Porzana Is Raising the Bar

New Porzana is more than simply an Argentinian steakhouse by Daniel del Prado—it’s phenomenal.

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On a recent Saturday night, the crowd at Porzana’s door had a different vibe than the typical frenzied mass that surrounds a hot, new-to-the-scene restaurant. These were not the usual suspects, shrilly enumerating the many reasons they deserved a table. Instead, the seekers—many of them men, taut, restlessly leaning in and leaning back, like players on the sidelines—sprang lightly from foot to foot, as if to say, “Put me in, Coach! I have trained for decades, for misty past lifetimes: I am ready to eviscerate a steak.”

I wondered: Was this humankind 500 years ago, as bison roasted over an open fire? Was this humankind 11,000 years ago, contemplating mastodon slices above the embers? Nowadays, the victory of the hunt arrives more easily, no flint-topped spears required. Just ask for: Porzana’s parillada! 

Your bounty will include a full hanger steak, a spiral of special Argentinian linguiça sausage, a few links of dark and meaty blood sausage, lightly grilled sweetbreads, a few links of spicy chorizo, and a glorious volcano-shaped tower of marrow bone, all arranged like a painter’s palette of meats: Here’s blood-rich hanger steak, here’s lusher-than-butter marrow, here’s what chili does when ground into meat. The whole shebang is perfectly offset by a perky, acidic little salad of herbs and pickled onions to go with the meats. (The kitchen calls it “Dani’s salad” because chef/owner Dani del Prado doesn’t eat meat without it.) Served family-style, the parillada also comes with a wooden bowl of green salad, a little ramekin of chimichurri, and a stack of exquisitely charred bread slices. Porzana’s parillada is an incredible spread, meant for two or four people to share, people who want to go weak with sensual post-hunt bliss. Take a bite of something meaty, a bite of something green, and sip your wine. Yes, it’s good to win the hunt.

As you enjoy the parillada, you may have the sense you’ve summoned the ghost of dear departed Burch Steak and Isaac Becker dream teams of yore, and you would be right. The sausages are made for Porzana by Erik Sather, now of Lowry Hill Provisions, who was with del Prado as part of the cooking line at Becker’s Bar La Grassa. The pair split up when del Prado went to lead Burch and Sather set up shop next door at Lowry Hill. That was all before del Prado left Burch to build his empire of melodious restaurants: Martina, Colita, Josefina, Macanda, and many more, including a St. Paul restaurant to come in 2024.

Porzana could function splendidly as merely the greatest new steakhouse in a state that loves steak: Watch out, Manny’s, Murray’s, the Lex, and Jax—there’s a new beef slinger in town. “I call it my reverse flagship,” del Prado told me on the phone. “You know what I mean?”

I know exactly what he means. Usually, in restaurants, there’s one signature big restaurant, a great success, and then little spin-offs circle around it, like planets around the sun. But in this case, the sun was filled in last. 

Porzana is a sun, a city, a center: 20 cooks in the back; 100 employees all told; nearly 300 seats, counting the patio, and it’s busy-busy, lively-lively, and nearly flawless. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced so strong a Minnesota restaurant opening. I was dazzled and dazzled again. Experience and attention to detail vibrated from every dish. Let me enumerate:

First the steaks, and there are many. Beyond options the old-school elite steakhouse customers demand, like the grain-finished filets and rib eyes, the menu also offers, shockingly, budget cuts, including five prime or better steaks at $26 and under, an accomplishment in today’s market. I tried the $21 6-ounce grass-fed flat iron, and it was excellent—wildly flavorful, iron-y and beefy yet tender and expertly charred. Porzana also offers hard-to-find Argentinian cuts—like a tapa de vacío, the cousin to the flank steak—and even more unusual cuts, which can be considered del Prado’s cheffy playfulness and imagination unleashed on pure beef.

For instance, to achieve the funk and deep flavor of a dry-aged steak without an aging room or the inclination to sit on pricey inventory, Porzana takes two approaches. One involves koji, a fungal spore (sort of functionally the Japanese version of brewer’s yeast) used to ferment everything from sake to soy sauce to miso paste. The kitchen rubs a flank steak with koji and salt and lets it percolate for ten days, resulting in a steak that has a bit of a mushroomy, winey funk. They also employ a similar trick using gorgonzola cheese, rubbing it on the meat, which is then long chilled. If you’re a steak lover, these different flavors are fascinating, if not wildly distinct, akin to different vanilla ice creams. 

Most interesting are the $3 sauces you can request with your steak: a vibrant chimichurri, a rich gorgonzola Mornay, or a bright Bolivian cousin to salsa called llajua (“ya-hwa”). It’s delightful to pair a perfectly prepared steak with a surprising and fresh sauce, and I think Porzana has, in a single move, cornered the metro market for every person who wants to split a smaller and more affordable but great steak with a friend and still have a few other treats. 

Now for the potatoes. Prepare yourself. You actually see del Prado’s skills as a chef most easily in the many, many potato dishes. The papas aplastadas, for instance, are a very unique version of a classic steakhouse baked potato. To make it, del Prado takes fingerling potatoes, boils them, smashes them, and crisps them in the oven. The potatoes are then pan-fried to order with bacon and chives, drenched with a beurre blanc, and finally hidden beneath a cloud of parmesan cheese—unbelievably rich, flabbergastingly flavorful. I cannot wait for people to start ordering them at the bar at 10 o’clock at night as a dinner: Welcome to your new potato obsession. I feel the same way about the papas al horno, an incredible potato dish in which creamy Yukons are baked, fried twice, and then liberally squirted with a garlicky red chili pepper sauce and covered with a flurry of cilantro and Marcona almonds. If you’re a hot-sauce-on-your-home-fries type, welcome to your new obsession. So crisp. So loaded with flavor and texture.

The potato story doesn’t end there. Anyone remember the glorious days before 1991, when McDonald’s french fries were fried in beef tallow? Porzana is tallow-frying today, with a dedicated tallow fryer and big Idaho russet potatoes sliced into glorious pencil-long french fries. I took one bite and was instantly transported to childhood, that particular big, slightly tangy robustness, the perfect french fry. It’s my new best lifetime favorite. I asked del Prado if it had something to do with his own childhood in Buenos Aires: “No, not at all. McDonald’s is for rich people in Argentina,” he said. He did it for flavor and winning. If we as a state wanted to value Porzana as a potato house instead of a steakhouse, we would be justified.

In case you’re looking for something other than red meat, the non-steak options are glorious, as well. I actually think my favorite dish was the scallop tartare—minced sweet, creamy raw scallops, tossed just before they reach the table with a sauce made of fried garlic, chilies, lime, and soy sauce, along with cilantro, parsley, and oregano. You fold the mixture into shiso leaves and get a world of contrast: sea-sweet and creamy, popping spice, fried garlic, licorice-herbal. 

“I like to do things that are not traditional,” del Prado told me. “It started in my mind, thinking about chimichurri, which begins with a saltwater brine sort of like soy sauce, and I love Vietnamese chili oil. So, I took everything from my brain and invented a new sauce.”

Fair enough! It’s amazing. The arctic char tartare, another raw fish dish, this one with fresh watermelon, is equally memorable: the fish berry-bright, the watermelon unexpected, while bottom notes of sesame oil and chili work to ground the flavors—it’s an intuitive and sparkling dish.

I also loved the Caesar salad, made new with handfuls of fresh dill and—here’s a swerve—perfectly fresh breaded, deep-fried oysters in place of croutons. The pastas are what fans of Colita and Martina have come to expect, expertly made and robustly seasoned. They remind the longtime del Prado superfan that he once cooked for Isaac Becker at pasta king Bar La Grassa. 

What about the cocktail scene, you ask? At the risk of sounding one blaring note of acclaim again and again, I have to say the cocktails at Porzana are staggeringly delicious and innovative. They’re the work of Megan Luedtke (who made her name at Martina), Adam Luesse (Martina), and Keith Mrotek (formerly of Marvel Bar, Norseman Distillery, and P.S. Steak). The three are presenting new-to-this-market flavors like the Gigi, a beet-red combination of maqui berries, camu camu fruits, lime, herbs like boldo leaf, the orange aperitif Hesperidina, and the South American grape spirit pisco. The combination tastes like something you get from a fresh-juice counter, all intense berries and bright citrus and interesting woody notes, yet it’s also so very pretty, a little crimson pool trembling in a coupe glass. This is why we leave the house!

The wines are also perfectly chosen, thanks to Bill Summerville, who lives in my mind as Minneapolis’s first sommelier of the contemporary era due to his work at dear departed La Belle Vie and Solera. He has put together a wine list that does three necessary things well. First, the list presents diverting and affordable by-the-glass options for steaks and scallops and all the things you’re likely to eat—try the Chilean Maule Valley blend from Laberinto Cinezas with any meat. Second, the list also gives old-school steak lovers the French Champagnes and Napa Valley cabernets they expect. And last, it does something we’ve been needing in the Twin Cities for a while: It takes a stab at curating an adventurous but solid South American bottle wine list. For everyone who’s been drinking Argentinian malbecs at home for a decade while wondering what the next level up is, Porzana has the answers.

Finally, as a critic, one begins to feel rather useless and unhelpful just noting one perfected object or moment after another. If I were to note a shortcoming among all the flourish of perfection, it would be the desserts. The chocotorta is nothing better than a good chocolate pudding, and its flaw is its failure of imagination. The other two desserts, a sort of pineapple upside-down cake and a flanstuffed crepe, are both better, though dull.

I’ll admit, I was searching and searching for a flaw, because that’s the role coaches or critics play. They’re the part of the hunt that weighs in from the sidelines, suggesting improvements—and maybe getting stabbed now and then, or maybe helping craft a better spear? Of course, it’s a trivial flaw in an exceptional achievement of a restaurant, a restaurant that, mere weeks from opening, is already in competition to be one of the best in the Twin Cities. Plus, Porzana serves till midnight, so if you don’t leave the State Theatre or First Avenue or Target Center or wherever at 9 o’clock and go straight to Porzana for potatoes and something wet, I don’t want to hear a complaint about the lack of late-night eats in the city ever again.

How will Porzana fare long-term in competition with legendary Minnesota steakhouses? I imagine the next thing that happens is that every steak eater in Minnesota visits Porzana, eviscerates a steak, and reports back to their clan as to whether the hunt was happy—or the happiest.

200 N. 1st St., Mpls., 612-489-6174