Alma — Restaurant in Minneapolis

We had our wedding at Alma in Sept. 2023. We did a full buy-out of the space and cannot emphasize enough how amazing of an experience we had with the Alma team, especially Gabriela. Our family was able to stay in the beautiful boutique hotel that was located in the building—they enjoyed an amazing breakfast each morning in the cafe (also had the option to dine in-room), and are still dreaming of how delicious the breakfast bacon was! From the moment guests arrived at our wedding, they were greeted by the most attentive, friendly and professional staff. Our ceremony took place in the private rooms, with beautiful exposed brick and a full wall of windows as the backdrop. Guests enjoyed delicious passed appetizers (such as hamachi crudo, fresh ricotta & herbs, and more) and top-notch champagne, wine and curated cocktails (such as French 75, Rob Roy and many more) during the cocktail reception, and a 5-course meal that was so delicious, creative and high-quality, that months later, our friends are still raving about it! We live in NYC and had guests fly into Minneapolis from all over—even the folks who are used to the quality restaurants in NYC, London, Dubai and Qatar were impressed with how delicious and innovative everything at Alma was!

The flower arrangements that Alma made were stunning, and every detail down to the event programs and personalized menus, topped with a hand-crafted Alma caramel—was all perfection.

The space was beautiful, the candle-light ambience at dinner was romantic, and our guests enjoyed the option of being able to hit the dance floor or hang out in the cafe area and have cake, coffee, and espresso martinis after dinner was completed.

We received countless compliments from our guests about the beauty of the space, the delicious food and drinks and the top-notch service. Huge thank you to Gabriela Seidel, events manager at Alma, for going through every step of the planning process with us and for executing perfectly. Her hard work, attentiveness and passion to make sure we had the best event possible truly gave us a dream wedding. We cannot recommend Gabriela enough, she is an absolute STAR!!!! Huge thank you to Cam, at Alma, who worked with us on the beverage menu for the event and personally bartended and made some of the best cocktails we’ve ever had!

Cannot recommend Alma enough. Whether it’s for a quick coffee & pastry, or a delicious brunch or dinner, it is all excellent. Full buy-out or private room would be great for a corporate or personal event—anything from formal dinner to cocktail reception. Full buy-out for your dream wedding with top quality food and drink, excellent service, and ceremony, cocktail reception, dance party and hotel on-site—Alma is the real deal.

Photos by Holly...

We went to Alma for their prix fixe vegetarian menu.

Short review : It’s a good place and I would have really liked to rate it 5 stars but several small things added up to make our experience less than exceptional. It’s likely that it was a one-off day or may be not. But, I can only review it based on our experience. Read on for a more detailed review.

We had a reservation at 7:30 pm and went in a couple of minutes early. We were seated pretty quickly. Almost immediately we were served marinated olives and roasted almonds. We also ordered a cocktail.

Then came the antipasti; they served us garlic flan, sourdough and butter , roasted beets and Gouda with poached apricots. All of them tasted really good. No complaints with any of the dish. They got us the salmon instead of roasted beets at first and we had to point out to them that we were doing the vegetarian menu and they went back to get the right one. And then, we waited for 50 minutes for our salad to appear. After about 40 minutes of waiting our server came and apologized to us for the delay. She said the kitchen was very chaotic. I’m not sure what that meant. Anyway, 10 minutes after that we got our salad. We were chatting with the chef who brought out the salad and mentioned to her that we really liked the marinade for the olives that were served as snacks. She was very kind to give us some to take home with us. Thank you for the kind gesture !

The entrée took another 30 mins to come. It was 9:30 by the time our entrees came out. Remember we came in at 7:30 and two hours later our entrees had just arrived. By this time we were kind of pretty tired of just waiting. The food was pretty good. The green beans, corn-cream pasta and the chick-pea all tasted good. The portion sizes were very disproportionate. The pasta and green beans was a very small portion and the chickpea was a huge portion. I wished we could have had more of the pasta as it tasted really delicious.

The dessert was a lime curd + coconut cream. Our server put a candle on my fiancé’s dessert as we were celebrating his birthday. Thank you ! In terms of taste, however, the dessert was a big disappointment. The lime curd had an excessively eggy taste that made it taste very weird.

Another observation: my fiancé pointed out that the cutlery was very very plain and the plating wasn’t great either. When you pay so much for a prix fixe menu, you’d expect some more thought to go into plating and the plates itself to have some theme, color etc. I think that’s a fair point he made.

Overall, we definitely liked the food. The olives and the pasta stood out for us. But, we’ve definitely been to...

My husband and I have been wanting to try Alma for the longest time but the pricing has been what was stopping us. We love enjoying new experiences but love to get our money's worth and sometimes these course meal experiences are a hit or miss from previous experiences we've had. Anyways we decided to take a leap of faith and dine in for our anniversary and this was our rating

Atmosphere/Parking/Greetings - 4/5

We arrived around 630pm and was able to locate a small parking lot in the back of the building designated for Alma guest only. I initially didn't see the parking or any signs that there was a parking lot in the back. My husband was the one who pointed it out. If you do street parking, it looked busy around this time.

Walking into the building it's a little unintuitive on where the restaurant is as there are no signs. The doors have Alma Cafe written on it and no Alma Restaurant. The host desk to be seated to the restaurant is hidden behind a wall next to stairs if you enter through the café left doors (there are multiple doors...) so I wasn't able to see him nor really determine where the restaurant was without looking lost lol.

Entering the restaurant atmosphere in general is small and intimate and overall more quiet than most places. We overall do not have a problem with this. Seats were comfy and water was wet. We're good here.

Service - 5/5

We had the pleasure of being served by Giovanni (excuse me if I misspelled the name). He greeted us right away and was professional, informative, and just overall very pleasant. He gave us some champagne to celebrate our first time in Alma which my husband and I were very pleasantly surprised about. Because my husband and I are more casual people we enjoyed his little breaks from being super fancy with us and just being personable and relatable. We enjoyed the service.

Food - 4/5

The food was good and cooked perfectly. Nothing was overcooked or undercooked. However, my reason for 4 star rating is because even though it was good, it was nothing out of this world that we'd come back for for the price that we paid. I did the wine pairing with the food and honestly felt happy with my decision ($60 addition). Our server was nice to top off my wine with no additional charge.

Overall - 4/5

In summary, if you're looking for a fancy first time course meal experience, but aren't too adventurous with your flavors, I'd HIGHLY recommend...