Valhalla Nordic Smoke And Ale House

I stopped in last Thursday 1÷21÷16 to check the place out and a note on the door said it was temporarily closed and to check the website. I only gave one star since that is all I know. Both Groupon and Living Social have offers here, but you can’t use them if they are not open.

We went to Sunday brunch expecting really good Nordic food. Instead, we got a sub par, run of the mill brunch that lacked plenty. The scrambled eggs were over cooked, as was the fish. The beef roast was tough and missing any signs of au jus. Tater tots replaced what should have been delicious cheesy hash browns. 95% of the foods were cold. The deviled eggs were either made with Miracle Whip or something in them made them taste funky. The dessert area was like something you would find at a free hotel brunch not a close to $ 20 per person brunch. We won’t be going back.

Just had the breakfast buffet. It wasn’t very good. The eggs were cold and seemed to be the kind you get from a big carton, premixed. The link sausage was inedible it was tough and greasy. The buffet was missing waffles, syrup, eggs, potatoes when we went up so had to wait for food. (And plates!)The hollandaise sauce was really bland (but the dish was warm so that was good), roast beef was tough, the salad bar was a mess, ladles in wrong places, really picked over and staff wasn’t refreshing items or cleaning it up. The smoked salmon was good and had capers, eggs and onions with but no crackers or toast points or anything to serve it with. We had to ask for plates twice. The dessert bar was empty and not refilled. We were really disappointed and will not be back. I’ve had better meals at Perkins. We expected higher quality.

Getting better. I think they are figuring out the theme with the Nordic ale house. Great selection of local craft brews. Service was awesome. Pretty simple fare but well done and reasonable $.

Lots of beers to chose from and they have mead! Very tasty.
The food was full of hits or misses. Most was really tasty but things on the menu were in odd combinations. Menu is tough to be able to try everything as they are locked into set combos and we were able to sub things around.
We thought the food needed to be kicked up a bit. Generally under seasoned. Hope this place does well but time will tell. Sure we will go back to try some more beers.

This restaurant received one star for the mediocre waitress we had. The terrible food (which cost us $ 100) was worth a negative star rating. Horrible. Vegetables rock hard, filet (ordered medium) was rare, one dinner was ice cold, and I can’t tell you what the green oil was on my plate. Will never make this mistake again.

Service was good.
Tap beers seemed a little flat.
Salt Roasted Beet Salad was excellent.
Roast Beast
ale braised beef was favorable, but fatty and barley warm
ginger snap gravy was good
fried potato dumplings were very good
baby top carrots were raw and OK
Olaf the Stout burger was very good.
Not as good as I had expected, but I would try again.

It’s very difficult to write this review. I REALLY wanted to like this place. Mahtomedi/​Willernie had a real opportunity here to add some food diversity to the area, and unfortunately, it’s a huge miss.
First off, we were warmly greeted by the sweetest lady at the door. Friendly, shook my hand and thanked us genuinely for waiting for a table. Grade: A+
Beer selection is impressive, but the tap lists were so outdated that the bartender had to take numerous breaths while he told us which beer they did not have. A–
For an appetizer, we ordered the pork belly board. Just short of wondering whether they had to go out and shoot the hog, it took forever. When it finally came, presentation was gorgeous, taste was awful. When I think ‘pork belly’, I think of crisp, rendered pork fat, nice sear on the meat and warm temperature throughout. What we got was a boiled piece of pig fat that had sat out far too long and lost all heat. I guess a silver lining is the fat had some humorous jiggle. The toast points it was served on were standard. At least the lingonberry sauce had some flavor. Grade: F
The main course… Why do they make it soooo hard? First of all, the wait was RIDICULOUS! 40 minutes for a burger and half a chicken. Unless they had to go, catch and butcher the chicken… Inexcusable, even on a busy night.
I had the half roasted chicken and the flavor was INCREDIBLE. Gotta give credit where credit is due. Juicy beyond belief and the spice blend on the skin was perfect. The green top carrots side was tasty, but only four carrots? Really? Gorgonzola, bacon brussel sprouts… Yum, BUT… The most bizarre part of the evening came when I dug into my Brussels sprout side and uncovered a piece of beef. Beef?!? Misplaced in brussel sprouts. This is a strike 3 kitchen offense. People can have allergies and this kind of carelessness cannot be explained. My partner had the Norseman burger and fries. He said the burger was tasty and the fries had nice crunch. Grade: B
Service. Ooooofda. I really hope they are new restaurant jitters because going 15 minutes without physically seeing our waitress is a problem. Busy or not, make yourself available. She seemed nice but just couldn’t hit her rhythm. Running around like a chicken after a guillotine… unnecessarily I might add. The poor girl would run to one end of the room to deliver a cocktail, walking past us without ever checking in. Let’s forget the fact that we asked for water three times and it never came. Ouch. Despite staff claims that it was «slammed», there were empty tables, so how busy could it be. Simple tasks seemed to take an eternity. Order a glass of beer…10 minutes. Checking in after the entrée arrives… 15 minutes (I was almost done). Run our credit card at the end of the night…8 minutes. Apparently, providing water is 120+ minutes since we never got any. Some people like to milk a meal for 2+ hours, but we have stuff to do on a Friday night. Likely won’t be back, despite tasty chicken. What a shame. Grade: Automatic F for never bringing water despite requesting it!
Overall, there is potential, just not enough to convince us to ever go back.

Fantastic food, fast and friendly service, and extensive beer selection. Definitely will be back!

My husband and I had a fine night of dining here tonight. Beef meals were very tender and easy to cut with a fork.
Waiters were very a involved with us snd assist with the flight choices.
Dessert was a apple and pumpkin mixed with whole whipping cream! Excellent evening out.

So, this post is a tad delayed, but I wanted to get it up on here.
My fiancé and I visited Valhalla a few weeks ago and were immediately confused where to go when we entered the building, no host in the front of the restaurant (they were sitting on a stool in the back). we walked in, no one really greeted us, we had to ask how to check in.
Once we were checked in, it took about 45 minutes to get sat. After being sat, it took about 15 minutes for someone to take our drink order, took another 10 to obtain the drinks. Of which, we never got offered refills. (she had an iced tea, I had a beer). The bartender also didn’t know how to pour beer from the tap, when I received my beer, the glass was only half full because the other half consisted of foam. I started to watch the bartender, and he was doing it to everyone and actually serving the beer (didn’t matter which kind of beer, he did it to all taps), the other bartender had to show him 3 times how to do it (the older bartender was actually good at it).
I won’t mention how long it took for the server to come back and take our food order, or how long it took for our food to come out. (we were at the restaurant for quite some time)
We weren’t very happy, so when the check came, we set our card down on the table waiting to pay so we could leave. Took a while for this to occur as well.
We still tipped the server $ 3 for her troubles in serving us, as I’m sure our attitudes reflected how upset we were by the time our experience was just about finished at this establishment.
I figured this would’ve been the end of our poor experience at this restaurant until almost a week later, my fiancé checked the history of her card online and found the charge for the restaurant wasn’t correct, after some investigating, we found out the server had charged us $ 9 for a tip instead of the $ 3 we had wrote down on the check. Credit card fraud anyone? The server is lucky we didn’t call the police and file a report with the credit card company.
We called the restaurant and explained the situation, the first person my fiancé talked to understood the situation, said they would look into it and call us back with the result & solution to the problem.
3 ½ days went by and we heard nothing. So, my fiancé called back to the restaurant and talked to the restaurant manager who sounded like he didn’t really care and couldn’t be bothered to rectify the problem. He sounded rather upset he had to give us the $ 6 the server owed us. Honestly, we didn’t really care about the $ 6, we just wanted to know the server wasn’t going to do this to anyone else. The manager told us he would «talk» to the server and let them know it wasn’t ok. HE SHOULD’VE FIRED that server for credit card fraud, as I said, she is lucky we didn’t call the police.
The manager also told us we HAD to drive to come and get the cash, even though we paid with a card. He should’ve offered to toss a credit back towards our card.
Overall, our experience with this establishment wasn’t a very good one, and I hope others will heed this caution warning as that server STILL works there. Who knows how many others she did this to before we got there. Good thing we check our charges on regular basis. If you’ve eaten here, I highly suggest you do the same thing. (we also now take a picture of our check after we write the tip on it after we eat *anywhere* so we have proof of what we tipped, thanks to this restaurant)
Needless to say, we will never be coming back to this restaurant and will be telling all of our friends, family & coworkers of our poor experience here.

Tried this place on a Friday night with my boss. I had the Olaf the Stout burger and a Smith and Forge. Delicious. Decided to bring my visiting parents there the next night. Totally different experience. I ordered a strip steak medium rare. What I received seemed to be a sirloin that was so rare it was cold in the middle, and tougher than all get out. We had waited an hour for food and I was ready to start chewing on my arm, so I choked about ¼ of it down. I tried the Brussels sprouts, which were chewy, flavorless, and buried in my cold mashed potatoes. My parents didn’t like their food, either. A common theme on both nights was this place is LOUD. Nope. Not happening again.

Super happy with Valhalla so far. We have been there three times already for dinner in the past 2 months, and have pretty much loved everything we have tried. Yes, it’s a tad pricey, but the quality of the food and drink are worth it.
The food boards are AMAZING, and the burgers are great. Steak was pretty basic, but delicious and cooked well. Fish was good, batter was a bit thick but I like it that way. The sausage was good, scallops were fine, fries are good, vegetable open-​faced sandwich was fresh-​tasting, and the roasted chicken was divine — I could drink whatever sauce they had on it!
The real winner here, though, is the beer and mead selection. So many choices, and such great options! We are thrilled to see Hammerheart on the tap list — they are hard to find outside of Lino Lakes. Next up, we are going to try the brunch buffet. We are so happy this place is here! We plan to bring our future out-​of-​town guests here!

I’ve been waiting for this place to open! We went, wife had a burger (she’s gluten free so ordered it no bun) and I had the King’s Board. She loved her burger and they have awesome fries.
King’s Board. Damn. What an experience. There are so many flavor combinations, so much going on, I just can’t even accurately describe it, except that it was awesome. It paired well with the beer offerings from Hammerhart. I had some smokey pale ale which was delicious.

Apparently Nick has not been to Tamarack Tap room, Craft Beer and Kitchen, Red Cow, Washington Square or Happy Gnome. These places all have two things in common; no macro beers on tap and a wait for a table. My main point is that they are wasting an opportunity to be a a good craft beer destination. It seems that they would rather be a sports bar with upscale food.

Ron’s review is horrible. I wonder how many stars he took off because they have some bad beers on tap (they have 33 other beers and some meads as well). He might as well go give almost every restaurant out there a horrible review for carrying beer that most of Minnesota drinks. I’m guessing he never goes out to eat with anyone that drinks crap beer. There are plenty of great beers at Valhalla and the food is fantastic too. My friends and I started out with a couple of the boards which were delicious. I then got some of the mussels which were a special and, in my book, if a place does mussels well, most of their menu is probably fantastic. After this I had the Olaf the Stout burger. It was very tasty to say the least. I was very surprised to see a place like this open up in Willernie, a town I never heard of until I found out about this restaurant. Overall the selection of beer and mead is great and they have created some fantastic dishes as well. I see myself coming back in the near future.

I had this place recommended to me by a coworker.
From the outside this restaurant doesn’t seem like much, but once you walk through the doors, you are transported into a Scandinavian pub.
Dark wood, a large bar, and Viking shields and weaponry displayed on the walls.
They have an extensive beer selection, with many rotators on tap, from both local and national breweries. The signature of the drink menu, however, is their selection of meads. That’s right, MEADS! The traditional honey-​wine drink of the Vikings!
Their artisanal menu offers many delectable choices for any palate. My roommate is a vegetarian (and an admitted Viking enthusiast) and he loves the food here!
The Sunday brunch is also delicious! From classic Scandinavian options like lox, red cabbage, and coarsely mashed potatoes, to the classic brunch fair of eggs benedict, waffles, and carved meats.
Definitely a must try!
(After my first visit, I returned the next two days in a row!)