What it’s like to dine inside Eat Street restaurants right now

It feels like any other frigid January morning on Eat Street. Bitter cold. Gray light. Ice that’s melted and refrozen innumerable times into perilous, slippery patches. Except this January is different. There are a few spent smoke grenade canisters and flash-bangs on the street that days after Alex Pretti’s killing still haven’t been picked up. People move quickly with their heads down.

Inside Spyhouse Coffee, the morning begins quietly. A regular customer stops by to check in with the barista. “I just wanted to see how you are,” the regular says. The answer doesn’t quite form. “Well, yeah, it’s … yeah.” The barista returns to work, pausing for a moment longer than usual, staring out into the cold. They have long forgotten your order; you apologize and remind them. They apologize. When the drink finally makes it your way, it’s excellent, as always.

This is what dining on this stretch of Nicollet Avenue feels like now: people going through the motions, on autopilot, doing what they know how to do. The hospitality is intact; the food’s the same. But the dining rooms are more empty than usual. Everyone seems dazed. People are hurting. Everything is not OK.

January is always a slow month. Restaurateurs brace for it, they survive it. But this January arrived carrying more than cold.

Across Minnesota, restaurants everywhere have been navigating the ripple effects of heightened federal immigration enforcement for several weeks. Workers are terrified to come in. Diners are nervous to go out. Reservations vanish in waves.

Staff shortages are severely affecting operations, resulting in limited menus, slower service, guarded doors, shortened hours, takeout-only pivots, temporary closures with no notice. There were moments of inspiration: Restaurants began stepping up for their community by running food drives, hosting fundraisers and donating profits.

And then came that Saturday morning..

At Marissa’s Bakery, the fryer is down — no churros today — but the conchas and puerquitos are fresh. Checking out, we ask the question. It’s hard, they say. We try. But ... we’re here. The champurrado is molten, hotter than the sun, and it burns the roof of our mouths.

At Marhaba Grill, chef and owner Mohamed Shehata has just set out the lunch buffet. He stands behind the register with a distant stare. Business is slow. He’s been here for 15 years and he’s never seen anything like this. When he realizes we’d never been in, he urges us to stay longer, pressing more food and generosity into our hands. The warmth is palpable. The vegetarian samosas were pretty good, too.

At My Huong Kitchen, the energy is entirely different. Owner Tracy Wong became nationally known after videos showed her rushing protesters and reporters into her restaurant during the tear gas deployment following Pretti’s killing. “Come in! Come in my home!” she called.

Her home is a sunny, cozy restaurant filled with greenery. Much like Wong, it’s bright and exuberant. The restaurant is packed with equal parts customers and press. A couple from Shoreview came because they “saw her good heart on the news.” A protester who fled into the restaurant returns to order spring rolls, leaving a large tip. “Thank you for Saturday,” he tells her. Tracy exudes the energy and tension of someone who is having the best day of her life for the worst possible reason.

At Lu’s Sandwiches, owner Quang Pham watches the sidewalk where a memorial to Pretti grows. His hands know how to do this work — he’s made at least 10,000 bánh mì over time — but he’s on edge. Sales were down more than 25% since December, something that has never happened at this location, one of three. Many of his regulars are immigrants who don’t feel safe leaving home.

When regulars didn’t return, new faces showed up instead — people coming specifically to support an immigrant-owned restaurant at the epicenter of something larger. “Fifty percent is making great food,” Pham says. “The other 50 percent is the community.”

The Pretti memorial is drawing people to Eat Street. It’s an open wound in the middle of the city. But the crowd hasn’t translated into full dining rooms. Operators talk about the disconnect: foot traffic without butts in seats, people paying respects but not staying long.

Some restaurants have locked doors; you ring a doorbell to be let in. Others run skeleton menus, like at Pimento Jamaican Kitchen, where owner Tomme Beevas is outside hugging customers with his melodic accent. Inside, the curry glows sunshine-yellow, food that feels like care.

His Pimento Relief Services has been paying people’s rent and for groceries as fast as donations come in. Elsewhere, workers organize buddy systems to get home safely. They drive each other. They check in. The gripping concern is when someone doesn’t show up for work. “Are they sick or are they just … gone? And how do we find out,” wonders Kara Smith, a local beverage professional and Pho 79 customer.

A block away, Glam Doll Donuts reopened to long lines just days after its employees made headlines by recording Pretti’s killing across the street. There’s a steady stream of customers as the memorial grows, surrounded by television cameras and reporters. That impulse — to be physically present, to shop local, to wait in line, to tip generously — keeps repeating across Eat Street. Spending money has become a form of resistance.

Some places are a little busy, and don’t seem to have skipped a beat, like the new school food hall Eat Street Crossing, or the Vietnamese stalwart Quang Restaurant. Regulars are turning out, but not in numbers that feel sustainable.

During our time on Eat Street, we were told many dark stories. Of people being shipped off to detention centers in Texas, with some having to pay for their flights back to Minnesota. About people afraid to go work, but not having a choice because rent is due. There was the restaurant owner who changed her route to avoid having to drive by the memorial.

At the Black Forest Inn, the German restaurant that’s been open since 1965, signs on the doors say it’s a “Warm place, come on in.” The restaurant has been offering coffee, tea, cocoa and bathrooms for people who need respite from the cold. There’s a heaviness in here, though. The bar is full of people processing their trauma out loud, including a trio watching videos of the shooting that took place literally just outside the walls, with the volume turned all the way up, the sound of whistles shrieking. A server tells them to turn it off. The sausages are overcooked, and the bar is out of straws, but the beer keeps flowing.

At the Irish pub Prodigal Public House, laughter finally breaks through. Still, it has big “bar after a funeral” sort of energy. One of us orders a negroni, and what arrives is a perfect Aperol spritz. But we’re just grateful for the hospitality and warmth, soaking in the soundtrack of rock brogue with electric strum before calling it a night.

On our way out, the barman asked why we didn’t finish the drink. “I asked for a negroni and you made me an Aperol spritz.” “Oh! My! God!” he chortled, clutching an unlit cigarette in one hand. “I did? How do ya make a negroni again? Oh no!” He offers shots of whiskey to make up for it. Any other night, that’d be a fine resolution. But today, it’s time to go home.

The neighborhood is still shaken, but this instinct — to feed people, to unlock the door and welcome them in out of the cold — hasn’t gone away. Recovery and healing will take time, but for now, on Eat Street, there is still warmth and light and hospitality.