Tanpopo Noodle Shop

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308 Prince St. St. Paul, MN 55101

651-209-6527

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2 User reviews Write A Review

Critics'
Pick
Best Japanese Restaurant
Award Winner 2011

Cuisine(s): Japanese

Hours: Mon-Thu 5:30pm-9pm, Tue-Fri 11am-2pm, Fri-Sat 5:30pm-10pm

Price: $
Payment Types: All Major Credit Cards

Features: Patio/Sidewalk Dining, Takeout

Serving: Dinner, Lunch
Alcohol: Beer/Wine

Reservations: Accepted

Parking: Street

Description

Homestyle, cheap, and elegant are not usually qualities you'll find served simultaneously in life, unless you're at St. Paul's Tanpopo, a Japanese restaurant where you can find those very things in a single bento box. Homestyle chunks of elegant, buttery looking broiled mackerel, next to pretty little pens of pickles and salads, accompanied by bowls of rice and a clean and pure miso soup all for around eight bucks! Most meals here are along those lines: Simple as can be in the Japanese home cooking idiom, and deeply satisfying.

2011 | Best Japanese Restaurant

What comes to mind when you hear "Japanese food" If an image of sushi pops up in your head, you're hardly alone. Minnesota has its share of sushi restaurants, but less common are places that serve home-style Japanese cooking and do it well. Thank goodness, then, that we have Tanpopo. The cozy St. Paul spot has been providing bowls of steaming noodles and trays of neatly arranged teishoku for more than 10 years. Often described as a "set-meal," teishoku consists of a main dish accompanied by... More »
2010 | BEST NEIGHBORHOOD CAFÉ (ST. PAUL)

Having recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, Tanpopo Noodle Shop has been a St. Paul favorite since long before local Japanese restaurants started serving poisonous puffer fish and raw-fish buffets laid out on naked women. Tanpopo's chef-owner, Koshiki Yonemura, skipped the strobe lights and sake bombs of raucous sushi bars in favor of spare, loft-like digs and home-style cuisine. That means bowls of soup arrive sans a side of techno beats, their heady broths steaming and flush with... More »
2008 | BEST NEIGHBORHOOD CAFÉ--ST. PAUL

This quiet Lowertown noodle shop shows that Japanese cuisine is far more than fun-and-flashy sushi joints. Chef-owner Koshiki Yonemura cooks a home-style menu that's as simple and sweet as her dining room, a high-ceilinged loft with a beautiful, spare rusticity. Appetizers can be as basic as blanched spinach with fresh-ground sesame seeds or as exotic as agedashi tofu, where the silken cubes are deep-fried and then served in a pool of hot broth--the rising heat causes the bonito flakes... More »
2004 | BEST JAPANESE RESTAURANT

Tanpopo is counterintuitive, Tanpopo is intuitive. The little Lowertown full-service restaurant is counterintuitive because many of its defining qualities, such as being light, elegant, healthy, and serene, seem completely, completely incompatible with many of its other qualities, like being cheap, easy to get into, friendly, and low-key. But that's just how it is here, where you can sit in a white cathedral of a space, gaze into the many courses of your teishoku meal and know that you're... More »

Tanpopo chases the chill

By James Norton | Wed, December 10, 2008

Hell has come to connote "hot." Countless generations of pop-culture references depict eternal damnation as one endless, torturous schvitz. But if you consult Dante's Inferno, you'll find that the lowest circle of hell isn't an inferno, it's a fr... More »
Vegetarian Phoenixes

By Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl | Wed, March 10, 2004

Tanpopo Noodle Shop 308 Prince St., St. Paul 651.209.6527 www.tanpopo-noodle.com Udupi Café 4920 Central Ave. NE, Columbia Heights 763.574.1113 www.udupicafemn.com It was a dark and shrieking night. The air in the room was as smoky as a ... More »

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citypagesbestof | Minneapolis, MN | 145 Reviews

| Wed, May 6, 2009

This quiet Lowertown noodle shop shows that Japanese cuisine is far more than fun-and-flashy sushi joints. Chef-owner Koshiki Yonemura cooks a home-style menu that's as simple and sweet as her dining room, a high-ceilinged loft with a beautiful, spare rusticity. Appetizers can be as basic as blanched spinach with fresh-ground sesame seeds or as exotic as agedashi tofu, where the silken cubes are deep-fried and then served in a pool of hot broth�the rising heat causes the bonito flakes to flutter like butterfly wings. It's as mesmerizing as it is delicious. Soba or udon noodle soups can be ordered in dozens of incarnations�our favorite is the one with mushroom caps, sweet omelet, and wakame seaweed floating on top. Or you can go the teishoku route�these "set meals" are the Japanese answer to the TV dinner. A portion of, say, panko-breaded pork cutlet or broiled mackarel is served on a tray with miso soup, rice, salad, and those addictive little Japanese pickles. Best of all, the entr�es hover right around $10, so it's easy to keep coming again and again�which we often do, always hoping to drop in when sesame flan is being served for dessert.
Like (0) Dislike (0)

thomaswilliamhoward | Saint Paul, MN | 5 Reviews

| Mon, August 16, 2010

Without actually jumping on a plane to go across the really big pond, this is the closest Udon -- closest to the real Tokyo or Kyoto noodle spots--you will currently get in the Twin Cities. It has everything to do with the owner/chef having a personal stake in this kind of authenticity. Really wonderful; and the California rolls are the equal of Origami. 10 on a 10 scale.

Dinner Menu

A La Carte - Cold

$4.00

Cold Tofu
home made sesame sauce, scallions

$5.75

Spinach With Sesame
blanched spinach, freshly ground sesame

$5.75

Chef's Salad
lettuce, cucumber, burdock, red onion

$4.25

Tsukemono

Todays Sushi Roll
ask your server

A La Carte - Hot

$4.00

Edamame

$4.75

Age Dashi Tofu
grated ginger, scallions, bonito flakes

$8.75

Shrimp And Vegetable Tempura

$7.75

Vegetable Tempura

$6.50

Chicken Wings In A Soy-ginger Sauce

Teishoku
A Home Made Entree, White Rice, Miso Soup, Salad And Pickles. Served With Maza Gohan, Rice With Sauteed Carrot And Burdock, Instead Of White Rice Add $ 1.25

Today's Teishoku
ask your server

$13.75

Chicken Kara-age
marinated chicken thigh, grated daikon and ponzu, scallions

$13.75

Tonkatsu
panko-breaded pork cutlet, tonkatsu sauce

$14.00

Saba
broiled norwegian mackerel

$12.00

Age Dashi Tofu
dashi, fresh ginger, bonito flakes, scallions

$12.00

Cold Tofu
homemade sesame sauce, scallions

$13.75

Tofu Dengaku
broiled tofu, sesame sauce

$15.00

Shrimp Tempura
crispy shrimp tempura

Hot Noodles
Vegetarian Mushroom Broth, Add $ 1.25

$12.00

Nabeyaki Udon
shrimp tempura, chicken, shiitake, fish cake, tamago yaki, wakame, scallions

$11.00

Combination Tempura Soba/ Udon
shrimp tempura and kakiage

$9.00

Beef Soba/ Udon
simmered beef & onions , wakame, scallions

$9.25

Wild Mushroom Soba/ Udon
shiitake and enoki mushrooms, tamago yaki, wakame, scallions

$9.00

Tori Soba/ Udon
pan fried, sliced chicken breast , wakame, scallions

$9.00

Kitsune Soba/ Udon
seasoned fried tofu, shiitake , wakame, scallions

$7.00

Plain Soba/ Udon

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Tanpopo Noodle Shop

308 Prince St. St. Paul, MN 55101

651-209-6527

Description

2011 | Best Japanese Restaurant

2010 | BEST NEIGHBORHOOD CAF&Eacute; (ST. PAUL)

2008 | BEST NEIGHBORHOOD CAF&Eacute;--ST. PAUL

2004 | BEST JAPANESE RESTAURANT

Tanpopo chases the chill

By James Norton | Wed, December 10, 2008

Vegetarian Phoenixes

By Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl | Wed, March 10, 2004

citypagesbestof | Minneapolis, MN | 145 Reviews

thomaswilliamhoward | Saint Paul, MN | 5 Reviews

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2010 | BEST NEIGHBORHOOD CAFÉ (ST. PAUL)

2008 | BEST NEIGHBORHOOD CAFÉ--ST. PAUL