Minnesota diners lost several familiar restaurants this month, and the goodbyes hit different parts of the state’s food scene.
Some were neighborhood staples. Some were local chain locations with loyal followings. Others were the kind of everyday places people worked into their routines without thinking too much about it — until they were gone.
The closures follow a difficult stretch for Minnesota restaurants, including the final two D’Amico & Sons locations shutting down in the state.
Here are three beloved Minnesota restaurants that shut down this month.
Borough in Minneapolis
Borough closed its North Loop restaurant on June 27, 2026, after 13 years in business — ending a run that shaped modern dining in one of Minneapolis’ most visible neighborhoods.
The restaurant at 730 N. Washington Ave. opened in January 2013 to immediate critical acclaim, landing on Bon Appétit’s list of the top 50 best new restaurants in America that year. It became known for its modern seasonal fare, thoughtful hospitality and an off-menu burger so beloved it eventually spawned a spinoff: Parlour, the burger bar that operates out of the same building’s basement level.
Parent company Jester Concepts, founded by Brent Frederick, announced the closure alongside plans for what comes next. The space will reopen as Revival — the fried chicken and Southern comfort food concept founded in 2015 by chef Thomas Boemer and co-owner Nick Rancone, which abruptly closed all four of its Twin Cities locations in January 2025. Jester acquired the Revival brand in 2025, and will reopen the first brick-and-mortar Revival in the Borough space later this year, with September as the current target. Parlour temporarily closed June 28 through July 5 for renovations and reopened July 6.
For North Loop diners, Borough’s final service marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
El Tejaban Mexican Grill & Lito’s Burritos in Richfield
Richfield also lost a longtime Mexican restaurant this month.
El Tejaban Mexican Grill & Lito’s Burritos at 6519 Nicollet Ave. closed after nearly 20 years in business. In their farewell statement, the owners — two proud Mexican immigrants — described the restaurant as a dream they had worked to build. “What began as a dream for two proud Mexican immigrants seeking the opportunity to build a better future became a reality because of years of support,” the owners wrote. They expressed gratitude for the loyalty, friendships and community they had found over the years.
The restaurant opened in 2008 and grew from its original concept into a 150-seat restaurant on Nicollet Avenue with a full bar. In 2023, the family launched Lito’s Burritos, a breakfast concept attached to the restaurant under the same family ownership.
But the final years brought new pressures. In January 2026, the restaurant temporarily closed during the height of Operation Metro Surge, when many immigrant-owned businesses in the area were targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The restaurant reopened, but the closure was one more hardship for a business that had already persevered for nearly two decades.
No reason was given in the final announcement for the permanent closure. The Lito’s Burritos location on Lake Street remains open.
A nearly 20-year run says something important. Restaurants like this do not usually become beloved because they chase trends. They become beloved because they are dependable — the kind of restaurant where people know where to go when they want the same meal they have ordered for years.
Richfield has changed over the years, and restaurant turnover is part of that change. But losing a long-running independent Mexican restaurant — one founded on a dream by immigrant owners — still leaves a gap for customers who counted on it.
Red Cow in Uptown Minneapolis
Red Cow’s Uptown location closed on June 1, 2026, after a decade on Hennepin Avenue — and the reason is more concrete than typical restaurant economics.
The closure was directly tied to the city’s two-year Hennepin Avenue reconstruction project. During construction from 2024 through fall 2025, the restaurant at 2626 Hennepin Ave. saw sales drop 60 to 70 percent, according to owner Luke Shimp. Though construction wrapped in the fall, business never fully recovered. The restaurant was still roughly 50 percent down when Shimp decided not to sign a new five-year lease.
“I don’t think there’s a business in the world that can take a 60 percent sales cut for two years — it took hundreds of thousands of dollars to prop the restaurant up during that time period,” Shimp told Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. “We couldn’t keep investing and just hoping guests were going to return.”
The Uptown Business Association president Andrea Corbin told KSTP that more than 60 businesses have closed along the Hennepin Avenue corridor in recent years. The street went from four car lanes to two, adding a median, bus lanes and bike lanes. Corbin said the redesign has made it frustrating for drivers to reach Hennepin businesses. The Minneapolis City Council was scheduled to vote on formal design approval in June.
Employees were offered positions at other Red Cow and Red Rabbit locations. The Red Cow brand still has five other Minnesota locations: North Loop, 50th and France (recently renovated), St. Paul’s Selby Avenue, Rochester and Wayzata. Red Rabbit, the Italian sister restaurant, operates in the North Loop and St. Paul as well.
Still, location matters. A restaurant can remain open elsewhere and still leave a hole in the neighborhood it exits. Uptown has already been through years of change — pandemic fallout, civil unrest, prolonged street reconstruction — and Red Cow’s closure adds another empty space to a corridor that many longtime Minneapolis residents remember differently.
For regulars, the goodbye is about more than one burger place. It is another sign of how much Uptown’s restaurant map has changed, and why.
Minnesota keeps losing familiar places
These three closures are not identical.
Borough was a North Loop dining staple with a 13-year run and a national accolade from Bon Appétit to its name — a restaurant that helped put Minneapolis on the broader culinary map. El Tejaban was a nearly 20-year independent Mexican restaurant founded by immigrant owners who built something lasting before a combination of rising pressures and community disruption took its toll. Red Cow was a local burger brand’s Uptown location, a decade-long neighborhood fixture that couldn’t survive the economic damage of a city infrastructure project.
Together, they show how restaurant closures can affect a community from several directions at once.
A favorite dinner spot disappears. A family restaurant closes. A familiar local chain location leaves a neighborhood.
Minnesota will keep getting new restaurants, but that does not make the goodbyes feel any smaller.
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