Late Summer On Water Street: Concerts, Trolleys, And Excelsior's New Dining Row

If you have lived in Excelsior for more than a few summers, you already know how the Water Street corner used to look after Labor Day: quiet windows, a shuttered pub, and a lot of talk about what should go in next. That corner is not quiet anymore, and the last three weeks of August are the tidiest window you will get to walk through the change on foot before the calendar tilts toward Apple Days.

The claim worth making about Water Street this August

Excelsior has spent the past year quietly turning a seasonal main street into something closer to a year-round restaurant row, and the late-summer calendar is the easiest way to see it in one afternoon. The busiest intersection in downtown Excelsior was dark not long ago, with restaurants that had anchored Water Street closed after the pandemic and left vacant. That is the baseline. The contrast is what has landed on the same block since last summer.

Two prominent Minneapolis restaurateurs opened within days of each other this past summer, just steps apart, joined by a wave of recent openings bolstered by new apartments, a parking garage, and plans for more development. Mayor Gary Ringate put it plainly to the Star Tribune: "The restaurant world is churning around here."

The thesis for anyone already living here: the reason to walk Water Street this month is not the summer view. It is that the block has finally reached the density where a Wednesday concert, a Thursday streetcar, and a Friday dinner can all belong to the same weekly routine without repeating a room.

The corner that changed

The old Irish pub at Water and 2nd is now three concepts under one roof. Jester Concepts is behind Mirabelle, a supper club with a coastal theme, Shiki, a ramen shop, and a lower-level outpost of Parlour, the company's cocktail bar and burger destination. If you have not been inside since the reopen, the sequence is worth knowing: Mirabelle opened on July 28 as the third and final concept on the corner of Water and 2nd, joining Shiki, which opened the month prior, and Parlour, which debuted the previous fall.

Across the street, the former Bacon Drug building has a different accent. In what used to be Red Sauce Rebellion, chef David Fhima, known for the Minneapolis spots Fhima's and Maison Margaux, opened Vagabondo, a Sicilian restaurant by night, and by day a cafe serving coffee, pastries and spritzes on a sidewalk patio with a peek-a-boo view of the lake.

A few doors down, Layline sits at 301 Water Street with a classic American menu that leans into seafood. The older guard is still here and still worth the walk: Maynard's on the lake, Haskell's Port of Excelsior with its corner patio and dock, Red Bench Bakery for morning kouign-amann, Excelsior Brewing, and Old Southern BBQ next door for a takeout window run when you do not feel like sitting down.

What ties the corner together is not a theme. It is a design sensibility. Amanda Maday, whose firm Studio Grey designed both Mirabelle and Vagabondo, said, "They need other local businesses to help support them, because it's a tough business." Two of the highest-profile new rooms on the street came out of the same studio, and it shows in the way the doors read from the sidewalk.

A weekly rhythm hiding in plain sight

The way to use Water Street in August is not to pick one night. It is to string together the recurring pieces. Here is the shape of the week the calendar actually rewards:

Two of those five slots are free. Two involve boarding a hundred-year-old streetcar. All five happen inside a ten-minute walk.

Thursdays are the sleeper day

Most residents default to Water Street on a Saturday, which is fair, but Thursday is the better civic afternoon this month. The Lake Minnetonka Excelsior Farmers Market runs Thursdays 2 to 5 pm on the east parking lot of Excelsior Elementary school, behind the library. Walk two blocks north with your tote and you can catch a ride on the way home: on Thursdays between June 18 and August 27, the streetcar sits at the Water Street Platform between 2 and 5 pm for streetcar rides and carbarn tours.

That pairing has been on the calendar for years, but the retail context around it is new. A market run used to end at the car. Now it ends at Vagabondo's sidewalk patio for a spritz, or upstairs at Mirabelle for the smoked trout dip before the room fills. If you have been treating the market as an errand, this is the month to treat it as the start of the evening.

The last Concerts in the Commons of the season

Concerts in the Commons closes out Aug 26. It is the single most crowded free lawn in the west metro on a good-weather Wednesday, and it is worth planning for even if you have been all summer.

Seven Wednesday nights between June and August, food trucks and beer and wine open at 5:00 pm with music from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, located on the banks of Lake Minnetonka in Excelsior Commons Park. The concerts combine live music, food and drinks, and sunsets over the water, bringing together people of all ages in a fashion that also helps raise money to support Community for the Commons as they improve the park. The efforts are led by the Excelsior Morning Rotary Club and the City of Excelsior.

The August closer is Rumours & Dreams, a Fleetwood Mac tribute, following The Suburbs on August 12. A practical note that residents pass around and newcomers learn the hard way: bring a blanket you do not mind laundering. The lawn is shared with a healthy resident goose population, and the Commons is a park, not a groomed venue. Chairs on the outer ring, blankets in the middle, coolers at the edge.

If you are new to the series, the shuttle is the move. The Rotary runs a free shuttle on concert nights, which means you can leave the car at home and walk out the door without thinking about the parking garage on 2nd Street.

The three-week runway to Apple Days

After the Aug 26 concert, the Water Street calendar does not go quiet. It shifts. Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and 20, celebrate the first apple harvest in Excelsior with events along Water Street and a trolley ride, with a non-stop streetcar shuttle running so you can explore the carbarn and catch the next trolley back to Water Street. Paradise Charter Cruises hosts complimentary community cruises during the festival.

Two things worth doing in the three-week runway. First, if you have out-of-town family who visit for Apple Days every year, use late August to preview the new rooms so you can pick where you want a reservation on that busy Saturday. As of July 2026, OpenTable lists eight restaurants in Excelsior, and the new arrivals book up first. Second, if you have not walked the block since the parking garage opened behind the corner building, do the loop once in daylight. Mirabelle notes parking on street and in the public underground parking lot behind the building. Knowing which stairwell exits where is the sort of Excelsior detail that turns a busy festival Saturday into a calm one.

Whether the street holds through winter

The honest question about all of this is the one the Star Tribune already asked. As the leaves begin to change and foot traffic inevitably slows, a question looms: Can Excelsior sustain the restaurant boom year-round? The answer being built into the block is structural. To address the off-season slump, Excelsior is trying to grow its year-round population and bring in more daytime foot traffic, and after the success of the new parking garage, more apartment units, medical offices, coworking spaces, and other developments are in the pipeline. One project at 10 Water Street and another at a former gas station site could bring additional dining options to downtown.

For a resident, the takeaway is simple. The version of Water Street you saw in 2022 is not the version you are walking through in August 2026, and the version you will walk through next winter is likely to be different again. The best evidence you can gather about your own town this month is a Thursday market run that ends at a Wednesday concert lawn and a Friday dinner in a room that did not exist last year.

If you are thinking about what your Excelsior home is worth in a market where the corner two blocks away just re-drew itself, that is a good conversation to have over coffee. Reach out to Trenary Realty Group for a home valuation grounded in what is actually happening on your street, not last year's headline.