Animales TODOTC.com To Do in the Twin Cities Restaurants

	Animales Date: Nov 14, 2025 241 Fremont Ave N, Minneapolis, MN 55405 Phone: (952) 222-7427 www.animalesbbq.com

Animales Barbeque Co.
Ribs, brisket, burgers and tacos are a few staples at this food-truck-turned-bricks-and-mortar.
Service options: Has outdoor seating Address: 241 Fremont Ave N, Minneapolis, MN 55405 Phone: (952) 222-7427

Animales Barbeque is the dream of many in the food trucks in the TC that we have ate at. It is a food truck turned into a bricks & mortar Restaurant. For seven years they ran the Animales Food Truck on Oct 23, 2025 they graduated to bricks & mortar. I admit E & I are NOT a big fan of food trucks. Let’s see walk around to 20 food trucks, find out which truck looks interesting. Now walk back to the interesting ones, figure out what to order. Go back and stand in line AGAIN and order. Another line, another line, now wait for your number of each to be called, or your name. BTW if you use Trump for a call name, very bad things could happen!

Food one picked up, but Es food isn’t ready yet. Where can we sit down? Oh, E found a spot but God forbid she moves and loses the seat. So, I’ll go and get it. I’ll always find someone to talk to. Food two is not ready yet, we’ll share. Did we use the deposit balance only credit card? 99% of these food trucks have security and no banking issues? Course there IS that 1%! Course, Wells Fargo and Walmart were hacked recently... Pick up food #2. The desert is ready… I’ll get that. Wait don’t we have salad? All this when at a restaurant they would have brought our wine to us and we’d have it half drank. We go to food trucks. But we prefer to go to the successful ones like Animales BBQ like tonight.

Animales BBQ is located at 241 Freemont Ave Mpls, 55405. Don’t know where that is? Put it in your car driving computer, keeps us from getting lost in Owatonna. Well, it’s next to the New French Alliance, remember their wine event? Do you know where 394 from the west Metro splits to the Tunnel and North 94? Do you know where we took you to the Mpls Big Farmers Market, a mile west under 94.  Two stone’s throw from the International Market Square. Here’s a good one 2 blocks from The Mpls Impound lot, remember that cold snowy night that moving your car was too much a pain? A mile NW from the Spoon & Cherry & Dunwoody, and a mile straight west of Target Field you get the idea! And it IS just south of North Minneapolis.

Animales BBQ’s dining room seats 250 the patio 120. The venue is 12,500 square feet, it opened the summer of 2025, for live music. In fact, the place was designed for LINE dancing, where is Shania when you need her? Animales BBQ is a rib joint though they specialize in St Louis BBQ. But WE, after converting the micro-ribeye steaks, we bought in the Menards parking lot out of a truck, are going to again try Animales BBQs Philly Steak sammichs we love so well. I know it’s not the Ribs this place specializes in. But if they smell good enough, we will buy an order of ribs too. And it’s in the same building as La Dona Cerveceria Brewery we took you along with us when we reviewed it.

On Site

E, and I go to 50 new restaurants or places to eat a year so clearly, we’re not going to like everyone that we see. Last night at Animales was a little bit different. It’s not necessarily for everyone, but we felt we should go see it.

Our ideal restaurant would be 10 to 15 minutes from downtown maximum, would have free parking and we should feel safe going there, and that was kind of the case at Animales.

But beyond that we like to have reservations when we go someplace even if it’s six weeks out which is normal for us.  If we are paying the restaurant $100+ to be there for an hour, we are not standing.  We also like to have choices of 5 to 6 red wines to drink. Understandably Animales is a beer place, but most restaurants have 5-6 red wines, Animales had one. It would be like having One Beer. We like being brought in and sat down have cold fresh water poured by someone to relax and look at the menu.  That didn’t happen last night.

Our son is in his 30s. So, have done the Red Lobsters, Applebees, Olive Gartens and the family places. We like going out as a couple and finding a nice place that we can get good wine and good food with good service.  Animales was kinda more of a beer place with families going to it, so I was unusual, but it was different and yet still fine. We ate at a different brewery type place last month.

Call us old school if you want. I was on the Internet in the 70s and have a top secret clearance so I’m very touchy about what goes on my phone. Animales was all about ordering from the phone, something we don’t enjoy doing, that’s what we pay AND TIP wait staff for. We LIKE having & paying for our own waitstaff, phones are a bit impersonal.

We arrived about 7:30 the time we normally arrive at our places. We like to go when most people go out to compare places.  Ellen went to the front desk waited in line to start waiting in line. She would give up her cell phone number begrudgingly. God knows if we’ll get ads on our phones because of giving out our number.  I get at least one Phishing call a day on my iPhone. After being told we would be texted when our table was ready, me being the Wisconsin person, I found a place to sit and we sat down. We were very quickly told that was not our table and we were not allowed to sit there. Oh EXCCUUUSE ME!

So, we walked around the place. We saw the playground and all the kids playing in it and decided to stand in line about five deep to get some wine. We had a choice of one type of one red wine so that’s the type we took. We got our water glass of wine and then we stood and waited and listen to the band. Skynyrd has nothing to worry about!

After that, E got the text on her phone and we were seated at THE table, not OUR table. The table we shared… on the far side was a family of about 5 which I think a daughter was doing pantomimes. But she was 12 years old and 12 years old would do that on occasion. Just not the romantic sit down we normally expect with our own table, when we go out to eat.

With that we expected our waiter/waitress to come up and after about five or ten minutes wait even though the other half of our table got several visits from her, we finally flagged down a server type. He told us we could put in our order with our phone. We are TIPPING 20% how about HE HELP and leave our phones on the table?  But he ended up taking our order, or we were told.  Turned out the lady that was serving the other half the table was supposed to be serving us too, so we got in more trouble already. This is the service we are paying the 20% tip for?

So about five minutes later, individual with management apparently came past us with a slip of paper in his hand saying that we were upset and I said we weren’t really upset. It was just an unusual way to order then he said well why don’t I take your order and we said because our order is in already as it turned in no it wasn’t in because whoever was supposed to take our order never actually did. We are very impressed paying the 20% tip based on not so good service.

After we ordered, we sat around for another 10-15 minutes and waited for our food to arrive. When it finally did it was good. The Philly Swiss cheese was exceptional. The French fries were medium, and the rest was OK, so we listened to the band which was not quite our type. But so be it, then later on the manager came and said apparently, we were not happy and took everything off the bill with exception of $38 so we were kind of thrilled about that but we don’t mind paying for a good restaurant food

We were told after we got our bill that we should pay online and for someone that has seen some corrupt things online and has work with a national security association we were less than impressed.  We don’t like putting our credit card online anymore than we need to. Even though we own an online store. Did you know Wells Fargo and Walmart had online banking issues this year? In fact a few weeks ago E asked me how I could buy Auto Parts in Rhode Island one day and California the next?  So, we went out to the front desk and where we were told we could pay without our phone.. 

There was four people there.  As soon as we said we wanted to pay with a card all four disappeared. A few minutes later we finally got it paid and we got out of there and went to the parking lot, which was just outside and drove home. 

It was an interesting night.  We eat brewery type food and the food at Animales was good, but atmosphere where there’s kids all over the place, was just not quite the same as our usual places.  Animales is probably not a perfect situation for us. 

We kind of prefer Malcolm yards in a similar food situation but it is what we prefer. Animales is a new place. They used to be a food truck. They’re learning how to get established so if you want to try something new and interesting give it a try. But be aware of the 20% TIP for customer service which at best is poor.

Contact us Dennis@ToDoTC.com