A breakfast diner/counter just slightly wider than a Mini Cooper, Al's breakfast 12- spinning stools line up with customers quickly. Those waiting must stand in a row behind the stools or out on the sidewalk. You need a fisheye lens to great this picture. This isn't the place you want to come with a large group or family breaksfast. It's a place for self-educated loners and grifters, self-absorbed poets and long-shot politicians, drummers to a different rythym, one-eyed lumberjack philosophers, firebrand unity seekers, out of work blues musicians, and seasoned malicontents. Americans best!
This is a hash-house where almost everything can be had for $6 and you can watch the grill-cook sling hashbrowns and eggs to make sure nothing is thinned with unusual substances or watered down with sorrow and self-pity. You might find this a perfect setting for Tom Watis and it was probably visited by Bob Dylan, Guy Noir and Allen Ginsberg.
If you think privacy is being alone in your thoughts and the only company you keep are the voices in your head, this is the place for you.
Recently, WCCO TV used Al's railroad-car styled space to set their commercial for the evening news program, with news anchor Angela Santaniello barking orders to fry-cook Don Shelby serving up plates to a hasty crowd.
Al's Breakfast is a Minneapolis institution not to be missed.
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