Three Extinct Minnesota Restaurants I Wish I Could Visit Just One More Time

When I was a kid there was no better restaurant on Earth than Circus Pizza in Burnsville, Minnesota. It was a Chuck E. Cheese-type place with pizza, arcade, rides and an animatronic band called The Rock-afire Explosion.

I went there all the time as a kid with my parents. As I got a little older, we would get dropped off by our folks and we would play video games all day long. As a teenager I even worked there making pizzas in the back!

Sadly, a Chuck E. Cheese location opened nearby and Circus Pizza wasn't much longer for the world. I am having trouble finding the exact year the Burnsville location closed, but I would guess it was in the early 2000's.

Here are a couple more former Minnesota restaurants I wish I could visit just one more time.

THE GROUND ROUND 

Few restaurants of my youth did as good a job of making a place fun for kids and adults like the Ground Round. It's been decades since I visited a Ground Round, so I'm flying off memory here- forgive me if I misremember anything!

The first thing I remember is that kids under 12 sometimes 'paid what they weighed,' which as a skinny teen meant two things: If anyone asked, I was 12 until I graduated high school and, two, my meals were consistently under one dollar.

The center of the restaurant featured a giant screen that played old-timey cartoons, which is where we would almost always eat. However, if I went to the Ground Round with my dad we would watch baseball in the slightly-seedier bar area located across the lobby.

According to its website, there are two remaining Ground Round restaurants. One is located in Minot, North Dakota and the other in Bismarck. Google Maps also lists one in Grand Forks.

EMBER'S 

When I was growing up, you had to make a choice: Ember's or Perkin's. For whatever reason our family always chose Ember's. I remember them having amazing chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream on the top.

The last Minnesota Ember's location, located in Fridley, closed in 2021. The St. Cloud location has been a Hooter's, a White Castle and now is a bank on 33rd Avenue.