Kroll’s Diner has been feeding Fargo since 1944, and the one on 13th Avenue South still feels like it knows exactly what it is.
I go a few times a year, usually on a Saturday morning when I have nowhere to be until noon. The building isn’t much to look at from the parking lot — low-slung, with that retro diner signage that’s survived long enough to loop back around to cool. Inside, the booths are red vinyl, the coffee comes fast, and the laminated menus are stacked near the register like they’re expecting you to need one.
What Kroll’s is known for, and rightly so, is the Knoephla soup. It’s a North Dakota thing — a thick, creamy German-Russian soup with potato dumplings and chunks of potato and sometimes a little celery. If you grew up here, it tastes like your grandmother’s kitchen. If you didn’t, it’s likely the first time you’ve had anything quite like it. Either way, order it. It comes with bread, and on a cold October morning, which describes roughly six months of the year in this city, it’s the kind of thing you plan your drive around.
The breakfast side of the menu is honest and generous. Eggs and hash browns, pancakes as wide as the plate, biscuits and gravy that are more biscuit than gravy, which I prefer. Nothing here is trying to be elevated. That’s not dismissive — I mean it as a real compliment. Kroll’s figured out its lane a long time ago and hasn’t swerved.
Lunch and dinner bring burgers, sandwiches, and specials that rotate through the week. The patty melt is a reliable order. So is the hot beef sandwich, which shows up on menus like this across the region and tastes better here than in most places I’ve tried it — open-faced, with gravy ladled over thinly sliced beef on white bread, with a scoop of mashed potatoes alongside. It’s not a subtle meal. It doesn’t pretend to be.
Prices are what you’d want from a diner. Breakfast runs you somewhere between seven and twelve dollars depending on what you get. A bowl of Knoephla is around six or seven. Nothing on the menu is going to make you wince when the bill comes, which matters more than people admit when you’re just trying to eat a real lunch without ceremony.
The staff is quick and unpretentious. You don’t get the sense anyone’s performing friendliness — they’re just working, and they’re good at it. The place fills up on weekends, especially late morning, so if you show up at 10:30 on a Sunday expecting a quiet corner booth, you’ll probably wait a few minutes. It’s worth it.
There are a few Kroll’s locations around the metro, but the one on 13th Avenue South is where I keep ending up. It has the feel of a place that’s been broken in properly — the kind of diner that’s absorbed fifty years of early mornings and lunch rushes and somehow got better for it. If you live in Fargo and haven’t been, that’s an easy thing to fix. If you’re passing through, make it a stop. The Knoephla alone is reason enough.
