Where Old Times Meet the Lake: The Story of Belle & Grey
Two names. One lake. A story that carries both.
When Steve Bohl opened Belle & Grey as a new concept at The Hotel Landing, he drew from the waters and history surrounding it. Belle recalls the Belle of Minnetonka, the grand steamship that once filled Lake Minnetonka’s waters with laughter, music, and the kind of easy summer company that stays with you. Grey draws from Gray’s Bay, just off our Wayzata shoreline, familiar to locals the way a back road is familiar, without needing a sign.
The names converge in our dining room on Lake Street at The Hotel Landing. Belle & Grey is a restaurant built around a particular belief: that the best reason to go out for dinner is the same as the best reason to stay home for it. The people across the table. The meal that keeps going. The story that gets a little better with each telling. Pull up a chair — this one’s yours.
A Lakeside Dining Room Where Generations Gather
Belle & Grey is a lakeside dining room where generations gather, meals linger and good stories get better. The Belle of Minnetonka isn’t remembered for the route it took. It is remembered because of what happened on deck: the company, the long evenings, the lake moving underneath. That same unhurried instinct guides our kitchen, overseen by Chef de Cuisine Tsu-Hung Liu — known here as Chef BAM — who trained under James Beard Award winner Nancy Oakes at Prospect in San Francisco and spent time at The Greenbrier before arriving in Wayzata. Caesar Deviled Eggs. Smoked Trout Rillettes. Oysters Casino. A Pan Roasted Walleye with brown butter and wild rice. A Steak Au Poivre for the table. A Black Walnut Old Fashioned that would satisfy anyone who grew up watching the original being made.
We’re open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner daily, with weekend brunch for those who think Saturday mornings are worth slowing down for. Happy hour snacks and a children’s menu mean the whole family finds something to come back for — and they do. It’s the kind of place that invites you back: not for the food exactly, but for the table, and who was at it.
No Occasion Necessary
Inside, our dining room is warm and layered: good light, the murmur of a room full of people genuinely not in a hurry. When the weather turns and our terrace opens up, you’ll find the restaurant extends toward Lake Minnetonka until the edge of the dining room and the edge of the water are barely distinguishable. Gray’s Bay sits just off that shoreline, the Grey in our name, right there in the water.
Bring your group, for a reunion, a birthday, an anniversary dinner that calls for something more contained — the multigenerational gathering that our restaurant was built around in the first place. And if the evening calls for somewhere quieter still, The Library, a no-reservations nook tucked within the restaurant. Come early. Stay later than you thought you would. That’s our operating principle, whether you’re a party of two or a party of twenty.
The Spa Ends With Dinner
Our Läka Spa sits one floor away. Its name translates to “to heal” in Swedish, and it’s open Wednesday through Saturday with four signature treatments: the Natur Healing Massage, the Nordic Radiance Facial, the Nordic Experience Body Treatment — a 110-minute full-body scrub, steam shower, and massage — and the Harmonic Couples Package.
The Harmonic Couples Package moves through a facial, a massage, and an aromatherapy steam shower, then ends with food from our kitchen, brought up to the spa. Which is, honestly, exactly the right way to transition into an evening at Belle & Grey.
Wayzata Keeps Them Coming Back
Belle & Grey is after something straightforward: to be the kind of place you return to without needing a reason. Not because it’s new. Not because a reservation is hard to get. Because it’s yours — and, in a way, it’s ours too.
That ambition is older than our restaurant. It’s the logic of every great gathering place that has ever outlasted the trends around it— a philosophy as old as Lake Minnetonka itself, and one that Wayzata has always understood.
Welcome, neighbor. Pull up a chair.