Minneapolis/St. Paul City Guide

We have friends in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, and I thought I’d share a quick weekend city guide from a trip we took to see them. Our friends live in the Prospect Park area, so a lot of this stuff was within walking distance, but we were also quite close to a Lightrail for when we needed to get downtown.

WHERE TO GET COFFEE

Dogwood Coffee. The aesthetic of this place is delightful. There’s art for sale by local artists and its all quite hip. I had a delicious pour-over and Curtis had a double espresso. They were doing two varieties of their own espresso and the one he had was called Bear Hug.  It was followed by a call of bubbly soda water.

WHERE TO EAT & DRINK BEER

There are so many good breweries and places to drink in this area, but like I said we were sticking close to our friend’s home so these are the places we went. Let me know what your favorite places to drink in Minneapolis/St. Paul are and I’ll try to hit those next time!

Urban Growler Brewing. We had a tasty lunch here. All of us had their fish sandwich special– Curtis and I split it and I was glad we did, because while the fish and fries were delicious they were quite a heavy, crispy, fatty batter. I was licking my fingers, but was plenty full splitting it.

I drank their Maibock, a 7% German golden lager seasonal. I love Bavarian-style, yeast-y beers and this one was quite good. Curtis had Urban Growler’s award-winning Midwest IPA, which we both really liked. It subtly-hopped for an IPA and had a surprisingly good maltiness to it, too.

Bang Brewing Company

This eccentric, teeny place seems like its in the parking lot of Urban Growler. It’s legitimately in a metal shed next to some abandoned train tracks, but the whole time we were at Urban Growler, we kept seeing people roll kegs into the place, so we thought we’d give it a try.

They had a landscaped patio outside, and they actually fired up the bonfire and pumped some music outdoors for us. It was Minnesota in March, but sitting around the smoky bonfire with their Nice Coffee beer (“ – STP Dark Ale infused with Kopplin’s cold press.”) I was very cozy. 

WHERE TO GO FOR MUSIC

Again I know there are LOTS of great places to hear good music in Minneapolis/St. Paul, so I would love to hear your top recommendations. We hit up the Cedar Cultural Center for a show by WHY? and I’m really glad we got to see this historic theater. CCC is a cool old non-profit theater run mostly by volunteer service, which is pretty amazing, and they get cool shows. It seems like something is showing there pretty much every night and the tickets are not expensive.

That’s my city guide for our trip to Minneapolis/St. Paul! Let me know what you like to do when you visit this area- I got to visit about once or twice a year and I would love to know your favorite spots so I can catch them next time.

Peace & love. -EM