Excelsior Added Four Restaurants This Summer. Now Comes the Test.

How might Excelsior's new restaurants fare as the seasons change?

Four new kitchens opened within blocks of each other on Water Street this year, all from chefs and restaurant groups with real reputations outside the west metro. If you live in Excelsior, you've probably already eaten at one of them, or at least peered through the window while walking to Licks Unlimited for ice cream. Apple Days arrives this weekend, offering a chance to see the town's downtown as the seasons shift.

A Very Small Strip Got a Very Big Summer

Water Street has spent years as Excelsior's steady, familiar commercial row: a lakefront liquor store and grill, a longtime seafood spot, a brewery, a scoop shop. That corner of downtown went dark for a stretch after the pandemic, with storefronts sitting empty. This year it filled back in fast, and not with the usual suburban rotation of chains.

The Star Tribune reported that Mike DeCamp, known for his Minneapolis restaurant work, opened Mirabelle, leaning into prime rib and pasta portions built for cold weather. David Fhima, another familiar name to Twin Cities diners, brought Vagabondo to the same stretch. Colleen Anderson opened Old Southern BBQ Smokehouse right next door to Excelsior Brewing Co.; she also has a catering business. The Star Tribune reported that Jester Concepts, the group behind several well-known Minneapolis spots, landed Parlour Bar in the basement level that used to house Bull & Wren. DeCamp also has Shiki nearby, which he's already described as more of a wintertime draw than a July destination.

Four full-service concepts, all opening within roughly the same season, on a downtown strip that's a little over a square mile. Excelsior's mayor told the Star Tribune this year that the restaurant scene is churning and that there's still an appetite in the market for more.

What Restaurant Owners Have Said About the Seasons Ahead

What's notable isn't just that Excelsior got a run of new restaurants. It's that the people who opened them are talking openly about whether the town can hold onto them once the lake stops pulling in day-trip traffic.

The Star Tribune reported that Amanda Maday, whose design firm Studio Grey worked on both Mirabelle and Vagabondo, said a new restaurant on a quiet block needs other businesses nearby to draw people in; operating alone in a small town can be difficult even in a good year. The Star Tribune also reported that DeCamp built Shiki's identity around the idea that people want soup and heavier plates once the patios close, not another burger stand.

None of this is doom and gloom. It's the specific, practical math that restaurant owners run in their heads every October in a town whose population triples on a July Saturday and shrinks back down once the boats come out of the water. The Star Tribune reported that Jack Stevens, whose family has run the lakefront restaurant Maynards for 27 years, was optimistic that having more restaurants nearby, not fewer, would help everyone get through the quieter months. That's a specific bet: that critical mass beats scarcity when the season turns. Whether more restaurants nearby will help through the quieter months remains to be seen.

Apple Days Arrives as the Seasons Shift

Apple Days offers a useful marker of the seasonal shift in Excelsior, without needing to track reservation numbers or read a food blog all winter.

Excelsior Apple Days runs September 18 through 20 this year, put on by the Excelsior-Lake Minnetonka Chamber of Commerce in downtown Excelsior. It's been a fixture since 1935, built around craft booths, a kids' corner, food vendors, an apple pie contest, live music, and a street dance that closes things out. It's the kind of event that feels like pure nostalgia, and mostly it is. But it also happens to sit at the exact point on the calendar where Excelsior flips from a town running on lake traffic and day-trippers to a town running on the people who actually live here.

Before Apple Days, a restaurant on Water Street can lean on warm-weather crowds walking over from the beach or off a boat. After it, that traffic mostly disappears until next spring, and the businesses that are left are the ones residents choose to keep visiting on a random Tuesday in November. Four new restaurants opened during a summer already full of built-in customers. The next few months will bring a different pattern of visitors after this festival's street dance wraps up and the folding tables come down.

The shift from summer crowds to local visitors is part of a small lake town's seasonal rhythm. If you've watched Water Street fill in this year, it's worth seeing how the restaurants fare through the quieter months.

How the Restaurants May Adapt to Fall

As the seasons change, a few details may help illustrate how Excelsior's restaurants fit into the town's year-round rhythm:

How Old Southern BBQ Smokehouse serves customers through the quieter months, given its location beside Excelsior Brewing Co. and Anderson's catering business. Whether Shiki's heavier, cold-weather menu draws local diners as the patios close. How the restaurants on that block benefit from nearby businesses drawing people in, as Maday described. And how Apple Days brings together residents and visitors for the street dance.

None of that requires a spreadsheet. It just requires living here and paying attention, which residents are already doing better than any outside reporter could.

Excelsior Through the Seasons

Excelsior has always punched above its size, a one-square-mile village with two bays of shoreline and a downtown that feels bigger than its population. This year, four restaurants joined its downtown dining scene. As lake traffic eases, the quieter months will bring a different pace for the businesses and the town, adding another chapter to the village's dining scene.

If you're already part of this community, the changing downtown is part of its ongoing story. And if you're the kind of person who's been quietly wondering whether Excelsior is becoming a place you'd want to put down roots, seeing how its downtown changes through the seasons can tell you more about its character than any brochure ever could.

Ulrich Real Estate Group has spent decades getting to know Excelsior and the rest of the Lake Minnetonka shoreline block by block, season by season. If you're curious what a home search in this part of the west metro could look like, reach out and start your home search whenever you're ready.