A few years ago, I got a message from Deb West, the owner of the Westwood Cafe in Spicer, MN, inviting me to stop by and try out their burgers at some point. She had evidently found the blog somewhere and thought I might like their place since I wrote a lot about finding good burgers. I looked up to see where Spicer was on the map and determined that even though it was an hour outside of St. Cloud - where I travel to from time to time - it didn't really warrant a special trip there. Lo and behold, my wife and I found ourselves vacationing along Green Lake and staying in Spicer earlier this summer, and just down the street from our hotel was the Westwood Cafe. One somewhat rainy morning when we couldn't really do much outside, we took a quick walk down the street to the Westwood Cafe for breakfast.
The Westwood Cafe is a breakfast and lunch only establishment, opening at 6 a.m. seven days a week and closing at 2 p.m. (1:30 p.m. on Sunday). Deb and Scott West opened the restaurant in 2000, but the restaurant blood was in the West family for years before. Scott's parents, Bob and Joan, owned the popular Fireside Inn supper club just north of Willmar for a number of years. In the mid-60's, the West's moved to Spicer and bought an old lodge along the shores of Green Lake. They razed the lodge and put up a new supper club, the Westwood Inn. It turned out to be one of the more popular places to eat in west central Minnesota with a spaghetti night and a Sunday brunch being two of their biggest weekly events.
After the Westwood Inn closed, Scott West found a small restaurant along Lake Street in Spicer by the name of the Safari that was up for sale. The West's bought the restaurant, refurbished it and opened the Westwood Cafe at the start of the century. Next year will mark 20 years in business for the restaurant.
The Westwood Cafe was located just a couple minute walk from our hotel up N. Lake Street. (see map) Spicer is one of those towns where the locals all know each other and we found that most evident at the Westwood Cafe where good-natured ribbing and banter went back and forth between patrons and the wait staff at the restaurant.
The restaurant is a small place - it had a main dining area that had room for a little less than 30 people. There were a couple of small rooms off to the side that had tables in there, as well. Behind a half wall was a small counter area that sat six additional diners. There was a lot of lake-type decorations and pictures on the walls. We were seated in one of the small dining rooms and given a couple breakfast menus to look over. Our server for our visit was a young lady by the name of Megan who was cheery and down-home.
The "anytime" breakfast menu at Westwood Cafe consists of your normal morning favorites - omelets, pancakes, skillet dishes, French toast, steak and eggs, and a breakfast burrito. They also had something called the Kitchen Sink - it consisted of a base of hash browns or American fries with mushrooms, onions, jalapeños, green peppers and two eggs mixed in. You had a choice of meat to add to the mess - bacon, sausage, ham, Canadian bacon, wild rice sausage, smoked sausage or taco-flavored beef. You could add up to three different types of meat to the Kitchen Sink for a price of $12.95. That sounded like a lot of food.
My wife went pretty basic - she got the No. 1 breakfast with two eggs over easy, sourdough toast and a side of thick cut bacon. She gave me a piece of the bacon to try and it was excellent.
I went with the corned beef hash breakfast. It featured a liberal portion of corned beef, with fresh hash browns, and two eggs over easy. I also got sourdough toast on the side with my meal. I wanted to believe that the corned beef was made in-house as it didn't taste like the canned variety, but the corned beef was chopped finely. The hash browns were very good - you could tell they grated their potatoes in-house. The sourdough bread was a nice touch to go with the farm fresh eggs on the plate. It was a very good breakfast.
We never did make it back to the Westwood Cafe for one of their burgers, but we did enjoy the breakfast we had during our visit to Spicer. The Westwood Cafe is a nice little place that caters to both the locals and tourists alike - although there seemed to be a lot more locals than tourists during our time there. While it was nothing special in terms of the food, we found to place to be homey and welcoming with a little bit of fun sass thrown in by the servers toward some of the locals. If you're looking for breakfast or a typical lunch while you're in Spicer, the Westwood Cafe is basically your only choice. But I don't think you'll be disappointed.
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