24-Hour Diner in Minneapolis | The Nicollet Diner
Minneapolis Still Needs a 24-Hour Diner. We're It.
I've worked in restaurants since I was fourteen. That is not a branding statement. That is just the math. Server, line cook, fast-food manager, the whole ladder. I moved to Minneapolis in August of 2001 at twenty and took a job running a fast-food shop because that is what I knew how to do. Twenty-five years later I still get a small, stupid thrill when the first ticket of a new day prints and it is an All-American Breakfast at an hour when most of the city is arguing with an alarm clock.
The Nicollet Diner is open twenty-four hours. We say that a lot because people still do not believe it. They will stand in the doorway at 1:40 a.m. and ask if the kitchen is "really" open, as if we printed the hours as a bit. Yes. The kitchen is open. The coffee is on. The hash browns can still go to Hash Brown Town if you want cheddar, onion, peppers, bacon, and sour cream on them, which you should.
Downtown Minneapolis is a strange place to run a diner. The Convention Center is a short walk. Nicollet Mall looks like a postcard at noon and like a different city after the last show lets out. Foot traffic is not what it was in 2019. Anyone who works down here will tell you that without needing a consultant. We stayed anyway. We moved the diner to 1333 Nicollet Mall in August of 2022, put Roxy's Cabaret and On the Rox in the same building, and kept the lights on through the hours when the city is supposed to be "done."
I am not going to pretend that 24-hour service is romantic every night. Sometimes it is a server, a cook, a dishwasher, and a table of people who just got off a shift and want wings and a milkshake before they go home and become civilians again. Sometimes it is a couple from out of town who thought downtown would be louder. Sometimes it is a regular who has been eating breakfast here since we were still on Nicollet Avenue and the whole thing was a side hustle Dion and I started in 2013.
Late night food in Minneapolis used to be a bigger menu. A lot of those doors closed. We did not. That is not a victory lap. It is a floor plan and a payroll and a decision we keep making. If you want breakfast at 4 a.m., or a burger after a show, or a malt because the day went sideways, we are at 1333 Nicollet Mall. Pull the door. If it is locked I will be as surprised as you are.
Come as you are. Order what you actually want. Stay as long as the coffee lasts.
— Sam