Walkin’ Around Checkin’ Stuff Out. #23

The weather has been so good restaurants and bars have opened their patios on the warm days…and one of the best patios in town is Aster Cafe.

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Aster Cafe.

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Aster Cafe. Minneapolis, MN

Aster Cafe is a great little spot right down on the river with a killer view of Downtown Minneapolis. The bar is great, but the real draw in the summer is the patio. It’s maybe the best patio in town….although W.A. Frost would have something to say about that and they wouldn’t be wrong.

Aster Cafe patio. Minneapolis, MN

As cool as the inside of Aster Cafe is, the patio is the real draw. For us nothing says “summer” like food and drinks on the Aster patio.

The food is pretty good, too…the Asian street noodles and shakshuka are highlights for sure.

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Stockyard Exchange.

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Stockyard Exchange. South St. Paul, MN

Located where the stockyards used to be. The stockyards are long gone, but this place still stands. I guess it’s a wedding and event venue these days…that’s a long way from the stockyards of years ago.

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Shantytown Gourmet Hamburgers.

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Shantytown Hamburgers. Bloomington, MN

Just when you think you know all the places…this one pops up in a neighborhood in Bloomington along a stretch of industrial buildings on a side street you’d never drive down unless you knew where you were going. Shantytown has been here forever and I’ve never heard of it. I love finding places like this.

The first thing that hit us about Shantytown were the regulars. This place is home away from home for a whole bunch of them.

Our server was telling us that it used to be a flophouse for people riding the train. In many ways it still is a place for people to hangout and crash…although they close at 8:00, so they can’t hangout too long.

I got the sense this woman has been coming here for as long as I’ve been a live. She was all done-up for a Sunday afternoon burger.

And how about that perfect stack of onion rings? Damn, that looks good. (We didn’t get onion rings, but the fries and tater tots were pretty good.)

The sign outside officially reads: Shantytown Gourmet Hamburgers. Gourmet might be stretching it a bit. Maybe they were gourmet decades ago when the sign went up, but now “gourmet” means a whole different thing when it comes to hamburgers…and a whole different price. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Sometimes you just want a good simple burger that doesn’t cost you $20. I don’t think the Shantytown regulars would be down with a $20 burger, “gourmet”or not.

I don’t think the dude running the grill sees himself crafting “gourmet” burgers, although he clearly took pride in his work and was happy to take a compliment with a smile.

I noticed they went through a lot of bacon on those burgers. Shantytown regulars know what they like, and they like what they know.

Any decent dive bar has to have pull tabs. And they have to have the pull tabs where when I play I win nothing. Zero. Zilch. I would have been better off tearing up a $20 bill and putting on my burger as a condiment.

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