I’d be lying if I said the address doesn’t make me nervous.
Nothing seems to be able to make a go of it for long at 901 W. Lake Street in Minneapolis, though some of the most highly regarded chefs in town have tried. The building made our list of the 12 most cursed restaurant spaces in the Twin Cities in 2022:
Spill the Wine made it for a handful of years at 901 W. Lake St. before closing in 2015, followed by Tinto Cocina + Cantina, which toughed it out roughly two years before relocating to a much smaller space at 50th and Penn … [Tim] Niver, Laurel Elm, and chef Adam Eaton—the team behind Mucci’s in St. Paul—opened Meyvn here in 2018, but the bagel haven survived just 10 months before the trio transformed the space into a Minneapolis Mucci’s. Trattoria Mucci shuttered in January of this year, and no restaurant has yet taken its place.
That was before chef Yia Vang opened a short-lived location of Union Hmong Kitchen in the space, which he followed up with a few (also short-lived) pop-up concepts like Slurp. So… yeah, a lot more one- to two-year tenants than seems ideal.
But goddammit, am I ever pulling for Lito’s Burritos.
Miguel Hernandez’s Chicano burrito operation got its start inside his family’s Richfield restaurant, El Tejaban Mexican Grill, about two years ago. The pop-up was a near immediate hit, achieving a buzzy IYKYK status among TC burrito heads. We loved Lito’s when we visited its Richfield location—which isn’t going anywhere, except that now it’s headed up by Hernandez’s sister, Diana—but it certainly was, as Eater put it at the time, a “quiet breakfast burrito revolution." We were one of maybe two tables in the place.
That quiet revolution got a little louder this summer, when Hernandez announced Lito’s would expand to the corner of Lake and Bryant. In July, he told MSP Mag that the location just made sense: “If we were going anywhere in Minneapolis, it was Lake Street. When I was a kid, my dad would take me there—we lived in Bloomington, so the representation of culture and food wasn’t where I was living. I would go visit L.A. or parts of Mexico where I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I can get food that I recognize, and I see other people of color here,’ which, back in the late ’90s, I didn't.”
Lito’s on Lake, as they’re calling it, opened last month, bringing the Richfield hits and some new additions to Minneapolis. And even when we visited on the first truly fuck-you-cold day of the year, a semi-steady stream of visitors stopped in, grabbing a table or just getting their burrito bagged to go.
The menu here is slightly larger than in Richfield (and the prices are slightly higher), but the burritos are big and the food is as excellent as we’ve come to expect. I already know I love the house-made chorizo, and therefore simply had to order the Chorizo Supreme burrito ($14). What can I say? Lito’s chorizo is crumbly magic, especially nestled in alongside fluffy eggs and gooey cheese, and the hefty burrito is packed with seasoned potatoes, Mexican rice, and veggies.
My dining companion went for the Chilaquiles Supreme burrito ($14) and said the chilaquiles inside added a great texture element, while the molcajete salsa the chips were tossed in was perfect: “I could have happily had a side of just that.”
In general, the salsas from Lito’s are excellent; if you’re a greedy lil gremlin like me, ask for more than one for a flavor profile that you can switch up from bite to bite. This time around I went with the gently smoky morita crema and the perfectly spicy diablo salsa. (Miguel, if you’re reading, you should bottle and sell that stuff.)
There was plenty I wanted to try and couldn’t—a bacon-wrapped L.A. Dog ($7.50), Asada Fries served with queso blanco ($12), the “diabolical” Chopped Torta ($12), which is like Lito’s take on a chopped cheese—and I’m looking forward to swingin’ by Lito’s on Lake again to make my way through the menu.
Hopefully I’ll have more than a year or two to do so.
Lito’s on Lake
Address: 901 W. Lake St., Minneapolis
Hours: Wednesday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday and Tuesday 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.; closed Mondays.
