About
An editorial magazine for Minnesota tables and bars.
Four Loons publishes reviews, venue profiles, recipes, and essays about how Minnesotans eat and drink. We treat the state's dining as a coherent subject — supper clubs and tasting menus, walleye and natural wine, North Shore cocktails and Iron Range diners — and write about it with the seriousness it already has.
Who writes
Reviews are bylined Four Loons editorial. That is a deliberate editorial choice, not a placeholder. Our protocol depends on operators not knowing who is at the table on a given night — the Michelin model. Anonymity moves the credibility burden from any one reviewer to the documented methodology: anonymous visits, paid checks, multiple diners, a published rubric, twelve-month revisits, dated corrections, named recusals.
The publication's editor — a single accountable person, also unnamed — is reachable at editors@fourloons.com and answers for everything we publish.
How we are funded
Four Loons is independently owned and reader-supported. We do not accept display advertising. We do not accept paid placements, sponsored content, affiliate dollars on review pages, or coordinated press meals presented as ordinary visits. Comps that are part of a normal media protocol (a tasting menu the kitchen knows in advance is being reviewed by press, for example) are disclosed on the piece they appear in — see the Disclosure field in the review sidebar.
How AI is used
We use AI tools in several parts of the workflow: search and tagging, code generation for the site itself, the homepage recommendation query, and generating placeholder photography for content that hasn't been photographed yet. AI does not write our reviews and does not assign ratings. Photography that is AI-generated is labeled illustration in the caption.
Contact
Editorial corrections, tips, and notes from operators about specific reviews can reach us at editors@fourloons.com. We acknowledge corrections in writing within five business days and publish material errata in the original piece.
Further reading