MANKATO — Mankato diners have some new menus to peruse with items ranging from a Juicy Lucy to a range of ramens, a new hotel has opened and another is nearing completion, one fast-food chicken chain is nearing an opening and another seems stalled.
Along with all that, a burger chain that’s had an up-and-down history in Mankato, along with some news-making brushes with celebrity, has disappeared once again.
New food fills vacant spaces
Spots that once filled stomachs with potato skins and a lengthy buffet of homestyle foods, then failed to gain traction as the location of regional bar-restaurant chains, are now open again and offering new concepts.
Legends Bar & Grill is operating in the long-vacant space adjoining Country Inn and Suites on Mankato’s northeast side. Until 2012, the site was home to a TGI Friday’s, then became a Bonfire Wood Fire Cooking, then sat empty after that chain shuttered all of its locations in May 2020.
Legends has a longtime presence in St. Cloud, attached to the Holiday Inn and Suites, and is promising to offer the same mix of good food, drinks and live entertainment at 1910 Premier Drive.
“Another chain restaurant? Nope. Another sports bar? Definitely not,” the owners teased in a Sept. 13 Facebook post. “We’re the new kids in town at the old Bonfire spot — and we’re here to raise the bar.”
Opening daily at 11 a.m. and closing at 10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, the restaurant offers a deep menu. Among the appetizers is Coastline Calamari, described as fried tubes and tentacles, jalapeno, shaved onion, remoulade sauce and charred lemon. For a more local and less adventurous seafood appetizer, there’s Sunnies and Rings, which is fried sunfish with crispy onion rings and lemon caper tartar sauce.
Burgers include a Legendary Lucy for $17 and a Bacon Arugula Burger (grilled beef patty, bacon jam, creamy goat cheese spread, wild rocket arugula on a brioche bun) for $16. For an entrée, options include a ribeye steak for $44, salmon for $28 and pastas like grilled chicken cavatappi or wild mushroom ravioli, which are both $22.
At 1861 Adams St., Ippin Ramen & Sushi Bar — part of a small chain of Japanese restaurants — opened Sept. 21. The spot was previouslyv occupied by MC’s Garage, Buffalo Wings and Rings and, prior to redevelopment of the property, by Old Country Buffet.
Ippin Ramen & Sushi Bar appears to have locations in Waite Park and Baxter, along with Mason City, Iowa, and invited people in the Mankato area to “Stop by and experience the true taste of Japan right here in town!”
The menu includes dozens of sushi and sashimi options, hibachi and teriyaki-style entrées, stir fries and ramens.
Mexican restaurant takes a pause
The Plaza Jalisco Mexican Grill, 1123 Range St. in North Mankato, has gone dark in recent days and the restaurant’s phone number is no longer in service.
The restaurant, which opened in a former Perkins restaurant along Highway 169 in spring 2023, was the fourth in a small chain in south-central Minnesota. Plaza Jalisco restaurants remain open in Windom, St. James and Fairmont.
Luis Ruiz said the ultimate fate of the North Mankato restaurant hasn’t been decided, but said business was harmed by too much road construction in the area.
“We’re just going to ‘standby’ for now,” he said, promising to update the community as a final decision on the location’s future is made in the next couple of weeks.
Another goodbye for Hardees
Restaurants come and go, but none more so than Hardee’s in Mankato.
Dating to the 1980s, Hardee’s has opened and closed restaurants in at least five different locations in Mankato, most recently the Highway 169 spot nearly two months ago followed by the last remaining local option on Madison Avenue two weeks ago.
Previous versions were across from Mankato West High School on the property that now houses a Kwik Trip, near the Minnesota State University campus in what is now University Square and on Madison Avenue near Long Street where CVS is now. The latter location was the last of the original Mankato Hardee’s, disappearing early this century.
The town was Hardee’s-less until the chain broke ground late in 2013 on a new building about two blocks farther east on Madison. The following year, it built a second new restaurant along Highway 169.
Founded in North Carolina by Wilber Hardee in 1960, Hardee’s grew to more than 2,000 locations in the 1980s but dropped in number during the 1990s. The chain then expanded again to more than 3,100 restaurants in 40 states after being acquired by CKE Restaurants, owner of the Carl’s Jr. chain of burger joints.
Since 2023, the trend has reversed again, and there are now fewer than 1,600 remaining locations. In recent days and weeks, media reported the closure of Hardee’s restaurants in Sioux City and Spencer, Iowa; Fargo and West Fargo, North Dakota; and Wilmar, Fairmont, Sleepy Eye and Marshall.
For Mankatoans yearning for a Frisco Burger, locations reported to be open as of early last week included New Ulm, Windom and Faribault.
Hardee’s history endures
Even if Hardee’s never returns, the restaurants will live on in Mankato lore because of two incidents.
In July 1991, Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman Keith Millard, in Mankato for the team’s MSU-based preseason training camp, was looking for a snack to take back to Gage Towers after some post-practice free time.
But Millard was on the verge of missing the 11 p.m. team curfew for all players to be in their dorm rooms, and as he hurried through the drive-thru of the Stadium Road Hardee’s, he smashed his muscle car into a concrete planter. Apparently more worried about the wrath of head coach Jerry Burns than about the repercussions of leaving the scene of an accident, Millard crawled out of the damaged vehicle and sprinted to Gage — leaving behind a damaged and empty, other than its deployed airbag, Corvette.
More than 30 years later, it was the Highway 169 Hardee’s making national news when MyPillow CEO and 2020 election denier Mike Lindell was stopped in the drive-thru by FBI agents who seized his cellphone. While folks on the right were appalled and folks on the left applauded, comedians found the story irresistible. On “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” the host did a dead-on impression of Lindell contemplating the fast-food options “in towns that are fun to say in his voice.”
“’Where do you guys wanna go eat?’” Meyers said in Lindell’s high-volume speaking style, complete with the thick Upper Midwestern accent. “’We could go to the Hardee’s in Mankato or the Arby’s in Owatonna or maybe the Jack in the Box in Oconomowoc.’”
Chickens slow to hatch
If Lindell or Millard are passing through Mankato in a few months, they’ll likely have another fast-food drive-thru option to hit.
On Thursday, workers were wiring the components of the drive-thru ordering station at the new Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen that appears to be in the final stages of construction along Highway 22 in the northeast corner of the Fleet Farm property.
The media relations staff at Popeyes didn’t respond to Free Press questions about a potential grand opening for the restaurant, which has been in the planning stages in one form or another since 2020.
Popeyes has thousands of locations worldwide and has a large presence in the Twin Cities, along with St. Cloud and Duluth. But if the Mankato spot opens soon, it will be the first in southern Minnesota.
Of course, any mention of Popeyes tends to bring out the Chick-fil-A afficionados, and The Free Press reached out to that chain’s media department for an update on whether its plans to add a full-size restaurant in Mankato have been dropped.
Chick-fil-A submitted plans to the city of Mankato early in 2024 that would have razed the closed Party City building adjacent to Olive Garden, located along the rim road around River Hills Mall. When no visible progress had been made 10 months later, The Free Press checked back and learned that a request for a building permit had been submitted and the intention was to begin construction before the end of 2025.
But the Party City building still remains, and Chick-fil-A officials told The Free Press last week that they hoped to provide an update soon on the fate of the project.
Belgrade building boom
The redevelopment of a former bank location in the heart of North Mankato’s Belgrade Avenue business district is moving along at a much quicker pace than the smaller fast-food projects.
The foundation of the four-story mixed-use building is being poured barely six weeks after the final financing piece — a $587,000 redevelopment loan — was approved by the City Council.
Max DeMars of DeMars Construction and Marty Vagenbach are partnering on the $5.2 million project at 242 Belgrade Ave., which was previously a vacant lot between Frandsen Bank and the American Legion. Plans show 18 market-rate apartments above 4,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space.
Tenants for the storefronts have not been announced. The project is expected to be completed by next fall.
The project is the latest major investment in a business district that features buildings constructed in the 1920s and even earlier side by side with modern neighbors. Since the old Marigold Dairy site was redeveloped with substantial city subsidies in 2010, four buildings have been constructed on the 200 block of Belgrade. The combined taxable market value for the new additions now exceeds $8 million — not counting the DeMars structure.
3rd largest hotel opens, No.6 to debut soon
As seen from Highway 22, the Candlewood Suites hotel on Blazing Star Road has looked mostly completed for several months. On the inside, however, work continues and an opening date won’t come until the new year.
“The Candlewood Suites Mankato East is now accepting reservations for arrivals on or after February 1, 2026,” the location’s website states. “The hotel is conveniently located in the heart of Mankato, near corporate parks, and centrally located to Minnesota State University, Bethany College and Caswell Athletic Complex.”
The “centrally located” claim might not be geographically accurate considering its location on the far eastern edge of city limits, but Mankato’s newest hotel promises to be worth the drive: “From our lobby to our 84 guestrooms, comfort and convenience have been reimagined. Our guests will enjoy the additional flexibility and space that our all suite hotel provides, including modern kitchens and inviting living areas to work or spread out.”
Another new hotel, TownPlace Suites by Marriott opened last month adjacent to the River Hills Mall parking lot and immediately west of the Courtyard by Marriott. Developed by Terratron Inc. of Park City, Utah, as a 95-room hotel, the TownPlace Suites became Mankato’s third-largest hotel behind the 118-room Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Mankato and the 101-room Country Inn and Suites. The Courtyard, with 93 rooms, is Mankato’s fourth largest, and the Holiday Inn Express with 88 rounds out the Top 5.
All of those hotels are expected to drop two spots on the list when a nearly $100 million two-hotel development is completed along Main Street between Riverfront Drive and Second Street.
That project, still in early stages of construction, is promising to bring a 10-story 156-room Marriott AC Hotel and an adjoining four-story 126-room Element by Westin to the city.