Law Warschaw Gallery
Macalester College’s gallery in the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center hosting curated solo and group exhibitions of contemporary artists. Open Tuesday through Sunday during the academic year.
St. Paul's walkable south-of-Summit neighborhoods. The Nook, Quixotic Coffee, Boludo, and the kind of streets that make people seriously consider moving across the river.
Macalester College’s gallery in the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center hosting curated solo and group exhibitions of contemporary artists. Open Tuesday through Sunday during the academic year.
An annual political science lecture Macalester has hosted since 1979, named for the professor who helped build the department. Each year it brings in a notable thinker to dig into a current question in politics, and recent installments have ranged across topics like capitalism and the politics of nature. It is a good fit if you like substantive, idea-driven talks in an intimate college setting.
The largest indie bookstore in St. Paul, with a packed calendar of high-caliber author readings, book clubs, and children's story times. It partners with nearby Macalester College and books a lot of local and visiting writers for in-conversation events. The neighborhood feel is warm and the recommendations from staff are worth the trip alone.
A small St. Paul roaster running a comfortable Highland Park cafe. The single-origin pour-overs are the move. The space is small and full on weekend mornings, but the weekday afternoons are quietly perfect.
The Nook opened in 2000 and the "Nookie Burger" is now frequently in the top of every Juicy Lucy ranking written about the metro. Bonus: there is a basement bowling alley with paper-and-pencil scoring. Order the burger, get a beer, roll a few games. A perfect Twin Cities night.
A small St. Paul cafe that quietly out-brunches half its more famous peers. Vietnamese coffee, hash heavy with crisped potatoes, a patio that fills by 9:30. Tip your server, the line will be longer next time.
Half neighborhood bar, half pilgrimage site for the Juicy Lucy. The four-lane basement bowling alley is the best kind of relic. Order the Nookie Burger, get a beer, do not think too hard about it.
Tuesday through Friday from two to 5:30: seven-dollar taps, eight-dollar wines, nine-dollar cocktails, and nine dollars for most of the food menu including burrata, crispy potatoes, garlic-bread cheese curds, and a four-oyster plate. A sixteen-dollar oysters-and-Muscadet pairing if you want to do it right. The garlic-bread cheese curds are the unexpected winner.
Daily happy hour from three to six under the name "That's Crazy Hour": $2.50 oysters, an eight-dollar margarita, a nine-dollar Old Fashioned, a ten-dollar Big Ass Glass of Wine, and an eight-dollar cheeseburger. The daily window and the oyster price are the two things that make this one worth knowing.
Dollar seventy-five tacos and five-dollar-twenty-five Summit taps every day from three to six. No notes. One of the cleaner happy hour propositions in St. Paul and the kind of deal that builds a regular crowd.
The boilermaker is built into the happy hour menu: ten dollars for a Summit beer and a bump of Keeper's Heart whiskey, which is the whole Iron Range in a glass. The rest of the weekday deal adds three dollars off signature drinks, flatbreads, and apps, plus two dollars off tap beer and wine. A new cocktail bar next door if you are staying out.
The largest independent bookstore in St. Paul, born as Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books in 2006 and renamed in 2019. Reliable bookseller recommendations, a strong events lineup, and a Snelling Avenue location that anchors the Mac-Groveland reading crowd. A dependable all-arounder.