A year ago this week, the corner of Water and Second streets in Excelsior was the subject of an open question. Three restaurants had just landed inside a single building on that corner, another had opened across the street, and the reporters covering it kept asking some version of the same thing: this is great in August, but what happens when the boats come out of the water?
That question is still worth asking. But this Apple Days weekend, September 18 through 20, gives residents something better than another round of speculation. It gives them a chance to walk the same block and just look.
The Corner That Used to Be Dark
Before any of this happened, that intersection was empty. The restaurants that had anchored it for years closed during the pandemic and the space sat vacant long enough that Jester Concepts co-owner Mike DeCamp described walking past it daily as depressing, since the town's main entrance had no restaurant in it at all.
What replaced the vacancy wasn't one restaurant betting on a comeback. It was three, stacked into the same building at 200 Water Street:
- Parlour, in the basement, a cocktail-and-burger format that opened first, in late 2024
- Shiki, a 630-square-foot noodle bar tucked into what used to be a pool table room, serving ramen and dumplings with no reservations, just a waitlist
- Mirabelle, the main-level anchor, a 2,700-square-foot supper club with a coastal theme, a cast-iron fireplace the designers kept intact, and a menu built around crab-stuffed walleye and nightly specials like meatloaf and lasagna
Three concepts, one address, one shared bet that the corner could support more than a single tenant at a time.
The Second Front, Across the Street
Directly across Water Street, chef David Fhima opened Vagabondo in the building that used to house Bacon Drug Store, a space local lore connects to a Rolling Stones song title. Vagabondo runs as a Sicilian dinner spot by night and a coffee-and-pastry counter by day, which means the same storefront pulls two different kinds of foot traffic depending on the hour.
That detail matters more than it sounds like it should. The corner isn't just crowded with restaurants. It's crowded with restaurants that keep different hours, so the sidewalk in front of them stays occupied from morning coffee through last call instead of emptying out the moment dinner service ends.
Amanda Maday, whose firm Studio Grey designed both Mirabelle and Vagabondo, put the underlying logic plainly when she said restaurants in a town this size can't afford to be the only reason someone visits, because a single restaurant on an island has no other local businesses to lean on when things get hard.
Why Density Was the Actual Strategy
That's the thesis worth sitting with. The story out of Excelsior last year wasn't really about four ambitious restaurateurs making four separate bets. It was about density as a survival plan. Mayor Gary Ringate called the scene "churning" and said there was still a desire for more, which only makes sense if the goal was never one flagship restaurant carrying the whole street. The goal was enough restaurants, packed close enough together, that no single kitchen has to generate all of its own traffic.
Ringate also named the real risk directly: Excelsior is a town that runs Thursday through Sunday, and even then mostly from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Winter is the test that density was built to pass.
Two of the business owners who lived through last year's opening rush described that test very differently. Jack Stevens, whose family has run Maynard's on the water since 1947 and personally for 27 years, said he was hopeful the new arrivals would bring energy to the town "especially in winter" and called it a turning point, adding that regulars are what keep everyone hungry and competing for the same customers. Colleen Anderson, who co-owns Old Southern BBQ Smokehouse, was more guarded. She said she didn't know what to expect from a Lake Minnetonka winter and admitted the horror stories she'd heard made it sound terrible, though she was banking on takeout orders, including runs next door to Excelsior Brewing, to help carry the season.
What a Year Later Actually Looks Like
Here is the part that didn't exist as a data point a year ago: an August 2026 check of Water Street's restaurant roster found ten restaurants operating on the block, not four. Lago Tacos, Mirabelle, Shiki, Parlour, Vagabondo, Yumi, Coalition, Layline, 318 Cafe, and Miyabi were all still open, a full winter after the mayor's warning and Anderson's uncertainty.
| Sept 2025 | Sept 2026 |
|---|---|
| Four new restaurants had just opened, outcome unknown | Ten restaurants operating on Water Street |
| Corner at Water and Second held three concepts under one roof | Same corner, plus a second front across the street, plus the block's longer-standing Yumi and Coalition still in the mix |
| Winter untested, mayor and owners split on what to expect | One full off-season behind them, storefronts still lit |
None of that proves the hardest months are behind Water Street for good. But it answers the specific question that hung over last year's coverage. The restaurants that opened into an untested winter are still there to open their doors for this one.
This Weekend Is the Occasion, Not the Proof
Apple Days itself has been happening since 1935, long before any of this. The festival runs Water Street and Second Street with free admission and grounds centered at 12 Water Street. The weekend includes a Historic Water Street Walking Tour departing at 11 a.m., an Apple Pie contest with both a baking competition and a pie-eating contest, complimentary community cruises on Lake Minnetonka run by Paradise Charter Cruises, and a street dance that closes the festival out. Sunday adds its own program: a 9:30 a.m. dedication ceremony for a memorial bench honoring longtime Water Street presence Laverna and Darel Leipold, followed by street hockey with the Minnetonka Youth Hockey Association from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Kids who want a break from the crowd can still find Excelsior's 1925 carousel running, the same one rescued from the original Excelsior Amusement Park decades ago.
None of that changes because of what's happening one block over at Mirabelle or Vagabondo. But the festival is exactly the kind of weekend that puts feet on Water Street from morning through night, which is precisely the traffic pattern the density strategy depends on. Residents who haven't tried Shiki's noodle bar or grabbed a pastry at Red Bench Bakery on Water Street have a built-in reason to do it between festival stops instead of treating it as a separate errand.
That's the actual value of Apple Days this year. It's not a referendum on whether the restaurant boom worked. The storefronts being open answers that already. It's just the weekend when the rest of the town has the best excuse to go find out for themselves what a year of new kitchens on one block adds up to.
Excelsior's downtown keeps changing in ways that reward paying attention, whether that shows up in a new restaurant on Water Street or in what a corner lot near the lake is worth five years from now. If you're watching this market for reasons beyond dinner plans, The Steadman Team has spent three decades tracking exactly that kind of change along the Lake Minnetonka corridor.
