- [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(soft music) - "R-Town," the show about Rochester, gets ready for Experience Rochester's annual Restaurant Week, and we join the year-end festivities at SPARK Children's Museum.

All that and so much more coming up next on "R-Town," the show about Rochester.

(upbeat music) Coming to you from 125 LIVE in Rochester, Minnesota, "R-Town."

(upbeat music continues) The dining scene in Rochester is growing and dynamic.

And this year, Experience Rochester is hosting the third annual Restaurant Week in the city.

Here to tell us more about this delicious week is Erin O'Brien, communications manager for Experience Rochester and Mayo Civic Center.

Welcome to "R-Town," Erin.

- Well, thanks for having me.

- So I'm really excited about this segment 'cause I love food.

(laughs) - Great, yes, so do I.

- And, (chuckles) how would you describe Rochester's dining scene?

- I would describe it as increasingly diverse.

We have a lot of new restaurants coming to Rochester with diverse cuisine from all around the world.

But I would also describe it as really long standing with legacy.

We have some restaurants in Rochester that have been around for decades, so that kinda speaks to the love for food from people of Rochester, and so it's a really interesting dynamic, you know, very varied, but also with a strong legacy here.

- I love that, I love the combination of those two.

Can you tell us what Restaurant Week is and what people can expect?

- Well, Experience Rochester's Restaurant Week is a week-long celebration of Rochester's dynamic dining scene.

So we have more than 30 restaurants participating this year, and those restaurants are offering a variety of promotions, whether it's a new menu item that they don't serve any other time of year or a special menu or special deals, really anything goes in Restaurant Week as long as it's just something special, something to look forward to.

So, from January 20th through the 26th of 2025, those restaurants will be offering those deals.

So it's just a great way to celebrate our restaurants and also support them during what can sometimes be a slower time of year, this January cold snap that we (chuckles) usually get here in Rochester.

- So in its third year, how has Experience Rochester's Restaurant Week grown?

- I would say it's grown really with the restaurant's creativity of what they offer.

It's really cool to see what these restaurants have planned for Restaurant Week.

We have some returning favorites, like ThaiPop, they're doing their seafood boil, which they did last year and it was so popular, so we were excited to see they're bringing it back again this year.

It's a really creative thing that they do for two to three people, this giant seafood boil that- - Yes.

(laughs) - Serves multiple people.

And then we have restaurants like Bleu Duck, they always come up with something brand new.

This year, they're doing an ode to Maine and their travels to the state of Maine and where they source their food from.

And then we have some really creative prix fixe menus.

So, you know, maybe two or three courses where you can choose a dish from each course.

And then some really great deals, so we have deals, you know, as low in price as $5 at Snappy Stop, they have a cool lunch deal (chuckles) for $5.

So I would say it's grown just in that creativity, and you can find something for everyone with the Restaurant Week deals.

- Definitely sounds like there's something for everyone.

And then you mentioned lunch deals, so this sort of, like, every meal (laughs) can be part of this as well?

- Yes, so mostly lunch and dinner this year, but we do have a couple breakfast options this year.

Benedict's comes to mind, they have a really great breakfast menu for Restaurant Week.

- Excellent.

What transportation options are available for residents that are planning to dine out during the week?

- Well, for Restaurant Week this year, we are partnering with Rochester Public Transit with their new RPT GO program, it's a microtransit ride service.

So if you are in southeast Rochester, you can get a free ride to downtown this year during Restaurant Week with a coupon code that's posted on our website, so you can get a free ride and then dine and get a free ride back.

So we're excited to partner with them for this year's Restaurant Week.

- Excellent.

How... What partners are involved in hosting this year's celebration?

And is there anything sort of, let's just say that- - Sure.

- What partners are involved in hosting this year's celebration?

- Yeah, well, Experience Rochester is presenting this Restaurant Week for the third year.

We're very proud of that.

And then Rochester Magazine and Mayo Clinic are supporting Restaurant Week, we're thankful for their support.

And then, of course, the 30+ restaurants that are partnering with us to help promote this campaign.

- How do local restaurants in the dining scene contribute to the vibrancy and the culture of our city?

- In a lot of ways, for sure.

I would just start with, of course, the basics, the food.

Food is culture for most people.

So, it's exposing people in Rochester to different kinds of cuisines from around the world or here at home, Minnesota cuisine, so getting a taste of other palates, expanding people's horizons in that sense.

But I think also restaurants are great for culture because restaurants are a gathering place for friends and family, they can be a place to meet new people, get to know loved ones, they can be a place to enjoy live music or poetry or some kind of live entertainment while you dine.

So, restaurants are really great hubs for cultural activity, especially in Rochester.

- Definitely.

You mentioned a little bit earlier about the fact that January's a little bit slow, and restaurants also have had a lot of adjusting to do, especially after the pandemic in 2020.

How has the restaurant scene sort of grown and changed, as you see it, in the post-pandemic years?

- Well, I think it's grown and changed with how downtown Rochester and Rochester as a whole is really coming back after the pandemic.

We're seeing more activity in downtown Rochester, more visitors, more residents coming downtown.

For example, more citywide conferences are coming to Mayo Civic Center, more live entertainment to Mayo Civic Center, the Chateau Theatre, little cultural hubs popping up throughout downtown Rochester and Rochester as a whole, which are bringing people downtown, and those people need to eat, so.

So I think those restaurants are keeping up with that demand and they're seeing that the love for local food is staying strong, even after the pandemic.

And so it's been neat to see restaurants, like I mentioned earlier, we have restaurants that have been in Rochester for decades participating this year in Restaurant Week.

We have Victoria's, who's been in Rochester for over 20 years now.

Chester's just recently celebrated 15 years in Rochester.

But then we also have some newer restaurants participating this year, like Bebap Korean Food, Our Paladar with a Cuban influence.

So, really diverse restaurants coming to downtown Rochester.

So, we're only growing more and more diverse as we get farther and farther out from the pandemic and as people are really rediscovering their love for dining out.

- Are there other, I know other times during Restaurant Weeks in other places, for example, there's sort of like an itinerary, like we can go see a show and then we can go to a Restaurant Week.

Are there other sort of itineraries that you might suggest for people that are thinking about making it a night out?

- Oh, absolutely.

Well, I would recommend going to experiencerochestermn.com.

There we have plenty of things to do.

Our events calendar is full of things happening all year round, and we have suggestions of things you can do any time of day, any day of the week, so visit our website for ideas of things to do.

But there are things to do, whether it's going to the Rochester Art Center and looking at their exhibits before heading out to eat or catching a show at the Mayo Civic Center or Chateau Theatre before or after going out to eat.

There's so many things to do in Rochester, even in January when it's cold out, (Nicole laughs) which not a lot of people might realize.

- For sure.

And can you remind us the website for Experience Rochester and how community members can just learn more about what's happening this Restaurant Week and beyond?

- Yes, well, Experience Rochester's website is experiencerochestermn.com.

There you can find everything you need to know about visiting or enjoying your hometown of Rochester.

And then specifically for Rochester Restaurant Week and all of the restaurants' menus, that website is rochesterrestaurantweek.com, and so you can browse every single restaurant's menus, what they have planned, more information about the Rochester Public Transit promotion.

We also have some social media giveaways going on during that week, so all the details are there as well.

Everything you need to know about Restaurant Week and eating out, you can find on that webpage.

- Excellent.

Well, we do have a little bit of time and you mentioned the social media giveaways.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

- Yeah, so it's really simple to enter.

So all you have to do is, well, first of all, go out to eat.

(laughs) No one's complaining about that.

- No one's complaining about that.

(chuckles) - Go out to eat at a participating restaurant, take a picture of your food or yourself enjoying the food, yourself with friends, it can be a picture of anything of you at that restaurant or your food, and post it on social media with the hashtag #RochMNEats, and we'll randomly select winners to win a gift card to one of our participating restaurants.

So really easy to enter, enter as many times as you want at, yeah, as many restaurants as you've been eating at and you'll have a chance to win.

- That's really exciting.

Thank you for sharing that.

For our viewers that may not know, can you tell us a little bit just about the work of Experience Rochester at Mayo Civic Center?

- Yeah, so Experience Rochester is the city's destination marketing organization.

So we are here to help residents and visitors know everything they need to know to visit and stay in Rochester and enjoy things to do here.

So whether it's hotels to stay at for people who are visiting for a variety of reasons, whether it's for Mayo Clinic appointments or just visiting for the weekend, places to stay, places to eat, as we've been talking about, we have all the great places to eat, and things to do especially, and that really applies to residents and visitors who are always looking for things to do year round.

And so whether it's going to Quarry Hill to do some snowshoeing this time of year, if we get snow on the ground anytime soon, or exploring some of our cultural hubs and activities here, Experience Rochester is really there to help you out with those ideas.

Mayo Civic Center, which Experience Rochester does handle the operation of the Mayo Civic Center, is Rochester's premier destination for live entertainment as well as conferences and events.

So, whether you're coming to a comedy performance or maybe attending a medical conference, Mayo Civic Center handles events of all sizes.

- Excellent.

And I know it's the beginning of the year and we're here to talk about Restaurant Week, but are there some things that you're sort of looking down as you're looking down the pipe of the year that you're excited about, that Experience Rochester is hosting this year?

- Oh, well, looking forward, I mean, other organizations have some really great events too that I'd love to give a shout-out.

- For sure.

- Coming up very soon in February is Social-ICE, the Rochester Downtown Alliance hosts that every year in downtown Rochester, so that's another great way to get people out and about in the cold months when you need a little extra nudge to get out in the cold.

Later in the summer is also Rochester Downtown Alliance's Thursdays Downtown, that always attracts a lot of people every Thursday.

And live music all throughout the summer, Rochester Public Music brings free concerts almost every day of the week during the summer, whether it's the FORWARD Park Concerts or the Down by the Riverside Music Series on Sunday evenings, there are so many opportunities to experience live music.

And then looking way ahead, almost a whole year ahead, we recently had our Experience Rochester's Celebrate Rochester!

New Year's Eve event.

So looking ahead all the way to New Year's Eve, if you wanna look that far ahead, (Nicole laughs) that's always a family favorite, it's a free community event to ring in the new year.

So, like I said, things to do all year round, regardless of weather, regardless of location in Rochester, throughout the city there are things to do.

- Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Erin.

Thank you for sharing about Restaurant Week and beyond with us here today.

- Absolutely, thank you.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (happy music) - Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

It's kind of a cozy sock rink.

If you notice, we wanted to replicate a park and we called it Sock Skating in Central Spark.

(gentle music) (people chattering) It's a space where families, no matter your age or size, can really engage, and so I've seen the littlest of little that aren't quite crawling yet just sitting in there enjoying and watching, to older children working on spins and movement.

So some of the goals are just engagement, but also moving your body and socializing with other people, learning to share space and fine and gross motor skills.

I think, you know, we really focus on health and wellbeing and movement, and so we were talking about different ways to get children and families engaged in the museum and moving, and what a better way to do that than to embrace our Minnesota winters here but in the warmth of the space.

And so we had seen some socks skating done elsewhere and thought, why not try it out here at SPARK?

(bright music) (children giggling) (people chattering) (bright music fades) - Yeah, so we've been members of SPARK for a long time, but this is the first time using the skating rink today.

Yeah, SPARK in general, and especially this cool little ice rink, it's just a fun spot for kids to be inside but still kinda get that experience of skating, and it's probably safer and easier for the parents too to have your kids out there.

- What has delighted me is how it came together with the lights hanging above it and the trees behind it to make it feel a little bit more outdoorsy when we're still inside because it is pretty chilly outside these days, so getting movement inside is where we have to go, for our warmth anyway.

- It's really fun.

It's slippery, you gotta be kinda careful if you're walking out there, but it is safe for kids.

So I'm comfortable letting my little kids use it.

Being the state of hockey, everybody should learn how to skate, and so I think a little ice rink like this is a good way for kids to start practicing skating.

I played hockey my whole life and I love skating too, so it's kinda fun to get out there and see what's out there for new things to help kids learn how to skate.

- I think this is a new thing for a lot of children.

They like to move and slide and see how their body moves, and so we've received a lot of positive feedback.

We unveiled this on New Year's Eve as part of our New Year's Eve party, and it was a really, really popular place to be at that event.

So, the exhibit was easy to put together and creates hours of fun for kiddos.

We're seeing a lot of happy faces come out of the sock skating rink.

(upbeat music) (people chattering) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music ends) - But we're all okay, right?

We're gonna get up and we're gonna shake it all out!

Shake it all out, shake it all out, shake it all out.

Yay, we did it!

- I think it's a great place to come all year round, of course, because of the different programming that we have and those educational elements.

In the wintertime, yeah, we're really busy because it is chilly outside.

I'm a proponent of being outdoors, so even in the winter, we can create some outdoor programming or give some takeaways of outdoor ways to play with things that you have from around your house outside, because that's super important, but it's also important to get into spaces, socialize, work on, you know, building those brain muscles, work on building those fingertip muscles and legs.

And all of those things that come with childhood development happens here in SPARK, and so you can do some of these things at home, but you can do different things here in this space.

I think here in the month of January, we're really embracing winter, so we're doing a lot of winter activities, including science activities around winter, so painting with ice cubes, for instance, so a little bit of art and science altogether as we talk about melting the ice cubes in the warmer environment.

And then coming up in the month of February, it's I Love to Read Month and Black History Month, so we're going to be celebrating both those topics throughout the entire month with special guest readers and featuring some of our Black artists and their different mediums, and then replicating that art as we move through the month.

(playful music) (playful music continues) (playful music continues) - [Narrator] For more information about this story and other "R-Town" features, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, @KSMQ, #RTown, or ksmq.org/rtown.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (lighthearted music) - Hi, I'm Danielle Teal with R-Town Spotlight.

I'm here at LTS Brewing with Stacy.

Stacy, what is your role here at LTS?

- So I do a couple things here at LTS.

I handle some of the marketing work as well as running our social media events, and then I also host our BINGO and trivia every Tuesday night here at LTS, so I'm in and out pretty frequently.

(chuckles) - [Danielle] I love that you have BINGO, that's such the rage right now.

Can you share a little bit more more about that?

- The really fun thing, it's customer/patron driven, but we have lots of fun call-outs.

So you've heard of, like, the before and after, but we have a lot of really fun patrons here who come out and we've got some singing call-outs, we get some ABBA, some "Sound of Music" songs, so people are really creative and it makes it a really, really fun event.

Semi-recently installed Singles Mixers, and so what we were hearing from the community is that people wanted spaces to meet other singles or like-minded people, maybe even just a friend, and they weren't finding the events to be able to do that at.

Lately, I've been bringing out games during our Singles Mixers, so it takes on a speed dating-type vibe.

- 'Cause you know if somebody flips a table over Monopoly, (Stacy laughs) you don't wanna date 'em.

(both laughing) - Fair enough, yes!

- Right?

- I mean, honestly, you can really decide if you would be good with somebody, yes.

(laughs) We also do monthly movie nights, which sometimes are more kid-oriented movies, especially like around the fall, we had several Halloween movies, we have some kid holiday movies coming up as well.

Then we have monthly, or excuse me, a weekly game night on Mondays that alternates.

So we do a monthly cribbage, a monthly poker, that's kind of a newer one- - Cribbage is also- - We're doing a poker night.

Yes, yes!

- Rising back up.

- Another one that's been really popular lately is our puzzle night.

So we have kind of competitive puzzling.

We have one coming up this month where people will actually get to take home the puzzle.

So everyone's doing the same puzzle this month, whereas normally it's just a 500-piece puzzle, so it's not always the same one.

But this month, everyone's gonna be competing with the same puzzle, and if you finish the puzzle in certain increments, then you win some prizes.

We hear a lot of positive feedback about live music, and so something that we've been starting this fall into winter is kind of, in our slower season, bringing people out with what they like, which we're bringing out some smaller groups of live music.

So, we have every Friday or several Fridays coming up, we're trying to book more and more.

We have several Fridays filled with small groups of live music, so like three people, one person maybe, we can't have huge bands in here during the off-season, but we have small singers or bands coming out to perform here at the brewery.

Again, our operations manager is just awesome about kind of coming up with new ideas, and so this fall we started an event every Sunday.

No matter what games are being hosted, whenever we're open here, we're playing football games on our big screen as well as all the screens in the taproom.

And all day long on Sunday, it's $10 pizzas.

People don't realize that we actually make our own soda here, which is cool.

- Wait a second.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - Okay.

Let's dive into that just a little bit.

So you make your own soda?

- Yeah.

- What's the best flavor?

- Oh, I really love our Butter Beer, but it's a non-alcoholic soda, the kids can have it.

It's really good, it's my favorite soda.

Usually we have that one here.

Root beer is usually here, and then we rotate.

So we've got, like, all kinds of fruit flavors that come and go.

We had an apple soda here recently, so we'll make all kinds of stuff, it's really fun.

- It sounds so good.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Where can people find out about the events, the menu, all that good stuff?

- The best place to stay up to date with all of our events is right on our Facebook page.

So on social media, we share out all of our events as, like, calendar events, but then we also update via, like, posting and stories and things, so following us on social media is by far the best way.

We do put out information about what beers we have on tap and that sort of stuff on our website too, but I would highly recommend following us on social media.

- All right, anything else you'd like to add?

- Ooh, we just hope you come out to LTS.

We love seeing new faces, and it's been fun to see who becomes regulars here, I think.

We tend to keep people once they find us here.

(laughs) - Kinda like what they say about Minnesota, once you go there, you can never get out because of the snow.

- Yes.

(both laughing) Or the people, right?

- Or the people.

- We're great.

(laughs) - I mean, we are great, we are great.

That is awesome.

Share a little bit more about the movie nights.

What does all that entail?

- Yeah, so the movie nights are inside currently.

We will sometimes do them outside whenever the weather is nice, but right now, as it's getting colder, they're inside.

So we've got a big screen right here in the taproom, and we will sometimes partner and maybe have, like, popcorn or something from like a local nonprofit.

Recently we did that with a local nonprofit and that was really fun.

But, yeah, we'll host a movie night here.

We alternate between kind of popular movies.

- All right, we have a patron here at LTS, and you come here and visit, but there's a really cool story about it, so share your name and what is the connection.

- So, I'm John Teske, and the owners, the original founders here, are people I used to work with.

- So, what is your favorite thing about coming to LTS?

- So, I like the atmosphere here and the people that I'm hanging out with.

We have our happy hours here and it's just a fun group.

Once you know a lot of people, it makes it even more fun.

- Thank you so much, John.

- You bet.

- This is Danielle Teal with R-Town Spotlight.

We're gonna go check out the sodas and get some pizza.

(upbeat music) - Thank you for joining us today.

I hope you learned as much as I did about all that's going on in our city and the wonderful people making it happen.

For more content produced right here in Rochester, please be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter at hashtag #RTown.

I'm Nicole Nfonoyim-Hara, host of "R-Town," the show about Rochester, we'll see you next time.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music fades) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.