When Guy Fieri pulls up to a restaurant on “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives,” the Mayor of Flavortown doesn’t hand out compliments lightly. Whatever you think of Fieri, personally, you’re unlikely to see bad food on “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.” While it’s often a niche environment of food establishments (more flavor blast than flavor nuance), the frosted-tipped master simply knows what he’s doing. So, when Guy Fieri declares a dish “killer,” you know it’s been earned. And that’s exactly what happened at StepChld, an eclectic, creative dining spot tucked into Northeast Minneapolis, when chef and owner Kamal Mohamed cooked up his lavender nori shrimp for Fieri.
“It’s one of my favorite dishes here,” Mohamed tells Fieri on the episode. Mohamed’s concoction starts with a lacto-fermented chili sauce, which is basically Fresno chilis blended with salt and left to ferment naturally. The fermented chilis are mixed with butter and cooked with the shrimp (and a touch of oil) and served with toasted nori (an edible seaweed) on top. Upon tasting the dish, Fieri says, “The shrimp are cooked perfectly, by the way… The slight heat you get from the Fresnos, the umami saltiness that you get from the nori, the blooming of the lavender … This is what I would call a destination dish. Without question, one of the most unique dishes I’ve tried on ‘Triple D’ in the last five or ten years.”
What happened to the killer Minneapolis dish praised on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives
In the “DDD” episode, Chef Mohamed explained how he came about creating StepChld. “I thought about all the spots I loved to eat at, and so I reached out to some of those chefs, and I said, ‘Can you teach me how to make pickles?’ ‘Can you teach me how to make bread?'” And he began rolling with his own eclectic menu. As for the name, StepChld, which Fieri points out is missing the letter ‘i,’ Mohamed says, plainly, “We couldn’t get the domain name … But we also say there’s no ‘i’ in ‘team.’ It’s a little corny, but it works, you know.”
StepChld was far from a greasy spoon, and Mohamed himself acknowledged the irony of the “Triple D” title — noting in an interview with The Minnesota Star Tribune, “When you look at the spots that [Fieri] has been to in the Twin Cities, they’re not really diners, drive-ins, or dives. They’re shifting away from that and more focused on just unique, interesting restaurants …” Unfortunately, since the episode aired, StepChld is no longer operating, having closed its doors in August of 2025. But thankfully, Mohamed’s other Minneapolis enterprises, cocktail bar WildChld, and “organic clean eating cafe,” Parcelle, are both still open, so you can get a taste (or a sip) from one of Chef Mohamed’s creations. And you might just react with one of Guy Fieri’s great one-liners, “This is killer.”…