3 minute read
Let’s Eat
from Mankato Magazine
By Dan Greenwood
Flame Bar & Grill's owner Mike Hobday (left) and daughter Shannon Hobday. The pair have cooked up delicious recipes at the St. Peter bar such as the Thousand Island pizza.
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The Flame Bar
St. Peter bar and restaurant serves up unique burgers, pizza
Photos by Pat Christman
Since 1992, St. Peter’s Flame Bar and Grill has been a popular meeting place for locals and college students. Whether it’s catching the Minnesota Vikings on TV, a place to celebrate a softball game win, or just grabbing a burger and a beer with friends and taking in live music on Friday nights, many customers have been coming here for generations.
“We do have customers that have been here since the day we opened up,” said owner Mike Hobday. “We follow families that we know that we’ve grown up with.”
And that applies to his own staff as well.
“One guy we had – he worked here and now his kids work here. We see their children grow up and then their kids start working with us.”
Hobday added a kitchen about 20 years ago and has been perfecting the menu ever since with homemade pizzas and appetizers. The burgers here have developed a reputation as being among the best.
“We’ve done well with the burgers,” Hobday said. “We have an au jus burger that we’ve done really well with.”
With more than a dozen burgers to choose from, there’s something for everyone, from staples such as the California burger and the double bacon cheeseburger to other more unique offerings.
“Our big one is our cheese curd burger,” Hobday said. “We run that on a special on Mondays. We do cheese curds on top of the burger
Green olive and pepper jack burger.
with bacon and a slice of cheese”
Other popular burgers include the green olive burger topped with pepper jack cheese, the western burger – smothered in barbecue sauce, onion tanglers, cheese and bacon – and the German burger.
“That has sauerkraut, Thousand Island dressing and American Swiss cheese,” he said. “It’s very good.”
Another top seller here are the pizzas, like the bacon cheeseburger pizza or the garbage pizza which includes basically every topping a customer wants, from sauerkraut to jalapenos to tomatoes.
Hobday said his daughter, Shannon, who he hopes will take over the business in a few years, has come up with some unique ideas, such as the Thousand Island pizza.
“She just uses Thousand Island dressing for the sauce instead of the marinara sauce with whatever toppings and seasonings you want on it. They do very well and are very good.”
Hobday said the recipes are inspired by looking into what other restaurants are serving in different parts of the country. When he’s on vacation, he’ll look through different menus for ideas. The family takes an annual trip to Fort Myers Beach every year in Florida and will see what other restaurants are serving.
“You do some different appetizers each time – we have deep-fried pickles now and we have a buffalo shrimp and garlic herb shrimp – just some different things that we do during Lent. It’s just kind of word of mouth and going with the trends we try to stay with.”
The buffalo wings here are served with homemade ranch dressing, and Hobday said they experiment with different sauces – keeping the ones that become a hit among customers.
“We’ve got a bunch of different Flame Bar & Grill is a local staple in St. Peter.
Flame Bar and Grill provides plenty of outdoor space for dining and chatting.
sauces for our wings, so we try to switch those up,” he said. “We’ve got a honey garlic stinger, it’s a little spicier, we have a buffalo sauce, bourbon, and teriyaki. Whenever something new comes out, we try something different. We have a chipotle mayo and a honey mustard. You can go on and on with these sauces and you try to keep the ones that are moving. We try to stay with the times.”
Hobday also wants to bring back live music on Friday nights – a regular feature at the Flame Bar and Grill before the pandemic. With that on the wane, he’s excited to see familiar faces again.
“We’ve been very lucky – we’ve been surrounded by a lot of decent people.”
