variety of dishes with a limited amount of ingredients. Spoiler alert: he nailed it.
We visited in October, when restaurants were allowed to be open, albeit at a much lower capacity than normal. With socially distanced tables and masks required, we felt incredibly safe and left so full we almost burst. Chef Flynn and his staff brought out dish after amazing dish until we nearly had to be rolled home. But lets start at the beginning- with cocktails.
I enjoyed a Jasper (brandy, lemon, pomegranate, baking spices, sherry, and absinthe) which was delightful. My husband ordered the Hewing Old Fashioned, pictured above, which included a giant ice cube featuring the hotel’s logo.
Then the food started: an insane charcuterie platter featuring some of the best cheese I’ve ever tasted and house cured meats, beef tartare with cured egg yolk on top and served with just-made chips, pimento deviled eggs, and a cured salmon dish that was divine. Lucky for us, it also included cured duck from Au Bon Canard, Christian Gasset’s Calendonia Farm. There’s a reason he get the accolades he does. We were stuffed already, but Chef Flynn wasn’t done.
He sent out the best kale salad I’ve ever had and one that I will forever be trying to recreate, topped again with the amazing cheese from the charcuterie plate. The Hewing burger was an insane double-patty creation with shameless American cheese and buttery, caramelized onions. Then, the short rib hand pies, an ode to Detroit, filled with onions and raclette cheese, which really tipped our dinner over the edge. 
Before this visit, we had dined at Tullibee one time only. Frankly, the meal was fine but nothing to write home about, and nothing that lured us back in over the next two years. But after tasting a sampling of Chef Flynn’s menu, we cannot wait to go back. He made brilliant changes to the menu and is serving amazing food, even while working with limited ingredients due to COVID restrictions. As soon as restaurants are able to reopen in Minneapolis, Tullibee will be one of the first reservations we make!
