The corridor of Nicollet Avenue south of downtown known as Eat Street, dense with restaurants from a dozen cuisines, plus the Black Forest Inn, the new Eat Street Crossing food hall, and Luna & The Bear.
An encyclopedic museum on the scale you usually have to fly to see. Ninety thousand objects spanning five thousand years of art and design. Free admission, a Japanese tea room, period rooms moved over from Europe, and one of the country’s great photography collections. A genuinely civic gift.
Half restaurant, half listening room, with a back stage that hosts jazz, indie, and quiet singer-songwriter sets. The food is real and the room is acoustically tuned. If you want to actually hear the music, this is one of the best small rooms in the city.
Next door to Mia. The only theater for young audiences ever to win the regional Tony Award. Productions are full-scale and wildly inventive, the kind of work that reminds you why theater for kids should never be dumbed down.
A New American kitchen and libation house in the Whittier neighborhood at the south end of Eat Street. Burgers, sandwiches, and entrees with serious craft cocktails and a thoughtful wine list. The room feels like it has been there longer than it has, in the best way.
A food hall in a historic Whittier building at the south end of Eat Street, anchored by a centralized bar (ESC Bar) and a rotating roster of seven vendors. Current lineup includes Bebe Zito (ice cream, burgers, fried chicken), Ouro Pizzaria (Brazilian-style pizza), Ramen Shoten (craft ramen), Sushi Dori (sushi sandwiches and maki), Staff Meeting (Hawaiian-Filipino fusion from the Chefs Louross), plus bubble tea and more.
A James Beard America’s Classic and the banh mi the rest of the city is judged by. Five dollars gets you a sandwich that has been quietly perfected over four decades. The cured pork with pâté is the move. The pho is the meal you order alongside it.
An Eat Street fixture since 1989. The pho is the draw, but the menu runs deep into bun, com, and a long list of weekend specials. Plain dining room, big bowls, fast service.
A longtime neighbor to Quang on Eat Street, doing generous bowls of pho and the usual run of vermicelli and broken rice. Casual, family-owned, and a steady reliable choice.
A Minneapolis record store that has been operating since 1968. Prince shopped here. So has every other musician who passed through. Deep vinyl selection, consistent in-store performances, and a staff that has not stopped paying attention.
A German beer hall that has been serving spätzle, schnitzel, and proper steins of dunkel since 1965. The biergarten in summer is one of the great unposed Minneapolis spaces. The painting on the wall in the back room has its own story that anyone who has been there for an hour will tell you.