Back in June I took a day off to make another small three day Minnesota road trip. Plan was Duluth to Ely and back. Since I’d already been root beer hunting in Duluth, I wasn’t planning on finding anything. Yet, the day before I tried “root beer duluth”s into Google and found a drive in called A & Dubs. They seemed to have root beer, so I gave them a call and they said yes, they make there own. Well, I knew where I was headed for dinner then. The little drive in was originally an A&W some 60 years ago but they decided not to renew the franchise at some point and just strike out on their own, with their own root beer recipe. They changed the name to A & Dubs, which is about the least creative thing to name your former A&W since the drive in named “The Drive In”. It’s a proper drive in with car service and 3 booths inside (closed sadly for Covid) and two picnic tables outside and offers the standard drive-in fare of burgers, dogs, chicken baskets and the like. Their sign says “Home of the Power Platter” which is a burger root beer combo meal. So that’s what I got.
The Body is sweet with a classic root beer stand sassafras flavor and some creamy vanilla. It’s a little mild though not too weak. The Bite is spicy yet smooth in carbonation and finish. The Head is short but very foamy and lasts awhile. The Aftertaste is a very mild sassafras and vanilla.
This is pretty good root beer. Stronger than the last drive in I went to but still a little too mild to get the Seal. Their Power Burger was much smaller than I expected with a name like that but was tasty enough. I’ve had better, but I go to a lot of these types of places. Over all I’d say there’s nothing particularly special or unique about this place compared to similar root beer stands, yet, it’s the only one of its kind in Duluth, so I can see why it’s still going strong. The waitresses were very friendly and gave good service. It’s still family owned too, so it’s worth dropping by if your in the area and looking for that classic drive in flavor. Just make sure to bring some cash, as they don’t accept cards at all.
The A & Dubs Drive In. And my sweet sweet Model 3 blue (best road trip car ever)
The menu on the side.
The Power Platter. Tasty, but kind of unimpressive given then name.
For Father’s Day weekend my wife asked me if there was any sort of celebrating I wanted to do. I had two things in mind, fishing and root beer. Luckily for me I knew of a place I could accomplish both (so I thought). Just 15 minutes south of where I live I had discovered the Minnetonka Drive-In in Spring Park, nearly smack in the middle of Lake Minnetonka. They make their own root beer, and surely there’d be some public fishing pier. So we set off to fish and found the only fishing pier on the map (that I could find in Google) was completely inundated with duckweed, lily pads, and other weeds making fishing entirely impossible. But at least we could get to the drive in. The Minnetonka Drive-In was opened in 1961 as a family business. The classic root beer stand is still owned and operated by one of the children of the original founder. He started working there at age 9, washing glass gallon jugs for root beer. I love a family business root beer stand story. They have random mugs to serve their root beer, some unmarked, some A&W, according to the server, they just acquired them wherever they could. There’s lots of picnic tables and they have car service as well. Since I don’t eat in my Model 3, I just ordered inside and went to a table in the shade, since it was a beautiful day. 
This past Saturday I had to get out. This lockdown stuff since March, I’m going a little crazy not having the life of travel adventures anymore. At the same time, I recognize that I need to be safe about things and stay away from people as much as possible. I know restaurants are starting to open but only for take-out, and I thought, there’s gotta be some root beer stand out there where you can just grab your food, eat on a picnic table or something. A little searching and sure enough, an hour an a half south of me, in the town of Waseca, I found Barney’s Drive-In. They still do car hops and have some picnic tables out in the sun for those who don’t want to eat in their cars (I for one am not eating in my new Tesla). Plus they make their own root beer and serve in frosty mugs. Exactly what I was looking for. So after walking around some lakeside parks in Waseca for a bit, I pulled into the drive-in and ordered root beer and a Coney dog. Now they have three sizes of root beer, but only the medium comes in a glass pint mug, the small and large come in plastic mugs, for some reason. They also let you order half gallons and gallons to take home. This is a root beer stand in every sense of the word. I, of course, got the medium glass mug. 
