Harbor View Cafe News

~ Opening day in 2008 is Friday, March 14th.

~ Open Friday, July 4th, 2008.

~ Closed Sunday, November 23rd, 2008.

Harbor View Cafe Articles

Mpls/St. Paul Magazine
We are truly honored and grateful each year as the MSP awards arrive. We know how special it is that we are winning awards in a contest that is for restaurants 70 miles from us, and in another state! We are grateful not only to the MSP critics, but even more importantly, MSP readers. This year we won the critics choice in the "Best Restaurant - Scene" category (see text below) and the Reader's Poll in the Day-Trip Restaurant category (see it here).

MSP 2007 Readers' Faves (see it here)

MSP 2005 Critics Choice - Scenes:
This legendary Lake Pepin-area eatery has new owners, but nothing else has changed. From the incredible setting overlooking the harbor and BNSF tracks to the pressed tin ceiling to the familial staff to the incredible, eclectic signature food, there's nowhere like the Harbor View.

Best Bets Halibut in black-butter-caper sauce; sautéed chicken breasts with garlic and chipotle; Georgia walnut pie.
Prime Time Each season has its charm, from a quiet November weeknight to a busy summer Sunday when everyone mills around on the sidewalk sipping wine. Closed in winter, it reopens
March 17.

From Pat Dillon's Travel column in Madison Magazine:Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine readers voted The Harbor View Café at the Lake Pepin harbor the best day-trip restaurant in the area. Plus it professes to have the largest selection of wine for a hundred miles. The place was packed and the location wonderful.

New York Times
The New York Times said..."The restaurant is an unanticipated boon in the back of beyond, with a terrific wine list (five Ridge zinfandels, for example, and several Calera pinot noirs). The vegetable cooking is of a very high order (we had delectably lemony kale), and the blackboard menu offers pheasant raised just up the road, plus dishes you don't often see at your corner bistro, like Norwegian meatballs, made of pork and veal, in a sour-cream sauce flavored with cardamom." ...click here to see the full article.

Citypages.com
Voted Best Day Trip - "Heaven knows we hate to agree with ourselves, let alone with each other, but why mess with a good thing? There are a million different reasons for leaving the Twin Cities, but when you just feel like going someplace else and you don't have all the time in the world, there's still no better destination than tiny Pepin, Wisconsin and the Harbor View Cafe." ...click here to see the full article.

RoadFood.com - "Definitely not your ordinary meatballs. Note the wonderful red cabbage in a cup on the side. This meal is a good example of the only kitchen we know that is accurately described as Norwegian with a Mediterranean accent." - Michael Stern

TheSkini.com - "The feelings you should have at the Harbor View are relaxation and satisfaction" - Martina Priadka