Walk down Broadway Avenue on a Thursday night this month and you'll notice something that wasn't there a year ago: a wide-open front window at 326 Broadway, spilling light and conversation onto the sidewalk. That's Bar Eloise, and the window is the point. For the better part of two years, Wayzata's downtown built a reputation as a reservation-only, dress-up-a-little kind of place. This fall, one of its most talked-about restaurants tore that model down and put in a front door that stays open instead.
If you've lived here through the last few years of restaurant openings, you already sense the shift even if you couldn't name it. Here's what's actually happening, and why it matters more than another list of "new places to try."
What Changed at 326 Broadway
Eloise opened in downtown Wayzata as an evening-only fine dining room from Lindsay Pohlad, the restaurateur behind The Grocer's Table next door. It ran Tuesday through Sunday, reservations through Tock, a menu built around fine dining technique. It was the kind of place you planned for.
Then, over a few days at the end of August, it closed. Eloise shut down Monday, August 31 through Thursday, September 3 for what its team called a light refresh, and reopened Friday, September 4 under a new name and a different premise: Bar Eloise. The team's own explanation, posted when the change was announced, was blunt about why. They said they'd listened to guests who loved the food but wanted a place that felt easier to drop into, more casual, and more connected to the neighborhood.
The details back that up. The new front window opens completely, blending the dining room with Broadway itself rather than sealing it off. A substantial share of both the indoor tables and the expanded patio is held for walk-ins, not reservations. There are TVs in the bar now, extended bar seating, and high-tops built for the kind of night where you didn't plan to stay this long. Sunday brunch starts September 20, running 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., a daypart the old Eloise never touched. The new hours run Tuesday through Thursday 4 to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 4 to 10 p.m., closed Mondays.
Even the patio expansion tells you something about intent. Because the new seating area extends past the restaurant's own storefront, the city treated it as an unusual request, but staff approved it after confirming the walkway still measures slightly more than six feet, clearing Wayzata's five-foot minimum for pedestrian clearance. That's not a detail restaurants usually fight for unless they expect a lot of foot traffic to actually stop and sit down without calling ahead.
The Resort Wayzata Built First
To understand why this reads as a correction and not just a menu refresh, it helps to remember what came right before it.
Macanda opened on the shore of Lake Minnetonka a couple of summers ago, a year after its sister restaurant Josefina, both partnerships between local restaurateur Aaron Switz and Minneapolis chef Danny del Prado. Macanda leaned all the way into destination dining: a Tulum-inspired interior, a 120-person four-season patio, hydraulic doors that turn the space into a late-night record bar. Switz has talked openly about the ambition behind it, saying he wanted people to feel like they were walking into a resort on vacation, not just eating dinner in Wayzata.
That ambition showed up in city records too. The Wayzata City Council spent part of this summer weighing a special event permit for HIFI on the Lake, a two-night outdoor electronic dance concert planned for Macanda and the Boatworks area near the Wayzata Depot. City staff actually recommended denying it. The council approved it anyway, on a 4-1 vote in June, after tabling the request once already. Whatever you think of a concert series next to the lake, it tells you the downtown had spent real energy positioning itself as a place people travel to, not just a place people who already live here stop into on a Tuesday.
That's the model Bar Eloise just walked away from.
The Quieter Second Signal: Parcelle's Takeout Window
The Eloise change isn't the only data point. In January, Minneapolis chef Kamal Mohamed confirmed plans to bring his fast-casual, organic cafe Parcelle to the Wayzata lakefront as its first suburban location, an 800-square-foot grab-and-go space designed for takeout rather than a sit-down meal. Mohamed said the format was built around picking up something easy before a lakeside walk or a spot on the patio, and that the move reflected demand from suburban regulars who were already driving into his Minneapolis flagship. He said he was hoping for a spring opening.
Whether that specific timeline held is worth checking before you plan a trip, since restaurant openings shift. But the shape of the concept matters regardless of the exact date. Parcelle isn't trying to be a destination either. It's trying to be the place you duck into on your way to somewhere else, no reservation required, no full meal expected.
Put those two moves next to each other and you get the same message from two different directions. One restaurant walked its ambition back. Another arrived with modest ambitions from the start.
The Pattern Underneath It
Here's the thing the "best restaurants in Wayzata" roundups tend to miss because they're built to list, not to compare. Downtown Wayzata spent roughly two years building out a version of itself aimed at people arriving for an occasion: a reservation, a special dinner, a concert on the lake. Macanda and Josefina were built for that visitor. The two most recent changes to the dining scene, Bar Eloise's walk-in mandate and Parcelle's takeout counter, are both built for the opposite person: someone who already lives three blocks away and just wants dinner without planning a week ahead.
That's not a small distinction if you're the one who actually lives here. A downtown that only rewards planning ahead is a downtown you visit occasionally. A downtown where you can walk in on a Wednesday, grab a stool at the bar, and watch the game while eating a good burger is a downtown you use. Bar Eloise's own language, wanting to feel "more connected to the neighborhood," is really an admission that the fine dining version of Eloise wasn't serving the people who live within walking distance nearly as often as it served people making a special trip.
This Week on Broadway
If you're deciding where to go this month, here's what's actually true right now:
- Bar Eloise is open at 326 Broadway Ave S, Tuesday through Thursday 4 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 4 to 10 p.m., closed Mondays. Sunday brunch begins September 20, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
- The expanded patio is in and mostly held for walk-ins, so it's a reasonable bet even without a reservation.
- Macanda and Josefina remain the pick if you want the occasion-dinner version of Wayzata, complete with lake views and a reservation.
- Parcelle's lakefront cafe was planned as a spring opening for grab-and-go food near the water. Worth a quick check before you build a walk around it.
None of this means downtown Wayzata is choosing sides between casual and upscale. It means the neighborhood is figuring out that it can be both, and that the fastest way to find out which one you actually want on a given night is to just walk down Broadway and see which door is propped open.
If you're a longtime Wayzata resident who's started wondering what your own home would be worth in a market that keeps evolving like this, or if changes like these have you thinking about what's next for your household, Zachman Realty Group knows this stretch of Lake Minnetonka block by block. Move Forward With Confidence, whenever you're ready to talk.
