
The New Uptown Cafe, a spin-off of the Uptown Diner, closed at 3008 Hennepin Avenue, the owners announced January 10, 2026, after nearly four years.
The cafe opened in the former North Face space in Uptown as a sister concept to the Uptown Diner, trading on the better-known name with a familiar, reasonably priced breakfast-and-lunch menu. In its closing message on Facebook, ownership called it a difficult decision and thanked staff and customers without giving a specific reason; outstanding gift certificates are now redeemable at the Uptown Diner, which remains open.
The closure removes an all-day option from a corridor that has lost a string of restaurants. Breakfast-and-lunch spots run on volume and daytime walk-ins, the patterns most disrupted by Hennepin Avenue's two-year reconstruction, which fenced sidewalks and shifted access along the street until it reopened in late October 2025. That a sister concept of an established local name still closed underscores how little a known brand counted once foot traffic thinned.
The closing leaves a turnkey restaurant space on a block still counting its losses. Whether an operator bets on the rebuilt street, now with wider sidewalks and steadier traffic, is the open question; for now the corridor logs one more departure as the Uptown Diner carries on without the offshoot a few doors down.
[unverifiable: the article's reference to the Uptown Business Association having "counted dozens of closures" along the corridor could not be confirmed in a named source and is omitted.]
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