Al's Breakfast is reportedly the narrowest

restaurant A restaurant is an establishment that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and Delivery (commerce), food delivery services. Restaurants ...

in the city of

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

, at a width of . Al's Breakfast is crammed into a former

alley An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane, footpath, path, or passageway, often reserved for pedestrians, which usually runs between, behind, or within buildings in towns and cities. It is also a rear access or service road (back lane), or a path, w ...

way between two much larger buildings and is located in the city's

Dinkytown Dinkytown is a commercial district within the Marcy-Holmes, Minneapolis, Marcy-Holmes neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Centered at 14th Avenue Southeast and 4th Street Southeast, the district contains several city blocks occupied by vari ...

neighborhood near the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

. The restaurant's 14 stools have seated generations of local students, along with notable figures such as writer James Lileks and humorist Garrison Keillor, all of whom consider the tiny diner to be a significant icon of the state.

History

The restaurant as it is today came into being in 1950 when Al Bergstrom parted ways with another neighborhood restaurateur. Bergstrom had gained experience at the griddle and in kitchen management in the 1940s while working at the popular Jack Robinson's Cafeteria during summers at the

Minnesota State Fair The Minnesota State Fair is the state fair of the U.S. state of Minnesota. Also known by its slogan, "The Great Minnesota Get-Together", it is the largest state fair in the United States by average daily attendance and the second-largest state f ...

. The Dinkytown building he purchased dates back to 1937 when a neighboring

hardware store Hardware stores (in a number of countries, "shops"), sometimes known as DIY stores, sell household hardware for home improvement including: fasteners, building materials, hand tools, power tools, keys, locks, hinges, chains, plumbing ...

erected a

shed A shed is typically a simple, single-storey (though some sheds may have two or more stories and or a loft) roofed structure, often used for storage, for hobby, hobbies, or as a workshop, and typically serving as outbuilding, such as in a bac ...

in the alleyway to hold

sheet metal Sheet metal is metal formed into thin, flat pieces, usually by an industrial process. Thicknesses can vary significantly; extremely thin sheets are considered foil (metal), foil or Metal leaf, leaf, and pieces thicker than 6 mm (0.25 ...

and

plumbing Plumbing is any system that conveys fluids for a wide range of applications. Plumbing uses piping, pipes, valves, piping and plumbing fitting, plumbing fixtures, Storage tank, tanks, and other apparatuses to convey fluids. HVAC, Heating and co ...

parts. This was eventually rented out and was a Hunky Dory

hamburger A hamburger (or simply a burger) consists of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. The patties are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, or chilis ...

stand by the time Bergstrom took it over. The new owner renamed the diner to Al's Café and first opened the doors on May 15. Initially, he produced three meals a day, seven days a week, but scaled back the operation to simply be a breakfast outlet after one year. Bergstrom retired and passed the restaurant to his

nephew In the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a niece or nephew is a child of an individual's sibling or sibling-in-law. A niece is female and a nephew is male, and they would call their parents' siblings aunt or uncle ...

Phil Bergstrom in 1973–1974. Doug Grina and Jim Brandes eventually took over around 1980. In 2016 Jim Brandes' ownership stake in the restaurant was purchased by the long reigning "Queen of the Weekend" Alison Kirwin. Al Bergstrom died at his residence in Forest Lake, Minnesota in 2003, at the age of 97, but the

recipe A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish (food), dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main r ...

s and short-order cooking style that he developed continue to be used at his namesake restaurant.

The restaurant

Due to the tiny space, guests must first stand in line along the building's back wall as they wait for others to finish their meals. It is common for diners to be instructed to move down the counter to allow newly seated customers to be seated together. Veterans of Al's are used to the instruction and diners may be re-seated several times during the course of a meal. Frequent customers can purchase "meal books" and pre-pay for their food. This practice dates back to the 1950s, when Al Bergstrom would accept prepayment from railroad workers that were only paid once a month. Hundreds of such books line the opposite wall, where two griddles are also situated. A number of unusual trinkets line the front area of the diner. The stools and a

linoleum Linoleum is a floor covering made from materials such as solidified linseed oil (linoxyn), Pine Resin, pine resin, ground Cork (material), cork dust, sawdust, and mineral fillers such as calcium carbonate, most commonly on a Hessian fabric, hes ...

countertop run down the middle of the building. Specialties on the

menu In a restaurant, the menu is a list of food and beverages offered to the customer. A menu may be à la carte – which presents a list of options from which customers choose, often with prices shown – or table d'hôte, in which case a pre-est ...

include

buttermilk Buttermilk is a fermented dairy drink. Traditionally, it was the liquid left behind after churning butter out of cultured cream. As most modern butter in Western countries is not made with cultured cream but uncultured sweet cream, most mode ...

pancake A pancake, also known as a hotcake, griddlecake, or flapjack, is a flat type of batter bread like cake, often thin and round, prepared from a starch-based Batter (cooking), batter that may contain eggs, milk, and butter, and then cooked on a ...

s, bacon waffles,

hash browns Hash browns, also spelled hashed browns and hashbrowns, are a popular American breakfast food consisting of finely julienned potatoes that have been fried until golden brown. Hash browns are a staple breakfast item at diners in North America, w ...

, and

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the ...

s prepared in a number of different styles including omelettes. There are also some seasonal items and weekend specials. The restaurant may be rented out for private parties.

Awards and popular mention

music professor, David Baldwin, composed special tunes in celebration of the restaurant's 50th anniversary in 2000. These were played in front of the building on May 15 by a local

brass Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. I ...

band. In 2004, Al's Breakfast won a

James Beard Foundation The James Beard Foundation is an American non-profit culinary arts organization based in New York City. It was named after James Beard, a food writer, teacher, and cookbook author. Its programs include guest-chef dinners to scholarships for asp ...

award in the " America's Classics Restaurants" category. The award medal now hangs behind the counter at Al's. In 2007, Laurie Lindeen, Minneapolis author, wife of ex- Replacements member Paul Westerberg, and former bandleader of Zuzu's Petals, chronicles several years of working at the "Hi-Lo Diner," described in her book '' Petal Pusher'' as a "famous fourteen-stool breakfast joint" near the U of M campus that has narrow walls "covered in grease-preserved foreign money." The description is a clear reference to Al's Breakfast. Al's Breakfast has appeared three times on the

Food Network Food Network is an American basic cable channel owned by Television Food Network, G.P., a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery, who manages and operates it as a division of the Warner Bros. Discovery U.S. Networks Group. The channel airs both televi ...

's '' Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives'' in 2007, 2010, and 2014.

References

External links

Tim Holtan: Al's BreakfastAl's Breakfast "Official" MySpace Al's Breakfast "Official" Facebook
{{Restaurants in Minnesota Restaurants in Minneapolis Companies based in Minneapolis Restaurants established in 1950 America's Classics winners