Installment #19 in Monolisticle's Ongoing Campaign Against the "Internet of Endless Listicles."
As a 10th generation Southerner, I fully understand the culinary sacrilege that is being committed when I say that the best fried catfish I’ve ever had (aside from my mother’s, of course) is not in New Orleans. Or Charleston. Or Houston.
It’s in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
I understand the significance of my assertion. Those are almost fighting words, I know. In my defense, I offer you the dish itself, on the menu at Brasa Premium Rotisserie, a small restaurant on Grand Avenue in the Highland Park neighborhood just south of Summit.
When I first ate at Brasa, I approached it with the same degree of skepticism I had the local Twin Cities’ “barbeque” establishments. When I first started eating my way through the Midwest, I’d heard people talk about how great the barbeque restaurants were. I was skeptical. Because making proper barbeque requires an outrageous degree of commitment and discipline that is nothing short of exhausting.
Barbeque excellence is even more difficult to sustain over time, as the lifestyle is demanding. Old-school practitioners of the craft wake up ridiculously early every day (like 3am early) to smoke the meat to perfection by lunchtime. How many people are committed enough to do that? Not many. And they pretty much all live in North Carolina or Texas.
So given my less-than-stellar experience with Twin Cities "barbeque" restaurants, I approached my first visit to Brasa with, at best, guarded optimism. Sizing up Brasa's menu, I said to my wife, “Look honey, they have fried catfish.” As she usually does in such instances when I am enticed by menu options that are clearly out of their jurisdiction, she immediately said, “Honey, remember where you are.” That’s her polite way of saying, we’re not in the South—you might want to order the rotisserie chicken instead.
So what did I do? I ordered the fried catfish, of course. I was so homesick (desperate) for good southern cooking I had to at least give it a try that by some small chance it would be halfway decent. Even though I feared I would regret it. Needless to say, Brasa's fried catfish was special. Exceedingly special.
For one thing, their catfish is thick. With fried fish, the batter-to-meat proportion is paramount. No one at Brasa is trying to sneak through a pitifully-thin filet inundated in batter like some places. While the typical southern fried catfish is made with a cornmeal and wheat flour batter, Brasa's version is a combination of cornmeal and rice flour (making their version naturally gluten-free, for those who care about this for health reasons).
Lovingly rescued from the frier within that precariously tiny 15-second or so window between fish being undercooked and overcooked, the exterior is lightly crusty and flaky. Seasoned perfectly. The inside is meaty, tender and moist. Clearly somebody knows what they're doing.
Lack of adornment is one of the things that sets Brasa’s fried catfish apart. It’s completely out in the open. Hiding behind nothing. Yes, there is a small ramekin of delicious sauce (on the side) for those who wish to go there. But why? Nothing against the sauce. It’s a perfectly fine sauce. Occasionally I’ll dip a piece of the thin crusty tail part into the sauce, but most of the time I'm so focused on the filet itself I will finish and realize I never touched it.
Subscribe to monolisticle for free weekly articles sent to your inbox, everything from art, culture and music to food, film, and travel. Not all the things. Only the best things.
At first I thought that my joyous reaction to Brasa's dish might be a result of having lived outside the South for too long. Had my taste buds gotten soft? But many trips back below the Mason-Dixon Line since have only confirmed my original assessment. And it was then definitively and unequivocally confirmed on a recent trip back to New Orleans, where I re-tried all the great fried catfish I’d eaten there in the past. While one or two in New Orleans held their own with Brasa's, none surpassed theirs, and a couple had even fallen far behind.
I had been eating Brasa’s fried catfish on a regular basis for a while before I was finally driven by curiosity to find out more about the gifted people behind the restaurant. And I couldn’t believe what I discovered. The restaurant is owned by a James Beard Award-winning chef, Alex Roberts. Why did I not know this, you ask? Because it’s the Midwest. Only in the Midwest would someone win a James Beard Award and not promote the fact relentlessly and at every opportunity.
But in Brasa there are no plaques hanging on the wall. No photos of Alex Roberts schmoozing with celebrities. Roberts and his team wield their culinary gifts with Midwestern humility, and something equally unglamorous yet important: consistency. Of the more than 50 times I’ve ordered their fried catfish, it’s been cooked perfectly every time except for once. And they quickly brought a perfect one to replace it.
Not that Brasa can do no wrong. We don’t agree on everything. Their collard greens, for one thing. While I do enjoy their collards very much, and order them often, they simmer theirs with smoked chicken instead of fat-back. <Sigh> While it may be healthier, it is, in my opinion, a fundamental flaw and will always make it inferior to any number of collard green sides at restaurants throughout the South.
I remember standing beside the wood-fired cooking stove my great-grandmother used to stew collards I’d picked for her that very morning in the fields of their farm in Virginia. The smell of fat-back and collards had the same hypnotic effect of bacon, and pork fat is kind of undefeatable. In Brasa's defense, it's also hard to compete with the taste of nostalgia.
Regardless of the collard greens' minor limitation, Brasa is one of my favorite restaurants in the Twin Cities, and their fried catfish is one of my favorite dishes in the world. My ultimate criterium for recommending any dish is this: would I buy a plane ticket just to go eat it? There are only a few dishes that I'd get on a plane for. Brasa's fried catfish is one of them.
If you enjoyed this article, please click the Facebook or Twitter icons at the bottom of this page and share it with others. You'll be helping to support our work, and the work of the artists, restaurants, cultural institutions, and experiences we write about. And we all would certainly appreciate the support right now. Thank you!
@brasa_rotisserie