The drive up Highway 61 is the thing people move to Duluth for and then, oddly, stop doing. It is twenty-five minutes from the east end of the city to Two Harbors and about ninety more to the Canadian border, and the whole first stretch is a straightforward proposition: lake on your right, hills on your left, and a short list of places to eat that have not changed much in decades.
This is that list, in the order you pass them driving northeast. Five stops, all confirmed open.
A note on method. We have not eaten at every stop on this list and we will not invent a review to imply otherwise. No star ratings, no fabricated visits. These are editorial picks based on reputation, longevity, menu and local standing. What we did verify is the part that ruins a drive if it is wrong: every business below is open, at the address given, with the hours stated, confirmed from its own website in August 2026.
Before you go, pick your road. There are two Highway 61s. The expressway runs inland and fast. The Scenic Drive, the old road, hugs the shoreline through Knife River and the North Shore strip and costs you maybe fifteen minutes. Take the old one. Everything below except Betty's is on or just off it.
Mile 5: New Scenic Cafe
5461 North Shore Drive, Duluth. Open daily 11am to 9pm.
Fifteen minutes northeast of Lakeside and still technically inside Duluth, New Scenic Cafe is the outlier on this road and the region's fine-dining destination. It is what Duluth households book for an anniversary, and it is the answer to "is there anywhere genuinely good up there," which visitors ask more often than locals like.
It also runs a pickup service, Mise en Place, for prepared food and bakery items, which is the practical version of the same kitchen.
Open every day 11am to 9pm, which is a longer week than most restaurants on this road manage. Reserve if it matters to you; this is the one place on the list where walking in on a summer Saturday is a gamble.
Mile 22: Betty's Pies
1633 Highway 61, Two Harbors.
The famous one, on the expressway side just before Two Harbors, and in business since 1957. Betty's sells cream pies, fruit and nut pies and custom pies, and it also does breakfast and sandwiches, though nobody drives there for the sandwich. It is the single most recognizable food business on the Minnesota North Shore and one of very few that a person in another state might have heard of.
One honest caveat. Betty's own website does not publish hours; it directs you to its Facebook page for current ones. We are not going to print hours we could not confirm from the business, so check before you commit to the stop. The address and the fact that it is operating are confirmed; the hours are on you.
Mile 25: Vanilla Bean, for the early start
812 7th Avenue, Two Harbors. Monday to Friday 7am to 2pm, Saturday and Sunday 7am to 3pm.
The first Two Harbors stop and the one that solves the most common problem on this drive, which is that you left Duluth at 7:15am and nothing is open. The Vanilla Bean opens at 7am every single day of the week, both weekend days included, which almost nothing else in the region does.
Full breakfast, a Classic Burger and specialty sandwiches for later in the day, indoor dining and curbside pickup. If the plan is Gooseberry Falls, Split Rock or Palisade Head, this is where the day starts.
Mile 25, other end of town: Louise's Place
19 Waterfront Drive, Two Harbors. Tuesday to Saturday 8am to 3pm.
The other Two Harbors breakfast, down by the water, and the more particular of the two. Louise's Place runs English muffin sandwiches and breakfast tacos built on Locally Laid eggs, sandwiches on house-made bread, salads, cinnamon rolls and turnovers, and pours Duluth Coffee Company dark roast. The house club sandwich is $14.
The detail worth driving for is Thursday pasty day, $11. The pasty is a genuine Upper Midwest mining-country food, brought in by Cornish miners and absorbed into Iron Range and North Shore cooking, and a cafe that still runs a weekly pasty day is doing something more interesting than a menu item.
Note the days: closed Sunday and Monday.
Mile 25, three blocks over: Castle Danger Brewery
17 7th Street, Two Harbors. Sunday to Thursday 11am to 9pm, Friday and Saturday to 10pm.
The end-of-the-drive stop, overlooking Lake Superior, and the source of the most common piece of North Shore confusion. Castle Danger Brewery is not in Castle Danger. The brewery started in that unincorporated community up the shore, kept the name, and moved to Two Harbors, so people still drive to Castle Danger looking for a taproom that is not there.
The beer is deliberately clean and approachable rather than clever, brewed with local water. The taproom has no kitchen of its own and instead runs rotating food vendors, including BoB-a-Q Smokehouse & Grill, the Rainy Rose food trailer, and Love Creamery for the ice cream end of it. Check what is parked outside before you plan dinner around it.
What we could not confirm
Two names that belong on a list like this are missing, for the same reason each time.
Russ Kendall's Smoke House in Knife River is the classic smoked-fish stop on the old road, and it is exactly the kind of place this article exists to point at. We could not reach a working first-party website at any address we tried, so we cannot confirm current hours or operating status, and we will not send you up the shore on a guess. If you are passing through Knife River, look for it, but call ahead.
Northern Waters Smokehaus in the DeWitt-Seitz Marketplace in Canal Park is the standard "get a sandwich before you drive up the shore" stop and one of Duluth's genuinely famous food businesses. Its site was up and describing itself as slow fast food since '98, but published no address or hours we could read, so it stays off the numbered list on the same rule.
Both will go in the moment we can confirm them.
If you live here rather than visit
A few things this drive tells you about the housing market at the end of it.
Two Harbors is a real town, not a resort strip. Three independent food businesses with year-round hours inside a few blocks, including a 7am daily breakfast, is a functioning small-town economy. That is a different proposition from the seasonal stretches further up the shore, and it is why Two Harbors trades as a commuter option for Duluth rather than purely as a second-home market.
The Scenic Drive corridor is thin on services by design. Between Duluth's eastern edge and Two Harbors there is almost nothing except New Scenic Cafe, Knife River, and lake. If you are looking at property along the North Shore strip or in Knife River, understand that groceries, fuel and a pharmacy are a drive in one direction or the other, and that the drive is beautiful and also long in February.
Hours shrink after Labor Day. Everything on this road runs its widest schedule between Memorial Day and the leaf season, and several places up the shore close entirely for stretches of winter. Verify before every off-season trip, including the ones on this list. Two of the five here are already dark two days a week in high summer, which we map out in which Twin Ports restaurants close which day.
Further up is thinner still. Past Two Harbors the gaps widen: Silver Bay is another half hour, and between them the services are seasonal or absent. Fuel up in Two Harbors.
For the Duluth end of the same appetite, see where to get breakfast in Duluth and the best ice cream in Duluth. For the walk rather than the drive, walking the Lakewalk end to end covers the shoreline route on foot.