Molly Yeh’s Restaurant Bernie’s Serves Minnesotan Hotdish and Challah | Eater Twin Cities

"In East Grand Forks, I visited Bernie’s, opened last fall by Molly Yeh and her husband Nick Hagen in the rehabbed former Whitey’s Wonderbar; they kept the massive horseshoe bar and vintage exterior lettering, and the sun-washed interior with carved wooden booths and a chalkboard evokes a modern farmhouse. The menu reads like a tidy compendium of Yeh’s cooking — inklings of Jewishness (potato challah, mandel bread, coconut macaroons), Scandinavian touches (cardamom buns, a smorgasbord of smoked salmon and soft-boiled eggs), and unabashedly satisfying items like the salami/ham/Havarti-stuffed Wondersub, sugar cookies, and baloney sandwiches — plus a small market selling harissa, za’atar, and halva. There are distinctly Minnesotan dishes too (wild-rice–flecked burger patties, whitefish spread on toast, and cookie salad), and hotdish is central: Yeh’s tater-tot versions are reliably topped with golden tots, flavors rotate (a taco hotdish recently appeared), and her signature hotdish uses a homemade, béchamel-like soup made with heavy cream, a quarter-cup of pale ale, and a dusting of nutmeg. Her early experiments included a “Chinese hotdish” topped with fried chow mein noodles that swapped coconut milk for cream-of-chicken and used ground chicken or pork with fresh ginger and scallions, and she’s since riffed with corn-dog, harissa chickpea, and Passover brisket hotdishes (the latter served beneath smiley-face fries). Yeh emphasizes that she wanted Bernie’s to feel welcoming to all generations and families, a place people can go every single day." - Justine Jones