By Jack Maguire

I went to INTI Kitchen & Bar for lunch after getting off a flight. It is in Minneapolis’s Kingfield neighborhood, and I went because its Google rating was strong and it looked good. It had only been open for a short time, which lined up with the relatively small number of reviews. A local opening report says the restaurant opened in late August 2026 in the former Corner Table and Revival space.

I sent AI a photo of the menu and used Tyler Cowen’s usual ethnic-dining approach: look for the dishes that depend on technique rather than the availability of the best ingredients from the homeland. It recommended the beef momos and beef shoko phing. We also got the cranberry curry puffs.

Cranberry curry puffs

The puffs were like a samosa meeting a wonton. They sound like dessert, but they were not. The menu calls them cranberry curry puffs, served with sauce. They had a sweet and sour filling and a little heat. They were tasty, if fairly flat in flavor, and worked as a simple appetizer.

Beef momos

The beef momos were good. They had a healthy amount of beef, nice aromatics, and enough spice. At $17 for eight, they came to about $2.13 per momo. That is a decent deal, though not an exceptional one.

They came with a small cabbage slaw, more vinegary and fermented-tasting than a standard salad. It helped balance the richer and spicier parts of the meal.

Beef shoko phing

The beef shoko phing was the most interesting dish. It arrived in a ceramic bowl as a stew of beef, potatoes, and glass noodles. I had initially thought the noodles might be rice noodles, but the restaurant describes them as glass noodles.

The menu says shoko phing can be served with rice, tingmo, or naan. They brought tingmo without asking what we wanted. That was fine because the tingmo was very good, though I would also have liked to try the dish with rice.

It had some heat without being aggressively spicy. Like the other dishes, it was hearty and well executed, but not especially complex. I would have liked a thicker broth, though it may have been made the traditional way.

Dessert

We wanted the Bhatsa Markhu, the sweet Tibetan macaroni and cheese, but it was not available that day. Instead we got the kheer and gulab jamun.

The gulab jamun tasted like tiny, very sweet doughnuts. The menu describes it as soft cheese dumplings in warm cardamom syrup. I found it one-dimensional and a little grainy. It was okay.

The INTI kheer is listed as saffron rice pudding. To me, it tasted more like rice pudding with rosewater. It was also fine, but one-dimensional and not excellent.

Overall

INTI has a wide drinks list, including Indian and Tibetan cocktails, beer, wine, sake, and nonalcoholic drinks. We did not order alcohol at lunch.

I would give the meal 4 out of 5 stars. Nothing was off-putting, but nothing blew me away either. The shoko phing is the thing to order, and the momos are a good second choice.