Best Smash Burgers in Minneapolis (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.

5-8 Club sits on Cedar Avenue at 58th Street in south Minneapolis, and it holds one half of the city's oldest burger argument. The Juicy Lucy here, spelled with a soft C, is a cheeseburger with the cheese sealed inside the patty rather than melted on top, and the payoff is the point: cut into it too early and the cheese runs out over the plate. The version at 5-8 Club leans toward a sharper, more cheese-forward pull than its rival across town at Matt's Bar, and the two spellings track a rivalry neither bar has ever settled. The classic burger without the stuffed cheese is on the menu too, for anyone who wants to see how the kitchen handles a patty without the trick, and the fries hold up as the correct order alongside either one.

None of this is complicated food, and it isn't trying to be. The room runs as a neighborhood bar first, with a menu built around one famous idea executed the same way, order after order. Cedar Avenue south of the Crosstown is Juicy Lucy country by long tradition, and 5-8 Club has held its spot in that stretch as one of the two original claimants, not a later addition to the trend. The price sits in the moderate range, burger, fries, and a drink without much strain on the wallet, and the room reads as built for groups: a table of four or six splitting a pile of stuffed cheeseburgers works better here than a quiet two-top.

First-timers to the city get steered here specifically to settle the Matt's-versus-5-8 debate for themselves, and the format rewards that kind of visit: order one of each spelling in one trip if the appetite allows it, since the cheese pull and the char are the entire conversation. It is a burger built to be argued about, and the argument is the reason to go.

Blue Door Pub built its name on the Blucy, its own answer to the stuffed-cheese burger the Twin Cities have argued about since the 1950s, and the Longfellow location runs that argument at full volume without apology. The Blucy differs from the originals on Cedar Avenue by spelling and by build, and Blue Door has made a small franchise logic out of loading it with extras rather than serving it plain, which is the modern branch of the Juicy Lucy family tree rather than a competitor to Matt's or the 5-8 Club. The plain burger holds up on its own, a sign the kitchen has the fundamentals down before it starts stuffing anything inside.

Boneless wings round out the menu as the other order worth flagging, solid rather than showy, the kind of side that keeps a table happy without becoming the reason for the visit. This is counter-adjacent, order-and-sit territory built for a neighborhood rather than a destination crowd: the room reads as a standby, the place a family or a couple returns to on a Tuesday rather than a special-occasion booking. Longfellow itself sits along the Mississippi corridor south of downtown Minneapolis, residential and unglamorous in the best sense, and Blue Door fits the block the way a good neighborhood bar should, unpretentious and reliably busy.

Pricing stays moderate, burger-bar territory, which matters for a spot that draws repeat business rather than one-time curiosity seekers. The kitchen's consistency across years of service is the real selling point here more than any single dish: this is a room people keep coming back to specifically because it has not changed the thing that works. For anyone weighing it against the Cedar Avenue originals or the Blucy variant at other Blue Door locations, the Longfellow room delivers the same stuffed-burger logic with the same neighborhood ease, no reservation required, no occasion necessary.