2024 James Beard award-nominated BernBaum’s in downtown Fargo abruptly closes

A beloved James Beard Award-nominated restaurant in downtown Fargo abruptly closed Monday, stunning customers and the community.

BernBaum’s, the breakfast and lunch eatery bridging Jewish and Icelandic cuisines, was a destination that gained national attention. Co-owner Andrea Baumgardner was a semifinalist for Best Chef: Midwest earlier this year.

Reached by phone Tuesday morning, Baumgardner said the closure was due to “personnel reasons.” She was in the process of donating perishable foods to local shelters. ”I’m just trying to get stuff out of here before it I have to throw it out, because that’s a little more heartbreaking,” she said.

Baumgardner declined to comment further, adding that she’s “just trying to keep my head down and close this restaurant.”

The Facebook page for the business was taken down after the announcement, and its website is empty save for an email address to redeem unused gift cards.

It’s the latest blow to downtown Fargo after a flagship bookstore, Zandbroz, closed this summer.

“Like Zandbroz, BernBaum’s created a community of interesting, open people excited to try new things. Two very important establishments closed and leave big holes in Fargo’s cultural scene,” wrote longtime Fargo arts reporter John Lamb on Facebook.

The Minnesota Star Tribune’s former food critic Rick Nelson in 2021 described the funky and casual BernBaum’s as one of the Midwest’s top restaurants.

Baumgardner and her husband, Brett Bernath, opened BernBaum’s in 2016 on Roberts Street inside a midcentury furniture store. About five years ago, it moved to Broadway and became a downtown mainstay.

Nelson wrote in his 2021 BernBaum’s review that the four-hour drive to Fargo from the Twin Cities was worth it just to visit the restaurant.

“We think of ourselves as a kind of traditional New York deli with a Scandinavian influence and a farm-to-table tradition, and that couldn’t have been successful here 20 years ago,” Bernath, a Fargo native, told Nelson. “But Fargo is transitioning from a big small town to a small big city. It’s definitely a boom town.”

Here’s an excerpt of Nelson’s review at the time:

“Spouses Brett Bernath and Andrea Baumgardner animate the surprising common ground between his Jewish culinary roots and her Icelandic heritage. A passion for lamb, smoked fish and pickled vegetables are just some of the overlaps, and the results are impressive.

“Their story is best told in a tale of two knishes. Although both make full use of Baumgardner’s obvious gifts with puff pastry, one follows the traditional potato-caramelized onion route while the other takes advantage of the ever-evolving bounty of local farms. For the latter, I lucked into a mix of kale, leeks, asparagus, spring peas and a burst of garden-fresh greens that will forever alter my previously formulaic view of the knish.”