For these tiny Minnesota towns with big restaurant crowds, the draw is more than a meal

ESSIG, Minn. - On busy nights, the three streets of this unincorporated town of 35 people in southwest Minnesota overflow with rows of parked cars and trucks extending past the old grain elevator and toward the baseball field.

Some 400 to 500 people from across the state drive to Carl’s Corner for the restaurant’s famous broasted chicken.

Like many small rural Minnesota communities, Essig has shrunk over the decades, as the garage, post office and other businesses closed one by one. But Carl’s Corner remains.

“If Carl hadn’t decided to rebuild this place, the whole town would have withered away,” said Joanie Rolloff, one of the regulars who has gathered there with friends for 50-cent coffee almost daily for the last three decades.

The restaurant is one of those rural Minnesotan eateries with a peculiar distinction: They draw in far more customers than their tiny towns have residents. These cafes and bar-and-grills aren’t just businesses, but the beating hearts of their communities, in some cases keeping their towns on the map.

Having a regionally known restaurant can drive community pride.

“That’s almost more important than the economic aspect,” said Marnie Werner, vice president for research at the Center for Rural Policy and Development. “It shows that someone still believes in the town.”

Owner Tait Jensen has been at the helm of the bar and grill for nearly 30 years. He said he never advertised, relying solely on word of mouth. But now his restaurant is so popular that patrons are willing to wait two to three hours for a table. Sometimes people tailgate and play cornhole for hours outside his restaurant.

Like many small-town gathering spots, such restaurants provide places to socialize; they are venues to see and be seen, to form and nourish friendships with people in the area.

John Stemm said he’s willing to endure long lines for a steak at the Bergen Bar & Grill. The eatery has been a constant presence in his life, going back to high school when he and his friends would snowmobile there from Windom to get burgers. Now, each time he and his wife come back to Minnesota from Oklahoma, they make sure to visit.

“It’s always worth it,” Stemm said. “It’s cool that a place this small in rural Minnesota can survive.”

Such loyalty is palpable in Huntley, an unincorporated farming town of about 70 people about 15 miles from the Iowa border.

Shane Brenny and his wife, Deanna, run the cafe after buying it and the building two years ago. It was intimidating, at first, to take over the local cafe as a transplant from Owatonna, Brenny said. But even from the back of the kitchen where he cooks, Brenny said he’s learned so much about the regulars.

One former owner still works there as a baker, and another is a regular customer, he said. Sometimes farmers out in the fields give him a call and he stays open a little longer so they can get dinner. Other times, he feeds their kids, knowing their parents will settle the bill later.

Sometimes during Friday night specials, the whole place fills and people shift around, giving up their seats so new patrons can find a table or an old-timer can sit in their favorite spot, Brenny said.

“To keep it open, you know, even for one person that comes in all the time, it’s still worth it,” Brenny said. “It’s still nice to see even that one person, making sure that they’re OK.”

Losing a regular is the hardest part of running a cafe in a small town, Brenny said. Most of his customers are in their 80s. He’s learned to cook with less salt. But he hasn’t learned how to deal with the favorite seat of a long-time customer going unfilled.

A fire in 2014 destroyed Compañeros Mexican Restaurant and the original owners called it quits, but the eatery reopened in 2016 with new owners and even more dining space.

Now, hundreds of guests flock to Compañeros on any given day in the summer. “We have parties of 30 people because they’re all up at the cabin,” Beth Durgin said.

Dorset, the self-proclaimed “Restaurant Capital of the World,” is a dining destination and tradition for tourists and locals alike since 1985. Tommy Brennan, the newest “Saturday Night Live” cast member, served up margaritas and did a few comedy shows there.

It was a 45-minute wait to dine the last weekend of September before the restaurant closed for the season. Crowds lined up for one last meal until they can return in May.

“I feel like all the customers are part of the family,” Durgin said. Beth and Levi Durgin employ nearly 100 people each summer, a mix of long-timers and new kids.

During a recent weekend afternoon, the bar was packed. In a corner, a former employee held a birthday party for her 1-year-old. The restaurant caters to its neighbors, but also get visits from cabin-owners, RV campers and beyond.

Its claim to fame: Everything is made from scratch and both the burgers and elk on the menu are so local that Jillian Maki, who owns the restaurant with her husband, Conor, has joked about taking a hayride to the nearby farm where it’s raised.

A Denham general store, gas station and post office all closed in Mayor Pamela Larson’s lifetime. Denham Run and another bar in town still bring people to the community, Larson said.

But like other big eateries in small towns, the secret to thriving at Denham Run Bar & Grill isn’t just the food, it’s the people.

“We wanted it to be like it was our living room,” Maki said.

He started working at the restaurant in 1973, when it was the Wagon Wheel West, a supper club with live bands playing soft rock and country four nights a week.

But when the supper club burned down in 1979, the community felt a deep loss, until townspeople persuaded a local, Carl Rolloff, to rebuild. Berg bought the restaurant from him in 1989, and his brother Kenny joined five years later to run the kitchen.

On a recent morning during harvest time, Rolloff was one of about a dozen having breakfast at the restaurant that still bears his name.

The regulars sat in their favorite seats. The waitstaff have known them for decades, or are related to them, but even the regulars joke that they still need to make a reservation on a busy night at Carl’s Corner.

At one of the tables, Lois Guggisberg and Joanie Rolloff drank their coffee and remembered their school days, when they’d walk miles from their farms near Essig to stop at the restaurant.