Loring Park is a small neighborhood with an unreasonable number of good restaurants. That is partly an accident of geography — it sits at the soft edge of downtown, next to the Walker Art Center and the convention center, with residential blocks on three sides — and partly because the people who live here eat out. Here is what is actually worth walking to.
We are biased: we run a bed and breakfast in the Eugene J. Carpenter Mansion, an 1887 house a block off the park. This is the list we give guests when they ask where to go tonight.
If you want the neighborhood’s marquee table
Gai Noi is chef Ann Ahmed’s Lao restaurant overlooking the park, and it is the one we recommend most often. It is walk-in only — no reservations, whatever the size of your party — so go early or go late and be prepared to wait a little. It is worth it.
P.S. Steak is the special-occasion room: an old-school steakhouse in a genuinely beautiful dining room. If someone is having a birthday, this is the answer.
If you are coming from the Walker
Cardamom sits at the Walker Art Center, with a menu built on Turkish and Moroccan flavors. It is the rare museum restaurant people go to on purpose. Pair it with the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden across the street, which is free and open year-round.
If you want something easy and good
Lotus does Vietnamese — pho, vermicelli bowls, pad thai — and it is the neighborhood’s reliable weeknight answer. The Butcher’s Tale, over on Hennepin, is for a table that cannot agree: specialty meats and Wagyu at one end, burgers and fried chicken at the other, plus a covered garden patio that works most of the year.
Buca di Beppo is here too, and worth knowing that this maze-like Loring Park location was the original — the first of what is now more than a hundred worldwide. Portions feed three to five people, so bring the group.
Breakfast, and the 3 a.m. problem
We do not serve breakfast on site, which guests sometimes find surprising for a bed and breakfast — so this section matters. A few blocks away, the Nicollet Diner is open 24 hours, which solves both the early flight and the late night. Eggy’s Diner handles breakfast and lunch, including Benedicts served on mini Belgian waffles. And Albi Kitchen, a woman-owned cafe down the road, does Halal treats, Somali-inspired sambusas and pastries, and qahwa coffee.
That last one is a small window onto something bigger: Somali cooking is one of the reasons National Geographic named Minneapolis one of the world’s best food destinations this year. If you have an appetite for a longer trip across town, that piece is where to start.
For a drink
Sisyphus Brewing is the low-key one: rotating taps, board games, pinball, shuffleboard, dog-friendly, and frequent comedy shows. Brühaven is another dog-friendly brewery nearby, with axe throwing if that is your evening. And the 19 Bar is a genuine piece of city history — the 1922 building housed a speakeasy during Prohibition and became Minneapolis’s first gay bar in 1952.
Or skip the walk entirely. Guests here get a $20 dining voucher for the historic Pillsbury Club for each night of their stay, and there is a speakeasy in our own basement if you would rather not put shoes back on.
Where to stay if you want all of this on foot
Every place on this list is a walk from the park. 300 Clifton is a block off it — a historic mansion with a four-season garden hot tub and a speakeasy downstairs. For longer stays, Oakland’s on 9th has furnished downtown studios by the month, and the Minneapolis Trolley will show you the rest of the city between meals.
Book a room a block from the park and eat your way around it.