How this Minneapolis street grew from immigrant neighborhood to culinary hotspot
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When Nicole Pappas Stanoch moved to her northeast Minneapolis neighborhood near the Mississippi River in 2009, it was emptier. There were dive bars, vacant storefronts, Polish grocers and pierogies.
“There weren’t as many amenities,” said Stanoch, the Sheridan Neighborhood Association’s outreach and office manager.
“But now I feel like I don’t have to leave if I don’t want to.”
These days, 13th Avenue in northeast Minneapolis is a culinary hot spot, home to some of the best restaurants in the country.
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This small part of the neighborhood is home to four recent semifinalists, finalists or winners of prestigious James Beard Awards: Young Joni, Vinai, Oro by Nixta and chef Diane Moua for Diane’s Place. Those first three are on the same street corner.
Yet this is not a pretentious-feeling street.
“There’s a good energy on the street where everybody helps each other out when it comes to getting through each day of service,” said Luke Kyle, the chef and owner of The Anchor, one of the first of this “modern” wave of restaurants to open on the street 15 years ago.
“I know if I’ve messed up on some of my ordering, I know a guy up the street that might have exactly what I need,” Kyle said.
The Anchor saw some initial buzz after it was included in a write-up in the New York Times about the same stretch of road in 2010. But Kyle says the neighborhood’s growth hasn’t felt manufactured.
“There’s been a slower, more organic pace to northeast,” Kyle said. “And I think that's hopefully going to lead to it staying successful.”
To the people who live here, 13th Avenue has always felt special. Polish immigrants moved to the area in the late 1800s, drawn by manufacturing jobs in the neighborhood’s milling industry.
Early immigrants to the neighborhood opened churches and bars, searching for community and gathering spaces. The east side of 13th Avenue even has four churches in one block – which may or may not be record-breaking.
Then, another wave of newcomers in the 1980s and 1990s: artists, pushed out of the North Loop — then the “Warehouse District” — looking for affordable studio spaces and finding them in then-empty mills and warehouses in northeast.
Bob Sorg was one of them. He’s a potter who moved his studio here in 1998 and bought a place right on 13th Avenue. There was plenty of room for a kiln, and the price was right.
“I tried to get people in here. I mean, I wanted to get a shirt: ‘We want a parking problem,’” He laughs. “Because there was nobody around.”
Sorg arrived just a year or two into Art-a-Whirl, a once-tiny studio tour that has ballooned into a showcase of over a thousand artists with live music, beer and tens of thousands of people. Its route includes part of 13th Avenue.
Art-a-Whirl gets some of the credit (blame?) for spurring development in northeast. Sorg said he and other artists worked hard to keep it a neighborhood event, even refusing a big beer company as a sponsor.
But 13th Avenue has managed to continue to feel quaint, like a small town within a city.
“It's beautiful,” said Bill Lindeke, an urban geographer at the University of Minnesota. “It has really wonderful level of density and traffic that is really rare in the Twin Cities.”
He said the street’s physical structure has a lot to do with its charm.
Similar to other commercial stretches like Payne Avenue and Selby Avenue in St. Paul and Eat Street in Minneapolis, 13th Avenue was historically a streetcar line.
“It had all the density, with the commercial buildings, the two-story mixed-use buildings and the shops, and taller brick homes with porches that are just so cool.”
By the time Gustavo and Kate Romero opened their restaurant Oro by Nixta during the pandemic, 13th was less of a hidden gem and more of an open secret.
Pizza restaurant Young Joni opened in a former record store space in 2016. Vinai, helmed by chef Yia Vang, followed Oro.
Gustavo Romero calls Young Joni’s chef Ann Kim the “godmother” of this street corner. He said the restaurants on this street have a special kinship.
“We have a great community,” he said. “That's what you would do with your neighbors, when we spend a lot more time here than we do at home.”
Even as the restaurants on this street rack up accolades and press, they still leave spots for walk-ins and regulars, and they’re deeply involved in the community. It’s something neighbors say they appreciate.
And much like the Polish and Slavic immigrants of the late 1800s, immigrants still have a major influence on the culture of 13th Avenue.
The Polish National Alliance is long gone here, but the PNA Hall still hosts weddings and events just like the old days.
A church originally opened by Slavic immigrants now holds multiple services in Spanish each week.
Kim, Vang, Gustavo Romero and Kyle are all immigrants to this country – from South Korea, Thailand, Mexico and Ireland, respectively. Kate Romero’s family has Polish origins.
It’s hard not to compare the success of 13th Avenue to parts of Uptown in south Minneapolis, like Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue, a corridor that later saw commercialization from bigger box stores.
But this neighborhood has largely resisted chain restaurants and big box stores.
“These smaller, sort of one-off bespoke establishments are really, in a lot of ways, the past and the future of Minneapolis commercial identity,” Lindeke said.
“And that’s good, so maybe 13th is the future.”
