Where the Jucy Lucy Started, Period
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.
