Eat, Sip, and Spin in...The Twin Cities

Making some of the best music players on earth isn’t the only thing we do at Victrola. Our staff loves to travel, loves record stores, loves to eat, loves a fine cocktail, and loves to hunt for the best places to do all those things in every metropolis in the United States. We want to share our favorite places with you, so we invented Eat, Sip, and Spin in…to tell you about our favorite places to do those things.

For this inaugural edition, we’re featuring the Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, the current and past home to multiple Victrola staffers, and the home of Target and Best Buy, two places where you can get many Victrola products. Read below for where to eat cheese-stuffed burgers, enjoy a rice beer, and search for rare Brazilian funk the next time you’re in Minnesota.  

Eat: If you find yourself in the Twin Cities—welcome!—and have time for only one proper meal out, you should get yourself to sample the local delicacy: The Jucy Lucy. We’re spelling it wrong here because that’s how they spell it at Matt’s Bar, the home of the best Jucy Lucy’s on earth. They’ve been oft-duplicated across the Twin Cities—and now, in cities across America—but Matt’s gets them down to their barest essence: A pair of hamburger patties, rounded together around a hunk of cheddar cheese, that in the process of cooking becomes liquid cheese in the middle. You might think that sounds like a cheeseburger: It’s not, and how dare you. The cheese in a proper Lucy becomes liquid, molten to the point where they warn you before biting in, its innards dripping like a cheese soup out of the patties, becoming its own dipping sauce, for the Lucy itself, and for Matt’s shoestring fries. It’s simple, straightforward, and will blow your socks off.

If you have more time, the culinary scene in Minneapolis especially has gotten a lot of national recognition, for restaurants that do Hmong cuisine, celebrating the large population of immigrants from Laos and Thailand who have made the Twin Cities home. Vinai is the best spot for dinner, and Diane’s Place is where to go for breakfast or brunch.

If you want Mexican or Latin American food, head to the West Side of Saint Paul—paradoxically, it is actually southeast of most of downtown and the rest of Saint Paul, its “West” referring to what side of the Mississippi River it’s on—and go to the Robert Street neighborhood where outposts like Burrito Mercado, Boca Chica, and Pineda tacos will set you off with tortas, burritos, tacos, churros, anything from south of the border you desire.

The most famous restaurant in either town right now is Owamni, where reservations are often booked 90 days out, and whose menu—curated by local celebrity chef Sean Sherman—is made of ingredients that are entirely pre-Columbus, celebrating the heritage of the indigenous population who lived in Minneapolis long before its first white settlers did.

Sip: The Twin Cities were one of the hot zones for the craft beer explosion that happened in the 2010s, and there are many, many breweries worth making a trip for. You can go with the bigger name, Surly, or go to local hot spots like Lake Monster (their Last Fathom is made with Minnesota rice). Many local watering holes have extensive craft beer menus; basically throw a dart in this town and you’ll find a bar with a good tap list.

If you seek cocktails, head to Meteor in Minneapolis, an award-winning bar that looks like a dive but has serious cocktails. If you’re in Saint Paul, Myriel has great cocktails and a fun bar menu.

Spin: If you’re mobile, and have access to a car, you should head out to Hopkins, a southwest suburb that boasts Mill City Sound, one of the deepest record stores in the entire state. If you want deep cut jazz, old Waylon Jennings records, or random soundtracks, in addition to all the normal new releases and classic rock you’ll find at record stores, this is your place.

If you want to stay closer to the Twin Cities proper, Agharta, on the border between Minneapolis and Saint Paul is a cratediggers paradise, a place where you might find rare Brian Eno records alongside African grooves, and Brazilian funk. Nearby, the smaller Barely Brothers is worth the few block walk.

The Electric Fetus looms large in the local record scene—it’s the oldest store, and Prince used to shop there for the express purpose of buying and destroying Prince bootleg CDs, Vinyl, and Tapes, since he didn’t get paid for those—and is worth the trip for the slice of Twin Cities history alone.