On a Tuesday morning in October, around 8:15, I watched a man named Jerry settle onto the last stool at the counter like he’d done it ten thousand times. Maybe he had. He ordered without looking at the menu — two eggs over easy, hash browns, wheat toast — and the cook, without a word, started cracking eggs. That kind of shorthand takes years to develop. At Al’s Breakfast, in Dinkytown, it’s just how the place runs.
Al’s opened in 1950 and occupies what I can only describe as the narrowest room that still legally qualifies as a restaurant. Fourteen stools, no tables, and a counter so close to the kitchen that you can watch your food being made without even trying. The line on weekends stretches out the door and partway down 14th Avenue SE, but it moves faster than you’d expect because the kitchen doesn’t slow down. Weekdays are more manageable — get there before 9 and you might walk straight in.
I first came here because a friend who went to the University of Minnesota told me it was the only breakfast she missed after graduating. That was seven years ago. I’ve since dragged my partner, my sister, two visiting cousins, and a coworker from Portland who declared it the best breakfast she’d ever eaten in the Midwest. The Portland coworker is the kind of person who says things like that casually, so I believe her.
What you should order: the blueberry pancakes, if they’re on the board that day. They’re thick without being dense, and the butter melts into them before they even reach you. The hash browns are the real anchor of the menu, though — properly browned, seasoned without being heavy-handed, exactly what hash browns are supposed to be and almost never are. Eggs any style, a short stack, the lemon-ricotta hotcakes when they appear as a special. Coffee comes in a standard diner mug and gets refilled constantly.
Prices are low in a way that feels almost anachronistic. Breakfast for two with coffee rarely clears twenty dollars, tip included on the higher end. It’s one of the few places in Minneapolis where you feel like the economics are arranged in your favor.
The staff moves with the efficiency of people who know exactly how much space they have and use every inch of it. There’s a warmth to the place, but it’s not the performed warmth of a concept restaurant — it’s the ease of people who like their work and know what they’re doing. The regulars and the first-timers get treated about the same, which I think is the right call.
Jerry, it turned out, had been coming since his grad school days in the late eighties. He teaches somewhere in the suburbs now and drives in on Tuesdays because it’s his day off. “I don’t really have a reason anymore,” he said, when I asked why Tuesdays specifically. “It just stuck.” That’s the honest answer. Most people who keep coming back to Al’s don’t have a better explanation than that. It stuck. It’s good. It’s been there longer than most things in this city, and it still deserves the line.
