My wife and I will be in Minneapolis for a weekend in May staying downtown without a car.
We like art, music, good food, beer, and whiskey. I like hiking, history, and botantical gardens but this is probably too short of a trip. We have two businesses in an art district with ideas for more so we always like to check out what other people are doing. So far from some quick internet searching I have found:
-The Institute of Art has a Guillermo del Toro exhibit.
-A Russian Art Musuem
-Butcher and the Boar.
Peninsula Malaysia Cuisine.
-NE Minneapolis Arts District
Any other recommendations? I especially would like to hit some good restaurants and whiskey bars to do “market research”.
Paisley Park is in Chanhassen - quite a ways from downtown Minneapolis. If you had more time, I would suggest it, but I don’t know that it’s worth taking a half day if you’re just visiting.
Fulton’s tap room is right downtown, along with Clockwork and Modist. Boom Island (brewer of my personal favorite, the Hoodoo Belgian Dubbel), Dangerous Man, and 612, are just north and northeast of downtown.
As for restaurants, what styles are you thinking? Sawatdee is a great Thai place, at least for the Cities. Hell’s Kitchen has an…interesting vibe, but the food is pretty good, and the desserts are incredible (I’m not biased by the fact my friend is a pastry chef, I swear). If lots of piercings, tattoos, and the like are dealbreakers for you, probably not, though. Mason’s is pretty unique and tasty, American style food, with drinks served in Mason jars. Then there’s Zelo for Italian, Fogo de Chão for a Brazilian steakhouse, Manny’s if you want to blow a very large wad of cash on incredible steaks, and Brit’s Pub for some English fare.
If you head west from the Institute of Art a couple blocks to Nicollet and turn south, you’ll find Eat Street. Pick a door, walk in, and you’ll come out happy. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad meal in that area.
For whiskey…well, there’s Marvel Bar. I’m not much for alcohol without malt or hops, but I’ve heard good things there. I know the Happy Gnome in St. Paul has a pretty good whiskey list as well, but that’s ten miles by Uber, and probably an hour or so by bus.
If theater interests you, check out the Hennepin Theatre Trust. There’s four theaters downtown, ranging from the intimate New Century Theatre to the huge State Theatre. Broadway traveling shows, comedians, musicians - you name it. Somebody mentioned Guthrie, which is an incredible venue as well.
Not a problem. Mrs Monkey has been a tattoo artist for 25 years. One of our early dates was to a Skinny Puppy show. Hipsters don’t scare us.
Really we are open to about any kind of food. We had been trying to figure out where Eat Street was. These kind of trips we like to plan a couple of things and ad lib/explore the rest so Eat Street sounds perfect.
I just got back from a a long weekend in Minneapolis with 4 friends fo mine. None of us have ever been before. As far as food and drink go, here are some of our favorite places:
Marvel bar for cocktails
112 Eatery - great food including an incredible Brie Burger
The Parlour - Amazingly good burger, probably the best i’ve ever had
The Constantine downtown is also a good spot for cocktails.
We also made it to Matt’s for the Jucy Lucy which was good as well but in a different way
The LynLake Brewery in Uptown was great and there’s an arcade bar down the street called Up Down that was a lot of fun
The Loop neighborhood, which is where we staed has a number of taprooms with outdoor patios that were a good time.
we did a lot of walking along the river to work off all the burgers. and really enjoyed just checking everything out. It didnt hurt that the weather was amazingly good.
Minneapolis resident here. Downtown Minneapolis is a major hub of the Metro Transit system, so you have lots of options to get places in the central Minneapolis/St Paul area by bus or light rail. Here’s the Metro trip planner page, where you can plug in starting points and destinations and see how and when you can get transit service.
