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LIFESTYLE LETTER

Arranging My Face October 2026 I ASKED ANNIE when I started doing it. “You’ve always done that.” No origin story. Apparently I’ve never, in twenty-one years, chosen my own dinner. When the server comes, I ask: “What would you order? Not the popular thing. What do you get with your own money, after a shift, when nobody’s watching?” Then I order it without asking what it is. Menus are props now. I hold one, I nod at it, and I wait to surrender. At Apa Sushi, the Kiss of Fire Roll, under something called “chef’s special sauce.” Nobody will tell me what’s in it. I’ve stopped asking. At Redstone the answer was the fondue. The fondue, which I’d never have ordered on my own. Then the server paired it with their Doli: a pineapple that’s been soaking in vodka for two weeks. Two weeks. Somebody started that pineapple before I knew I wanted it. At The Great Greek I cheat: Greek salad with salmon, because it’s what Andrew the owner orders. I’ve outsourced the question one level higher. At Dancing Ganesha they don’t wait for me to ask. They know: chicken tikka masala at a heat level my children call a personal attack. My kids are Minnesotans. Minnesotans think mild is a dare. The garlic naan is not a side dish. It’s a first-aid measure. I broke the system once. Hendrix & Siena. Double date with Annie, Dave and Heather. I got cocky and ordered something I picked: the Phony Negroni. The server gave me a look. Not a word — just the look that says are you sure about that. I am a food adventurer. I did not flinch. She brought it out. I took a sip. Then I began the difficult work of arranging my face. Annie didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Of course the server could tell. She’d been standing next to the right answer all night. Maria offered me something she loved instead. Their house-made soda. She was so right. Here’s what I didn’t expect. Some servers worry I’m picky. Picky. I handed a stranger the wheel. Nobody asks them. They spend all shift taking everyone else’s order. Then someone wants theirs. They’re being trusted. Every page in here is somebody’s answer. I still don’t know what I’m having tonight. Annie will order two things. I’ll eat the one she likes less. TIM DORAN, PUBLISHER @MAPLEGROVECITYLIFESTYLE

PUBLISHER

Tim Doran tim.doran@citylifestyle.com E D I TO R

Annie Doran annie.doran@citylifestyle.com STAF F P H OTO G R AP H E R

Ryan Siemers Architectural Filmmaking and Photography RPS@ryansiemers.com E D I TO R I AL C O O R D I N ATO R

Antara Murdeshwar antara.murdeshwar@citylifestyle.com CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Kristi Sellers

Corporate Team CEO Steven Schowengerdt President Matthew Perry CRO Jamie Pentz CoS Janeane Thompson AD DESIGNER Rachel Kolich LAYOUT DESIGNER Lillian Gibbs QUALITY CONTROL SPECIALIST Marina Campbell

Learn how to start your own publication at citylifestyle.com//franchise. Proverbs 3:5-6 Maple Grove City Lifestyle™ is published monthly by Lifestyle Publications LLC. It is distributed via the US Postal Service to some of the Maple Grove area’s most affluent neighborhoods. Articles and advertisements do not necessarily reflect Lifestyle

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Publications’ opinions. No portion of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without written consent. Lifestyle Publications does not assume responsibility for statements made by advertisers or editorial contributors. Information in Maple Grove City Lifestyle™ is gathered from sources considered to be reliable, but the accuracy of all information cannot be guaranteed.

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inside the issue OC TOB E R 2 02 6 | FOOD & D R I N K

12 Featured

18 24

Print Prestige Meets Digital Power.

WHY CHOOSE BETWEEN PRESTIGE AND PLACEMENT?

Departments

He Walked Out of Tibet.

A restaurant that opened before it was ready.

You're Staying for Dinner

Inside Maple Grove's Take on "Fine Fast-Casual" — Greek Style

Lifestyle Letter

City Scene

Business Monthly

Eat Right FOOD + BEVERAGE

Local’s Choice FOOD + BEVERAGE

Chef ’s Selection FOOD + BEVERAGE

Local Limelight LIFE + CULTURE

Seasonal Setups FOOD + BEVERAGE

Events

Twenty-Four Pineapples

That's one barrel. It takes two weeks.

On the Cover Behind every plate at Apa Sushi is a family that took a chance, worked side by side, and built something Maple Grove could gather around, one meal at a time. Photography: Ryan Siemers Photography

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city scene WHERE NEIGHBORS CAN SEE AND BE SEEN

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1-7: 3rd Annual Pickleball Social Maple Grove City Lifestyle and Kevin Walsh & Team of Keller Williams Classic Realty NW hosted the 3rd Annual Pickleball Social at Pints & Paddle. The event raised $33,487 for Crescent Cove, with every dollar benefiting its care for children with life-threatening conditions and their families. Special thanks to Kevin, who led the effort, and to the generous sponsors, players and supporters who made it possible. Photography by Hola Productions

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A Fresh Look for Pull Tabs Look Out Bar & Grill has given its pull tab space a major makeover. What was once a dimly lit back room has been completely transformed with new counters, improved seating and a bright, welcoming setup for pull tabs. Even better, every pull supports a local cause, with proceeds benefiting the Maple Grove Fire Relief Association. Stop in, check out the new space and play a few for Maple Grove’s firefighters.

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A FATHER, HIS BROTHER, HIS SON, HIS DAUGHTER, AND A RESTAURANT THAT OPENED BEFORE IT WAS READY.

HE WALKED OUT OF TIBET. HE BUILT THE SHELF BEHIND YOU. PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN SIEMERS PHOTOGRAPHY The divider next to the bar at Apa Sushi was in the room before the restaurant was. There was a planter box in that spot when the family took the space, and it took up too much room. So it came out, and something slimmer went in, narrow enough to give the tables beside it a little more air. The shelves the sake bottles sit on are handmade too. Same person, same empty room, before anybody walked in. He is not a carpenter. He is Rinpo Yak. He runs the kitchen, and when the planter box was in the way, he built the fix himself.

EAT R IGH T | FO O D + BEVE RAGE

He left Tibet at fifteen. He went on foot, with uncles, in a group, behind someone who knew the way. You go through the passes and you try to stay safe. His family came in the 1990s, a few years behind the first Tibetans here, which meant somewhere to pray and somebody who knew who was hiring.

OTHER PEOPLE’S ROOMS

Before Rinpo ever had a kitchen of his own, he set up other people’s rooms. Solera, the Spanish place downtown, ran events, and his job was the room itself — the chairs, the lighting, everything standing ready before anybody walked in. And he cooked: Marshall Field’s, Italian, American, kitchens with somebody else’s name over the door. He wanted his own the entire time. He tried it once as a partnership. It did not take. His brother Sonam arrived in the 2000s and spent five or six years behind sushi counters in New York, Atlanta and California, collecting a network of chefs and owners who knew his work. Then the brothers bought a hibachi truck. That was 2017.

HE HAS ONE EVERY SINGLE DAY

Sonam designed most of what you will order tonight. He likes sushi. He is not crazy about it. What he is crazy about is momo. He has one every single day. Not as a treat, not as nostalgia — it is the thing that makes a meal a meal. Which explains why a sushi restaurant in Maple Grove sells a Momo Roll. He was in Japan when we talked. It was the first time he had ever been.

THE LEASE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO START YET

Then Momo Sushi caught fire. Summer of 2025. It started in the kitchen, and nobody ever pinned down exactly what set it off. They could not go back into the building. It was the busiest thing the family owned, and more than half the staff lost their work. A few could pick up shifts elsewhere. The kitchen could not. A space was available in Maple Grove. They took it and opened in November instead of the following spring. Rinpo’s daughter Tenzin Legden does not know who made that call, and is not certain there was a call to make. Nobody stopped to argue about it. There was nothing to argue about. The question was how to take all these people somewhere. Apa Sushi opened on November 7, 2025. Nearly every employee came from Momo Sushi. In the kitchen they do not call him Rinpo. They call him Cho Cho. It means brother. CONTINUED >

OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C O M / M A P L E M N

“HE LEFT TIBET AT FIFTEEN. HE WENT ON FOOT, WITH UNCLES, BEHIND SOMEONE WHO KNEW THE WAY.”

WHICH FISH NEEDS WHAT

Read the menu and you can see where one brother stops and the other starts. The sashimi, nigiri, poke bowls and chef’s rolls are Sonam’s. The hot side comes out of Rinpo’s kitchen. The Tibetan dishes belong to both — momo, mokthuk, shapta. Order the dragon roll and notice where the heat stops — enough to register, not enough to bury what is under it. Sea urchin gets the same treatment. It arrives looking like an orange tongue in a spiked shell and tastes like the sea, so it gets citrus, until what you taste is the butter instead. The newest rolls are not Sonam’s. They belong to Rinpo’s son, who is the one inventing things now: snow crab, dried lemon, lime. He keeps reaching for citrus. Sushi chefs learn which fish needs what, and this is a kitchen where that gets handed down.

FLOATER

Rinpo’s daughter hires people. She seats them. She fills drinks and runs food and stops at tables to ask how everything is, at this restaurant and the family’s others. Sit down with her and none of it stops. She will keep talking while she gets up to greet someone, keep talking while she sets down a bowl of soup she decided you needed, and keep talking when she sits back down. Before joining the family business, Tenzin spent four years in the Air Force. Ask what to call all that and she will talk you down. Not general manager — she turns that one down flat. Owner’s daughter, maybe. What she offers instead is floater. Wherever a restaurant needs her, that is where she goes. And one family already comes every week. That is the thing they are watching for. Not the review. The second Tuesday in a row. The planter box is gone. He built something slimmer so more people would fit. Nobody sitting there knows. Apa Sushi is at 15607 Grove Circle North in Maple Grove, serving lunch and dinner, with dine-in, takeout and delivery.

EAT R IGH T | FO O D + BEVE RAGE

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OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C O M / M A P L E M N

YOU CAME FOR LUNCH. YOU'RE STAYING for Dinner

INSIDE MAPLE GROVE'S TAKE ON "FINE FAST-CASUAL" — GREEK STYLE ARTICLE BY KRISTI SELLERS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN SIEMERS PHOTOGRAPHY

LOCA L’S CH OICE | FO O D + BE VE RAGE

The first few steps at The Great Greek Mediterranean Grill are familiar: study the menu board, order at the counter, find a table. Then someone brings your meal over, sets it down, and asks if you need anything else. The order was quick. The meal can take its time. That small handoff is a useful introduction to owner Andrew Van Vleet’s approach to “fine fast-casual.” The convenience is there at the register; the hospitality follows you to your seat. There is room in the same lunch for both. It also puts the emphasis where it belongs: on the plate. The counter gets lunch started. What comes out of the kitchen gives this place its character, from a bowl of lemon-brightened soup to a salad substantial enough to be the whole meal. Andrew’s own order is the Greek salad with salmon. Grilled fish sits over the greens with feta, kalamata olives and a wedge of lemon: a few distinct flavors, each with something to contribute. The feta brings salt and tang, the olives a CONTINUED >

OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C O M / M A P L E M N

deeper briny bite, and the lemon gives the salmon a bright finish. It’s a useful place to start with this menu. The salad gets its substance from the fish without losing what makes it a salad. There is plenty on the plate, but the ingredients are easy to recognize. Lunch doesn’t need much explaining when the pieces make this much sense together. Andrew will tell you to start with the Avgolemono, if you ask — his own favorite, a creamy chicken-and-rice soup brightened with lemon, the kind of first bite that makes you put your phone down without meaning to. The spanakopita comes next, made that same morning, not thawed, not reheated from a case. Then the Great Greek Gyro lands — the restaurant’s signature, its most-ordered dish, and the one most people are really there for. It’s not assembled so much as delivered, already finished, like it’s been doing this exact job for years and has no intention of stopping. You will stop mid-sentence, whatever the sentence was. None of this is improvised. The recipes trace back to 2011, to the culinary-trained Greek family

who opened the original Great Greek and wrote the menu you’re now eating from. Andrew took over in 2022. He tasted the food once, the same way you just did, and that was that. “Maple Grove is one of the fastest-growing communities in the Metro,” he says, “and the Greek concept seemed well-suited for the area.” Everything on your plate arrived fresh, delivered several times a week, made from scratch in the kitchen just feet behind you. You’ll finish with baklava, or rice pudding if that’s the mood you’re in, and the check will feel almost beside the point. “Mediterranean culture is known for bringing people together over great food,” Andrew says, “and I think every interaction should reflect that.” He means it literally — the person who took your order, the person who walked your food over, the stranger at the next table who told you exactly what to get next time. You came in for a quick lunch. You are leaving like you had dinner. You’ll be back. You already know that. Next time, you’ll order the salad.

“Mediterranean culture is known for bringing people together over great food,” he says, “and every interaction should reflect that.”

LOCA L’S CH OICE | FO O D + BE VE RAGE

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T W E N T Y-FOU R PI N E A PPL E S

That's one barrel. It takes two weeks.

Nobody made them do this. At nearly every point where an easier option existed, somebody at Redstone American Grill in Maple Grove looked directly at it and went the other way. The bar. Start at the bar. On the counter in front of you are the barrels: enormous glass vessels packed wall to wall with pineapple. Twenty-four pineapples fill a single barrel. Kelli Amontroy cut all of them. Plenty of people on the team can build one; she is the one who gets asked. Then she starts stacking.

Neatly. “We start by stacking pineapple neatly into giant jars on our bar top,” she says. It takes a few hours. Nobody will ever see the inside of that barrel — once the vodka goes in and the fruit settles, the arrangement is gone. She does it neatly anyway. Then it sits for two weeks. “We then hand squeeze all the pineapple juice and vodka out of the pineapples,” Kelli says. By hand. Two weeks later. Twenty-four pineapples’ worth. Then it is strained, then shaken until it comes out, in her words, ice cold and extra frothy.

ARTICLE BY KRISTI SELLERS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN SIEMERS PHOTOGRAPHY

C HE F ’S SE LE CT ION | FOOD + BE VE RAGE

What arrives is the Doli: pineapple-infused vodka, served up in a coupe under a thick cap of pale foam. It goes down easily and hits harder than people expect, says front-of-house manager Camilla Kuho — which is what two weeks of pineapple and vodka will do. It is the only drink on the menu they cap. Two per guest. Two weeks also means the bar is not mixing a cocktail so much as forecasting one. Somebody has to work out, fourteen days ahead, how much Doli Maple Grove is going to drink, and be right, because there is no faster version. There is no emergency Doli. Now look past the taps. Set into a stone arch behind the bar is the rotisserie — wood burning underneath, chickens turning in a steel cage above the flame, in full view of anyone on a barstool. Not a spit in an oven. An actual fire, in the room, all day, which is a substantially more irritating way to cook a chicken and a substantially better one. You can sit at that bar with a drink that took two weeks and watch your dinner turn over an open flame. The building. None of this is new. In June 2012, Redstone paid $2.5 million for the Boston’s Gourmet Pizza standing at 12109 Main St. N. A reasonable company buys a working restaurant and opens a restaurant inside it. Redstone bought a working restaurant and removed it. The walls stayed. Everything else went. Michael O’Leary, then the company’s chief operating officer, described the plan to Finance & Commerce in seven words: “We’re keeping the shell and that’s all.”

Into that shell they put a wood-burning rotisserie, an openflame grill, and two stone fireplaces, each built to face in two directions at once. Then they pushed the walls out and added another 1,800 square feet of covered patio. The kitchen. The cornbread is baked in a skillet. The maple butter beside it is made in house rather than pulled from a tub. The New York strip is fourteen ounces and cut by hand, in the building. Edgar Ramirez is the executive chef, and his name is on the glass of the front door. None of that is especially surprising on a menu with a $54 steak on it. What is: on the happy hour menu, between the short rib sliders and the onion rings, ten dollars buys you handmade chicken strips. Handmade. Chicken strips. The fire. The fireplaces come back on this month. There are two at the entrance, one on each side as you walk in, both double-faced. The near side warms the waiting area, where a cushioned bench is built right into the stone hearth — Redstone’s answer to “your table isn’t ready” is to sit you down on a fireplace. The far side opens into the dining room, and only a couple of table areas get it. Those are the tables guests ask for. And then the part that gives the whole thing away. Kim Williams books the private spaces. The Arbor Room takes groups up to 50. The Ember Room is semi-private. And outside, to the left of the entrance, there is a third space with no name at all. CONTINUED >

OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C O M / M A P L E M N

The Ember Room is the one that got the fire. Its back wall is the far face of one of those entrance fireplaces — the same hearth you sat beside waiting for a table, opening into a private room on the other side. Named for what a fire leaves behind, in the one room where a fire actually is. The flame from the Redstone logo is on its door anyway. The Arbor Room is bigger and it did not get one. So above the letters spelling REDSTONE on its back wall, a television plays a bonfire burning in a stand of pine. Somebody turns it on. You cannot run a chimney into an interior room, and you cannot run one onto a covered patio. Where they could not build a fire, they hung one instead. Nobody would have noticed a blank wall. Out on that patio, three backlit panels of flame are mounted along the wall — printed fire, lit from behind. Twenty feet away, a gas fire pit runs seasonally, when somebody lights it. At the bar, the next batch of Doli is already two weeks in the making. Somebody started your next visit before you decided to come back.

C HE F ’S SE LE CT ION | FOOD + BE VE RAGE

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OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C O M / M A P L E M N

That Would BE AWKWARD ARTICLE BY TIM DORAN

I-94 Ch am be r

PHOTOGRAPHY BY I-94 CHAMBER

The new business owner who called the I-94 West Chamber of Commerce wasn’t calling to join anything. She’d taken over another company’s storefront and hadn’t changed the signage, so customers kept walking in expecting the old business — and left furious about gift cards issued by an owner who no longer existed. By the time she dialed the Chamber, she’d decided she hated this town. Mindy Smith, the Chamber’s president, didn’t sell her anything or invite her to an event. She told her to cover the signage — literally, with sheeting or a cheap vinyl banner — and pointed her toward sign shops and Chamber members who could help fast. They talked for two hours. About a banner. If that’s not what you thought a chamber of commerce did, you’re in good company. The confusion runs deep enough that Mindy has fielded calls from people trying to call in late for jobs that aren’t at the Chamber, and from people trying to quit them. For the record: a chamber is not city hall, and not a government office. It’s a membership organization — more than six hundred businesses across the I-94 West corridor, Maple Grove included — that exists to make those businesses work better. That means

Nobody knows what a chamber of commerce actually does. Six hundred local businesses do.

LOCA L LIM E LIGH T | L I FE + CU LT U RE

connecting them to each other, putting them in front of the community, and answering the phone on the day everything goes sideways. Once a year, at the State of the Cities Luncheon, it means putting the mayors themselves in front of the room to report in. Today, though, the phone can wait: the Chamber is throwing its member appreciation cookout under a pop-up tent in a Rogers parking lot, burgers coming off the grill courtesy of a man in a “No Name” apron — the steak brand, not a personality trait — beneath a banner reading “We Love Our Members.” The six hundred that spend the other 364 days a year headsdown in their own shops are, for one lunch hour, just people passing each other paper plates — and Mindy built the room where that happens. She doesn’t run it alone, either. Alongside her is Abby Ciesynski, the Chamber’s Membership & Marketing Director. Mindy’s on the phone walking somebody through a signage crisis; Abby’s the one making sure this cookout runs without a hitch. Between the two of them, nothing in this organization runs on luck. Working the crowd in a teal J&B T-shirt is Amy Valek, who chairs the Chamber’s board when she isn’t representing the protein supplier on her shirt. “We’re not a consumer business,” she tells me. “People don’t come into our facility.” This cookout is J&B’s storefront. That’s the two halves of this organization: the cookout gets you in the tent, and the two-hour phone call about a banner is why you stay. Kyle Sabot, of Twin Cities Promotional, puts it bluntly: just being a member doesn’t do much. “It’s one of those types of organizations where you get out of it what you put into it,” he says. Showing up is

the actual membership fee. The Chamber’s job is making sure that when you do, there’s someone worth meeting. “Practically every week” isn’t a slogan here, it’s verifiable. First Wednesday of the month, seventy-five-plus people turn up at Rush Creek Golf Club for Coffee & Conversation, at eight in the morning, voluntarily. Second Wednesday, it’s the Ambassadors at Dave & Buster’s. In the two weeks around this cookout alone: a ribbon cutting for the Stretch Zone on Main Street in Maple Grove and another for a Costco — yes, that Costco — and the Golf Tournament that Kyle insists, every year, he wins. Come November, better than two hundred members pack Rush Creek for the biggest one of the year. Mindy credits Dawn Sperr and Greg Anzelc, the two presidents before her, with setting that pace and creating the positive and welcoming culture. “They did not let anybody become cliquey,” she says — no small feat with a group this size. It doesn’t stop at the membership, either. The Chamber funds scholarships for local schools and puts on an awards ceremony for first responders every year — the kind of thing nobody would ever trace back to a chamber unless somebody told them. Bo Nelson has a basis for comparison — he belongs to five chambers across the state, and sits on this one’s board. Five chambers. This one wins. “This is by far the most valuable one that I’ve been a part of,” he says, and he doesn’t hedge on why: leadership. Ask Mindy what she’s gotten out of running it and she skips the mission-statement answer. A ton of these people, she says, are just her friends now. Not contacts. Friends. Kyle calls it getting beyond the transactional. I’ve seen exactly what he means. I’ve built some of my best relationships in rooms like this one. You get to know fifty different businesses here, and after a while it stops being networking and starts being knowing who to call. Yossi Aharoni is the marketing director at Kahuna Window Cleaning, and a while back he needed help getting a TV ad together. I knew the right people, made the introduction, no

strings attached — he wasn’t interested in the magazine at the time, and that was fine. Later, at an Ambassadors meeting, he turned to me and asked if we could meet up afterward. We ended up talking for hours — philosophy, politics, the kind of conversation that has nothing to do with either of our businesses. That’s the whole trick of this place. You don’t burn a bridge here — you build relationships. You’ll see them again next Wednesday. That would be awkward.

COME SEE FOR YOURSELF

Coffee & Conversation meets the first Wednesday of every month at 8 a.m. at Rush Creek Golf Club in Maple Grove. You don’t have to be a member to walk in. Come find me — introducing people is the whole point. www.i94westchamber.org

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ARTICLE BY LINDA DITCH | PHOTOGRAPHY BY JANIE JONES

ST Y LISH SOIR EE ELEGANT BUT CASUAL GATHERING

Autumn is a lovely season to have friends and family over for dinner. Why not host an elegant but casual gathering before the holiday craziness begins? A table setting of white dishes, woven placemats, copper utensils, and linen napkins decorated with succulent or herb clippings creates a stylish atmosphere conducive to conversation and enjoyment. This simple menu will allow you to host a stress-free evening.

S EASON A L SE T U P S | FO OD + BE VE RAGE

Recipe by Chef Eric Carter

CHEESE BOARD

STEAK RUB

Recipe by Linda Ditch

While your guests enjoy a pre-dinner glass of wine or cocktail, set out a cheese board for them to nibble on. It is much simpler to assemble than a full-on charcuterie board. The basic rule is to offer three types of cheese—one blue (Stilton, Roquefort, Gorgonzola), one hard (cheddar, gruyere, manchego), and one soft (brie, camembert, Port Salut). Feel free to add olives, nuts, and grapes to the board, or just keep it simple like this one pictured with slices of artisan bread, crackers, and breadsticks.

ROASTED BEET SALAD

The dinner’s main event is a lovely piece of beef seasoned with this spice rub. Use a steak of your choice grilled or seared in a cast iron skillet. • • • • • • • •

• • • • •

6 medium beets Olive oil, for drizzling Salt and pepper to taste 1 bag of salad greens 1/4 cup toasted pecans, coarsely chopped • 2 ounces of goat or feta cheese • 1/4 cup chopped dried apricots • Favorite vinaigrette dressing

3 parts brown sugar 3 parts smoked sea salt 1 part smoked paprika ½ part coriander ½ part chili powder ¼ part cayenne pepper ¼ part dried thyme ¼ part cracked pepper

Mix all spices and apply liberally to the beef. Place the seasoned meat in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Allow it to come to room temperature before grilling or searing.

Coat the beets with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Place on a baking sheet. Roast in a 400-degree oven for 45 minutes until fork tender. Cool for 10 minutes, and then rub with paper towels to peel. (Beet juice stains, so be careful.) Cut the beets and toss with the remaining ingredients.

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OCTOBER 2026

events A S E L E C T I O N O F U P C O M I N G LO C A L E V E N T S

O C TOBE R 3 RD

Lookout Oktoberfest Party The Lookout Bar and Grill | 11:00 AM The Lookout Bar and Grill Oktoberfest Parking Lot Party in Maple Grove, Minnesota, is a massive, highly anticipated annual fall celebration. This day-long outdoor event is completely free to enter and blends a lively community party with family-friendly entertainment. Guests gather under a giant outdoor beer tent to enjoy seasonal adult beverages, food trucks, and continuous live music performances. O C TOBE R 7 T H

Leonelle.Cookies: An Intro to Decorating with Royal Icing Mama's Happy | 6:00 PM A hands-on Royal Icing Cookie Decorating Class led by a resident expert in the field! Whether you’re brand new to cookie decorating or looking to sharpen your skills, this class is designed to be fun, approachable and hands-on. During the class, attendees will learn foundational royal icing techniques through guided, hands-on demos while decorating their own beautiful sugar cookies. O C TOBE R 1 4 T H

Cupcakes and Conversation Maple Grove History Museum | 1:00 PM Join this quarterly gathering. Enjoy coffee and cupcakes while listening to a special guest relate his/her story of a life-changing situation or useful and enlightening information. Plan to meet at the Maple Grove History Museum. O C TOBE R 1 7 T H

Halloween Family Fun Weaver Lake Park | 12:30 PM Celebrate Halloween with an afternoon of family fun at Weaver Lake Park with Maple Grove Community Organization! Enjoy Halloween-themed games and activities, make a craft, take home a goodie bag filled with candy and treats, and show off your costume! O C TOBE R 2 2 N D - N OV E MB E R 1ST

Venardos Circus Main Street lot, just south of Weaver Lake Road | Performance times vary Step right up! Venardos Circus brings its signature red-and-white big top to Maple Grove October 22 through November 1. This Broadway-style, animal-free circus features aerialists, acrobats, jugglers, comedians and more in an intimate setting where every seat feels close to the action. Expect high-energy performances, family-friendly fun and plenty of old-fashioned circus magic. O C TOBE R 2 4 T H

Trunk or Treat Halloween Party Maple Grove Community Center | 1:00 PM Put on your favorite costume and join in the fun for Trunk or Treat, a free community event for all ages! Enjoy decorated trunks, costume contests, free treats, and a variety of fun Halloween-themed activities for the whole family.

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