Best Restaurants in the Cedar Avenue Burger Mile (2026)

Matt's Bar and Grill on Cedar Avenue is the original argument in a decades-old dispute, and it settles that argument the only way that matters: by serving the burger. This is the bar that spells it Jucy Lucy, cheese sealed inside the patty instead of melted on top, and the menu keeps customizing to onions or no onions, nothing else. That restraint is the entire point. A dive bar built one dish this well does not need a second act.

The cheeseburger and the burger with onions round out the order, but the Jucy Lucy is why the room exists and why the line forms. The cheese comes out molten, which means the first bite requires patience most people ignore. Minneapolis claims the Jucy Lucy as a local invention from the 1950s, and Matt's is one of two bars on Cedar Avenue that still make that claim and still spell it differently from the other. No side gets taken here.

Both rooms are real, both burgers are real, and the rivalry is part of what a visitor is buying along with the food. The room itself runs counter service, cash-friendly and no-frills, with a bar that has clearly seen more Jucy Lucys than any other order on the menu. Pricing stays moderate, which fits a kitchen that has never needed to dress up its one dish to justify the tab. This is not a room for a leisurely tasting menu approach.

It is a room for walking in, ordering the burger, waiting out the cheese, and walking out satisfied. The Cedar Avenue address puts it solidly in south Minneapolis, a short trip and worth making regardless of which spelling a diner ultimately sides with. Matt's earns its reputation through consistency, not reinvention, and that consistency is precisely what a burger pilgrimage requires.

Fat Lorenzos runs a straightforward premise well: pizza with a distinct crust, a sandwich board built on fresh bread, and gelato to close it out, all served alongside a cocktail list that pushes the room past the usual red-sauce formula. The crust is the tell. It comes thicker and more textured than the thin-crust standard that dominates most Twin Cities pizza counters, generous with sauce and cheese and built to hold a long list of toppings without going soft in the middle. That kind of crust takes a kitchen that has settled into its own method rather than chasing a Neapolitan or New York template, and it reads as the house signature. The sandwich follows the same logic: well-seasoned fillings on bread that tastes baked that day, not shipped in.

Gelato at the end signals a kitchen willing to run a full Italian program rather than stopping at pizza and calling it done. The cocktail list matters here too. Pairing a full bar program with a pizza-and-sandwich menu is not automatic in this city, where red-sauce spots tend to stick to beer and house wine, and it puts Fat Lorenzos closer to the upscale-casual lane than the neighborhood slice shop. That positioning shows up in the price as well. This is moderately priced rather than cheap, and a couple of reviewers have flagged the tab as steep for what is, at its core, pizza and sandwiches.

The room reads as group friendly and comfortable holding a table for a while, which fits a menu built around sharing a pie, ordering a round of cocktails, and finishing with gelato instead of rushing out. It suits a table of four or six looking for something more composed than a bar-and-a-slice night without stepping into formal Italian dining. Service has been noted as attentive, which matters in a room trying to run both a bar program and a full kitchen at once.