Best Restaurants in the West Side & District del Sol (2026)

The chile relleno anchors the menu at this longtime West Side room, and the weekday lunch buffet is the move for anyone testing the water. Enchiladas and tacos round out a Tex-Mex leaning menu built for repeat visits rather than novelty. The room hosts family gatherings easily, and the pace stays unhurried even at capacity.

Brunch here comes with a view most St. Paul rooms cannot offer: private planes taxiing past the patio next to the airport. Cocktails and seasonal specials fill out the menu, but the draw is sitting outside in patio season and watching the runway. Reservations move fast on busy weekends, so calling ahead pays off.

Happy hour cocktails and a burger built for a pre-game crowd define this St. Paul sports bar. Steak and fish and chips round out a menu suited to groups heading to a Wild game or a hockey tournament, with shuttles run on busy nights. Lunch on a slower weekday shows the kitchen's range beyond the bar snacks.

Chicken Sawa and lentil soup carry this Kurdish room, the first of its kind in Minnesota, and the lamb kebab backs them up. The interior rewards a slow look around the room. This is a distinct cuisine from the West Side's Mexican corridor and deserves to be named on its own terms, not folded into a broader Middle Eastern label.

Barbacoa tostadas packed to the edge are the reason to walk in, with guacamole made fresh enough to notice. The patio, more a stretch of outdoor seating than a formal terrace, fills through the summer months. Attentive service and a sports bar pace make this a reliable choice for a casual meal on St. Paul's West Side.

Flautas are the standout at this counter-service taqueria, with menudo and ceviche giving the menu real depth beyond the standard taco lineup. Tripe shows up on repeat orders from regulars who know the menu runs larger than the small room suggests. Takeout holds up as well as eating on site, which says something about the kitchen.

Arepitas, yuca, and an arugula salad build a Venezuelan menu with real ambition, and the fixed-price dinner puts three courses at a set cost for a date night out. The dining room leans upscale for the neighborhood, a deliberate choice on a stretch of St. Paul more associated with counter service than tasting menus.

Steak tacos move fast at this taqueria across the street from a market that draws its own crowd. Carnitas and carne asada round out a short, focused menu built for speed rather than ceremony. Service moves quickly enough that a lunch stop rarely runs long, and the tacos are the reason regulars keep skipping the market across the way.

The burger gets mentioned as often as the pizza at this strip-mall room, a rare split loyalty for a place with pizza in its name. The dining room carries decades of neighborhood history on its walls, newspaper clippings included, and the crowd leans toward coworkers grabbing a casual lunch rather than a destination pizza order.