Best Restaurants in Downtown St. Paul & Lowertown (2026)

The St. Paul Grill runs on a simple bet: downtown St. Paul needs one room that does steak, cocktails, and pre-show timing without a misstep, and this is that room. The blackened beef shows up across the order sheet often enough to read as the kitchen's calling card, a starter with enough char and pepper to earn repeat orders from people who've been coming for years. The steaks themselves get called decent to good rather than transcendent, which is its own kind of honest signal: this is a room that executes a classic chophouse menu correctly rather than reinventing it.

The Old Fashioned gets singled out specifically, and a bar that makes a proper one is doing something a lot of upscale dining rooms skip in favor of a longer cocktail list with less rigor behind each drink. Service reads as consistently sharp, the kind of polish that holds up whether someone is seated for a full dinner or just perched at the bar for a nightcap before heading to whatever is playing nearby. That bar-only option matters: this is a room built to flex between a two-hour dinner and a twenty-minute drink, group friendly without losing the upscale register. St. Paul, unlike Minneapolis, doesn't have a deep bench of grand old-guard dining rooms left standing; the ones that remain (Cossetta, Mancini's, the Grill itself) carry real weight downtown.

This is the kind that gets booked ahead of a Xcel Energy Center show or an Ordway performance, then remembered as much for the room as the meal. The price sits at the upscale end, appropriate for steak and classic cocktails done properly rather than adventurously. It suits groups celebrating something, business dinners that need a reliably good answer, and regulars who've decided this is their downtown St. Paul standby. It is not chasing trends.

It is holding down a lane that downtown St. Paul does not have many other rooms competing for, and doing it well enough that first-timers walk out surprised by how good the whole night was.

Afro Deli & Grill runs on a simple idea executed without shortcuts: East African and Mediterranean cooking sharing one counter, one price point, and a menu that does not make either side feel like an afterthought. The Chicken Fantastic is the order that built the reputation, grilled chicken over rice with a sauce that reads as the connective tissue between the two cuisines on the menu. The Veggie Fantastic runs the same formula meatless and holds up on its own, not as a compromise plate but as a real option, which matters in a room built to be vegetarian-friendly rather than vegetarian-tolerant. The hummus gets called out on its own, which says something: plenty of counters treat it as filler, this one treats it as a dish worth ordering separately. This is counter service, quick, inexpensive, built for a fast lunch or a family dinner without ceremony.

The price point and the format put it in direct competition with every fast-casual option downtown, and the fact that it holds its own says the kitchen is not coasting on novelty. St. Paul has lost ground in this lane recently: the Cedar-Riverside and skyway Afro Deli rooms closed at the end of 2025, which leaves this location carrying more weight than it used to. That makes consistency here less of a nice-to-have and more of the whole argument. The room reads as family friendly and casual, the kind of place built for repeat weekday visits rather than a special trip.

Nothing about the menu chases trend. It is a Somali and Mediterranean hybrid that has apparently found an audience wide enough to keep both halves of the menu relevant, from the grilled proteins to the hummus to the rice plates that anchor the Fantastic line. For a fast, cheap meal that treats vegetarians as a real customer and not an afterthought, this is one of the more reliable stops left in that particular lane in the Twin Cities.

Meritage sits in the French brasserie lane St. Paul has claimed for itself, a genre downtown Minneapolis has never really matched. The menu leans on steak frites as its center of gravity, and the dish carries the room's argument: a well-rested cut, a pile of fries that reviewers return to again and again, and a version of French cooking that does not apologize for being rich. The fries alone earn separate mention from diners who order them as their own event rather than a side.

A house salad rounds out the trio of signatures, the kind of plain, well-dressed greens that a serious kitchen uses to show restraint before the heavier courses land. That range, from a salad this simple to a steak this indulgent, says something about a kitchen confident enough to let both stand on their own. Meritage reads as a special-occasion room built for pacing: courses spaced for conversation, a wine list positioned to matter as much as the plates, and a dining room designed with the kind of formality that suits an anniversary or a client dinner rather than a Tuesday supper. The upscale pricing places it alongside St.

Paul Grill and W.A. Frost as one of the city's serious rooms for occasion dining, and it draws on the same downtown St. Paul energy that keeps those two institutions full. This is a St.

Paul restaurant in the fullest sense, not a Minneapolis stand-in with a river between it and the real thing. The French program here draws its own line: steak frites done with attention rather than novelty, a wine list built to be studied, and a room that treats romance as a matter of pacing and light rather than gimmick. For a couple marking a birthday or a milestone, or a table that wants French cooking with the volume turned toward comfort rather than spectacle, Meritage is the downtown St. Paul answer.