Around 11:45 on a Tuesday, the parking lot off Minnesota Avenue starts filling up with people who clearly planned ahead. They’re not tourists. They’re the lunch crowd from the insurance offices and the regional hospital network, the ones who figured out, probably two years ago, that Cher-Mae’s House of Flavor is worth the five-minute drive from wherever they happen to be sitting.
The first reason to go is the steam table. Not every restaurant is built around a steam table — in fact, most restaurants that should be aren’t. Cher-Mae’s is. The rotating daily menu leans Southern and Creole: smothered pork chops, red beans and rice, mac and cheese with a crust that looks architectural, collard greens cooked down to the point where they’ve made peace with themselves. None of it is precious. All of it is exactly what it’s supposed to be. Tuesday is often the day for oxtails, and if you show up after noon you may have missed your window. That’s not a complaint, that’s a warning.
The second reason is the price. You’re going to get a full plate — protein, two sides, cornbread — and spend somewhere in the range of eleven to fourteen dollars. In 2025, in a city where a fast-casual bowl has somehow convinced people that thirteen dollars is normal, this is either a miracle or a very good business decision. Probably both.
The third reason is Cher-Mae herself, or at least the spirit of the place she built. The dining room is small and unpretentious in the way that only genuinely functional rooms can be — a few tables, nothing on the walls trying too hard, a refrigerator case with sweet potato pie and banana pudding that you should absolutely be buying before the lunch rush clears it out. There’s a reason regulars grab dessert first. It’s not anxiety. It’s experience.
The fourth reason, if you need a fourth, is that Sioux Falls does not have an abundance of places cooking this particular food well. The city has grown fast and added restaurants at a pace that sometimes outstrips the actual cooking. Cher-Mae’s is not a recent addition filling a market gap. It’s been here long enough to have opinions, long enough to have regulars who get mildly territorial if you sit in their spot by accident.
The location is straightforward: Minnesota Avenue, south of 12th, not far from the regional medical corridor. Street parking is fine. The hours skew toward lunch, so calling ahead or checking their Facebook page before making the drive on a Monday or Friday is a reasonable precaution. They sell out. They close when the food runs out. These are the behaviors of a kitchen that cooks to order and doesn’t pad the inventory with frozen shortcuts.
If you’ve been eating at the same three lunch spots for the past eighteen months, this is the correction. Oxtails or smothered chicken, sweet potato pie, and a parking lot full of people who already know what you’re about to figure out.
