The Thirsty Belgian

I found this restaurant while I was running errands on this side of town, and I'm glad that I did! The sandwiches we tried were delicious! The staff was kind, and very attentive. This place is small, with cozy bar pub vibes. I definitely enjoyed the energy for a Sunday, with their patrons enjoying the current football games. My boyfriend and I plan to return soon!

Looking for a place in Rochester that feels like "everyone knows your name"? This is it! HUGE selection of beers, wines and cocktails. Great food. Very small but with great vibes. EXCELLENT staff. 100% recommend!!

We decided to give this place a try tonight, based on other positive reviews. We were not disappointed. The two main items on the food menu are flat bread pizza and "toasties," which are, for the most part, very fancy and delicious variations on toasted cheese sandwiches. My wife and I both ordered toasties, and we were amazed at how good they were. We also enjoyed our adult beverages. We will definitely be back!

Great food and good beer! Loved the sampler platter, get and extra smoked egg because they are that good!! Can't wait to go back when in Rochester again!

The minute we walked in the door, we were greeted with a smile and a shout out to have a seat anywhere and she would be right with us. The atmosphere was relaxing and had a good vibe to it. The service was incredible too. Our server was friendly and prompt and always came back to check on us. The food and drinks were very good too. First time we've been here, and we'll certainly be back again.

This was a stellar dining experience. We started with the Chipotle brick cheese which was perfectly savory and gooey and accompanied by a homemade marinara (the thick, full of flavor kind 🤤). We had the Sergeant Pepper bloody ($5 on Sunday) and the Duchesse Red Sour to drink. To eat, the staff was so kind and allowed me to have the al capone flatbread, but as a toastie on sourdough. Holy yum! We also added the parmesean sausage kale soup that was on special today, and zero complaints. Jon our server (and the rest of the team) were very attentive and friendly. 10/10 recommend this establishment.

Love the vibe. We didn't try any food this time but checked out the menu. The bartender was cool we'll definitely stop back.

Well isn't this place a dangerously good local gem. I could do some real damage to my liver if I were closer to the Thirsty Belgian. You walk in and are greeted by tchotchke overload in a wonderful environment of welcome and good food and beer smells. What's the German or French greeting like Norm entering Cheers? That's how this feels. The glassware and on tap selection, whoah!! So over the top and maintaining this level of beer and the right glasses for each beer is over the top. The Kwak glasses alone are.... fantastic. And getting Kwak on tap anywhere is a treat. I had the bruschetta that was good but I prefer mine with balsamic glaze. The toasties more than make up for it. I had the Tijuana with chipotle mayo. Perfection. Talked to the owner and the woman tending bar and both were so great to hang with. These are good people and I hope their business thrives for another 10, 20, etc years. I'll be back when I'm in Rochester!

This place is way cool. If you want some good beer, great food and cool people serving your drinks/food, then this is the place to come. I found it and went there several days in a row while I was up for work. It was great every day.

Holy crap this place is incredible. Basic looking bar, basic looking tables, basic looking menu (looking being the key word). Our server was a great guy, when you ordered he checked for understanding first instead of just walking off. He was ontop of it, clearly liked his job. Food was incredible and well thought out and executed, the brie and mushroom soup is something I could eat every day for the rest of my life. It would probably be a short life but I would be happyrhe whole way.

You know when you walk into the perfect, mid afternoon, small bar? It's here! Nicole greet us warmly before the door closed behind us. I knew we had made a good choice. She is a gem. Didn't even falter as I proceeded to dictate how to make my Manhattan perfect! Great prices! Great vibe!! Even friendly owner! I love this place!

We went here last night. It's a great little bar, nice atmosphere, and great food. Beer prices aren't cheap for 12 ounce beers, and our service was a little slow. But the server was helpful and gave good recommendations when asked. I got the reuben flatbread, and I am a bit of a meat snob, but the pastrami was pretty solid...i'd give it a 7 out of 10, which is really good for a bar like this. The toasties looked great, and the chips they come with are good, but i would have liked to see a fries option. For apps we got the pretzel sticks, which were AMAZING, and we got the bruschetta, which was meh. Fun bar with great food...would gladly go back!

This is one of the best local bars around the town. If you're looking for Belgium beers, they have amazing draft and a great collection of bottles around 70 this is a place that can give you a lot of beer selection. They have great food they were two bartenders who knew everything about the beers and they were amazing. One of the guys name. Charles was very very helpful, it has a chill ambience it's not for upscale dining, but a very casual good local bar

If you're looking for something different to try in Rochester, how about Belgian? There are menu items found nowhere else in Rochester, such as Toasties, flat bread pizzas and Belgian fare. We went afternoon on Valentine's Day and our server, Isaac, was dressed for the occasion. Isaac knows his beers. The food is so good here and the staff always makes you feel welcome and appreciated. Look on the oversized chalkboard for their daily drink, pizza and Toastie specials. I ordered the special pictured, which came out hot and delicious. If you haven't tried Belgian meatballs on a pizza, you're missing an experience. I've ordered the pizza on special about every time we visit. Check out their menu. Where else can you find a Toastie named "The Petty"? My choice for best pizza in Rochester!

My wife my kid and I have been to the best of the best places in big cities across the us and know the restaurant and bar industry well (though mostly in larger cities). Thirsty is by far one of the few places in Rochester that could probably stand against anyplace in the country any day of the week in terms of food and service knowing what you're coming for. Other restaurants in Rochester (even the ones that purport themselves as fine dining) could learn a lot from thirsty Belgian just in terms of service, client management, and consistency of product.

Amazing food. We also got the pretzel sticks which were super fresh and delicious. Our server was very friendly and helpful with recommendations. We recommend

Great little pub, delish appetizers. So glad we spotted it while back to school shopping at Kohls. My significant other loves craft brews, they have a lot to offer.

Love this place. Great toasties served with chips and awesome beer selection. The hours are wrong in Yelp. Hours are 11am-10pm daily, closed on Mondays

Walnut and pear salad, just awesome. Great little spot to meet for cocktails very friendly and so convenient by Kohls.

I really love their salad (candied part is delicious and their sammich was absolutely delicious my favorites are the grilled cheese and the ham n turkey, cheese. And the drinks.... Royal loon!

Fun little bar to stop in for a quick bite or a craft beer. Or to watch a disappointing super bowl game.

Lots of craft beers, love the location, so close to shopping. Great place to meet for happy hour.

Waited forever and server never took our food order.... Took the other table's order just fine though... even though they sat 10 min after us.

Great beer, cocktails, food, and service. We got the dragons milk stout and nutty Belgian (milk chocolate). The pretzels were soft and warm. I'm not usually one for melted cheese but the mustard was great. Nice presentation too. I would probably sit by a window or in the back since I sat right in front of the door. Music was a little bit loud but MAN they had a great mix and I swear I saw each person singing along at some point in sitting there. I would DEFINITELY go here again in a heartbeat

Fun place. Great food and bartender. We had a meatball flatbread that was delicious.

This is a good place to meet someone for a relaxed drink and some yummy snacky casual food to go along with it. You don't have to drink alcohol to enjoy this place, but they have a fun assortment of drinks to choose from if you do.

Honestly, this place deserves 5 stars for the beer list alone. The extensive options of just the Belgian Trappist beers is enough to make the nerdiest among beer nerds swoon. An important note is that this restaurant is greaseless - no fryer - so adjust your french fry and cheese curd expectations accordingly. Having been here a few times, I can say with some certainty that you can't go wrong. I have had the pear and gouda toastie, the candied walnut and pear salad, and several different pizzas on various occasions. My favorite tends to be their pizza, but unless you want leftovers or have a friend with your specific tastes, it can be a lot of food (darn!). I would also highly recommend trying the baked brick cheese. If I could offer a note to the kitchen on this one: the marinara sauce is way too thick for dipping. This is a great casual spot if you want table service but aren't looking for anything formal or fancy. The food is well thought out and pretty impressive given they don't have a grill or fryer. Always happy to stop here when I'm in town!

Thoroughly enjoyed our visit! Great staff! Very friendly. Great beer! Enjoyed fresh made pizza & a great wedge salad!

We ordered take out and by the time we got home everything was cold. The sandwiches after reheating was pretty good. Paleo dinner was ok. Pizza was ok . Salad was very good. I was a little disappointed. Next time I'll try dining in if I ever visit Rochester again.

The food is amazing! The service is the best I have had in awhile. Great people! Highly recommend

Nice place. Small and quiet. Sunday bloody marry special is not to be missed. This place is excellent.

I love this place but a few items to not order again.The Naan bread is just a tiny cup of crackers that taste nothing like Naan bread.A bowl of soup for 6.95 was barely one cup.The lobster bisque had no lobster in it.just a creamy sauce with essence of lobster.

Very nice place for a good comfort meal while visiting Rochester. Great place to just sit. Ack and relax after a day of appointments. Good sandwiches, homemade soups and individual pizza. Also a nice selection of beer if you want a drink to relax

Great food. Love the Mac and cheese. Nice employees and an overall nice atmosphere. Definitely will be back.

It's definitely a cool place to come and hang out with friends. The inside has a local neighborhood bar vibe while being part of a strip mall. About 9 beers on tap with even more variety in cans and bottles. The drinks are fairly cheap and good. We got the Veggies for appetizer and the hummus is really good. And then I got the pear and Gouda toastie and it's delicious and filling. Yum! We are visiting Rochester and this was a chill place to come to.

Super cute bar. Has an amazing rotating beer list and you won't be able to receive these beer anywhere else. The owner ordered beers outside of the country and has an assortment of different types! The food really hit the Red Pepper Smoked Gouda Soup and The Continental panini.

Great food and great beer selection! Love the unique beers you can get and the food is always home made, fresh and creative.

Stopped in Saturday. SUCH GREAT beers available!! I had a toastie, that hit the spot! When the gal brought my check...we started talking about beer preferences, breweries....maybe a 10-15 minute convo ensued...which really made this visit great!! I like being able to discuss good beer with like minded folk. All around great spot ....food ...beer... service!! Definitely will stop in next time I'm in town!

On a cool fall day it was a great place to stop for lunch. The Mushroom Brie soup was very good. I had one of their special toasties which is basically a panini. It was excellent and nicely toasted. The Stella Cidre was similar to a hard cider. Wine is more to my taste but it was good. The chocolate strawberry cupcake was the only let down. It tasted old and dry. If fresh, it would have been very good. They buy them from a local bakery and charge $5. Skip the dessert. Service (Nicole ?) was excellent and fast.

So glad we gave this place another try. We've been here a handful of times in recent months, and the service has really done a complete 180 since that first horrible time. The beer selection is great, and the food is definitely better than your typical bar food. My favorite beer is a Sour called The Duchess. The bar tenders/wait staff are all really good about helping suggest new beer to try.

Great place! Our bartender/ waitress was exemplary. She kept the entire place fed, happy and and content. She was working alone and handled it beautifully. Our food was good and drinks were perfect. The receipt said John. I doubt that was her name.

Always get great service. Their are a variety of drinks (which I needed them to be explained to me lol). They were all good. The pizzas are very good too.

Man..I really had high hopes for this place and the food actually wasn't bad at all but the service just plain sucked. We sat ourselves and waited about 15 minutes before 1 of the 2 workers acknowledged us and gave us menus to look at. Fast forward another 20 minutes and the waitress finally came back to take our orders (soup and pizza). So all in all, upwards of 40 minutes just to take our orders. After ordering, it seemed like an eternity to get our soups and pizza. Oddly, they brought our pizza out first. I was expecting them to serve us the soup as an appetizer to enjoy before the pizza came out- so it was a little off the mark to get everything in reverse order. They must only have 1 cook working back there because I could tell other patrons were getting frustrated as well. Alas, here's the review of the food itself. The bratwurst and sourkraut soup was good. The flip-a-delphia pizza (basically a Philly cheese steak-inspired pizza) was also good but probably not worth the $18 asking price. It was just able to feed my wife and I even though it was advertised as "family sized". The green peppers were underdone and the pizza itself was slightly luke warm but the taste was pleasant. The fried onions on top were a good addition to the pizza and gave it a little extra crunch. To sum it up, we won't be rushing back here anytime soon. The service was lacking; I feel they need another worker helping customers. 2 employees alone can't handle the evening dinner influx of people or else they need to be more attentive. We weren't the only customers feeling like they were being overlooked. And finally, the food was good but probably not worth the asking price.

I lived in Rochester through about 2003, and haven't been back until recently. My peers and I affectionately called the city "the culinary deprivation tank," for obvious reasons. It would appear that things have changed. This place looks like a dive in a strip mall, and perhaps it is, but as dives go, it is clean and busy, the service is excellent, and the food was out of this world! They specialize in pizza (Italian), on Naan for crust (Indian); and I got the reuben sandwich variety (which is American by way of Lithuania). Amusingly, they do NOT have fries, which are actually Belgian despite the French misnomer. So is any of this food actually Belgian? Hell no. Did this jumbled geographical journey across my palate dazzle? Hell yes! Seriously not to be missed! Their is a HUGE selection of beer and cider, and many of these are actually Belgian imports, so I guess that's how they were named, but even if you don't like beer, you really have to go here for some quality eats in a relaxed environment. I brought my school-aged kids. They are annoyingly picky, but loved their pizzas more than their iPad after a long day at school. Seating is limited, but throughput is fast enough that wait times aren't unreasonable. Plus... the pizza.

Bravo - I LOVE YELP when we can find these awesome local places. A group of 10 of us from out of town - EVERYONE loved this place ! The food is awesome our server/bartender was awesome. This is a must go place if your in Rochester MN. Don't judge this place from the out go in and experience a great bar and awesome. Food!

In Rochester for The Mayo Clinic and Yelp pointed us to this place last evening. Unimaginable selection of beer and ciders. You won't be want for drink here. Wine and mixed drinks as well. The wait staff was incredibly friendly and helpful. Very personable and on point when it comes to taking care of their customers! Food came out quickly. The Belgium meatballs and bread and balsamic were excellent appetizers. My son also got the hot pretzel sticks, which he devoured. My wife created her own "toasty" and enjoyed it very much. Fresh, juicy and flavorful. I tried the sausage flight and was very pleased. Also had the special soup, which was Belgian Beer Cheese, and it was like velvet. So incredibly flavorful, without being too rich. If we lived here, we would be back for sure. We hope to get there again before we fly home. Rochester is lucky to have such a fun, friendly delicious place to go to!

Good selection of brews, great selection of sandwiches and other eats served by friendly staff. Definitely worth a return visit.

This bar welcomes you with excellent drinks, superb food, and staff that with quick wit and smiles. So many beers available that most other bars will never offer. Try a Belgian beer - ask the staff for their recommendation. Don't be shy, all the beer is excellent! My beer recommendation: St Bernardus The kitchen kick out some amazing dishes. My tongue currently tingles from a pepper cheese, and I want more and more of it! Superb soups and flatbread pizzas. This is my bar.

Beer Selection, Pizza's E.G. Hot & Spicy & the Chocolate Torte! Very nice & accommodating staff. YUM!

This place is simply awesome. Little off the beaten path with a magnificent specialty beer inventory and awesomely simple and healthy pub food WITHOUT a greasy fryer anywhere! Nothing not to like about Thirsty Belgian!!!

Went here for lunch. Asked if I should order a pizza Toastie or a pizza. She suggested a pizza. I ordered a Flatbread with Pepperoni, mushrooms, red onion & green olive. A cup of potato soup. My husband got a Chef Salad with French & Thousand Island Dressing. His came with French & Blue Cheese. The soup was inedible. I heard her ask the kitchen about the soup & they told her the bad taste was dried chives that they put to much in. She didn't take it off the bill. Then I noticed the special was a margarita pizza with pepperoni & mushroom for 10.00. As you can see from the bill, we were charged 12.00 for a margarita pizza and 1.50 for pepperoni, .75 each for mushrooms, onions & green olives. So the 10.00 special pizza if you add red onion & green olives would be 11.50. Instead it was billed at 15.75. The beer was cold though, hence a 2 star. Never going back.

Stumbled into the spot after stopping for hardware at Lowes. Great selection of beer! Even proper Belgium glassware! (It's the little things). Noise level is a bit overwhelming... maybe it was just the people who happened to be there the night I stopped. Food looked good, but I'll confess, I didn't eat. (I was hardware shopping after all needed to get home to get to work)

Can't say enough good things about this place. Never had a bad meal here! The food is delicious and the service is wonderful. I am a vegetarian and can rarely find healthy options in a bar setting. They have some great options! The salads are amazing and the pear and gouda sandwich is my favorite meal on Earth. I am not from Rochester but they make me feel like a local. Everyone is so welcoming.

Stopped here for drinks with a friend and was pleasantly surprised. Super cool atmosphere with a lot of awesome decor. Drinks were strong and the bartenders were super friendly. We came in at 10:30 on a Saturday and the kitchen was closed. My friend was really hungry. The bartender must have noticed and served us snack mix from his private stash! :) Highly recommend! Can't wait to come back here for lunch/dinner.

This is an awesome place to eat. The Buddah Gouda pizza was off the chain good. On top of the fact that it really had the feeling of a neighborhood place. I'm in recovery so I didn't sample the beer, but it felt like a place where you're always welcome. We liked it so much we ate at lunch and came back for dinner.

The Thirsty Belgian is great! Haley (like the comet), is very attentive, fun, conscientious and very aware our needs. The Irishman was very good. Needed a little more dressing but very good. It came with chips. The grapefruit and rose salty dog (without the salt) was very refreshing and nice and tart. The princess peach was a little lacking in peach. The Red pepper Gouda soup and the Gandolph (toastie special) was sssoooo good. Dip the sandwich. It's heart! Would be back in a heartbeat. A

We visited the Thirsty Belgian one Friday night for beers and pizza. I have nothing bad to say about the beers or the pizza. I happen to look at my credit card statement a week later and noticed that they charged my credit card twice. I called them to fix the problem and they explained that they would look into it and call me back. We waited 2.5 days and nothing. I called again and they explained that they were just too busy right now and to please call back the next day at 9am. So we called back AGAIN and spoke with someone who said they would fix the problem. Eventually they did credit back my card but it just goes to show you that an experience can be completely ruined with bad customer service. I was not impressed to say the least.

My daughter and son-in-law are big fans and we were all hungry so stopped in for lunch because we ate tired of all of the days with the Covid mess. We quickly learned that they're just re-opening after being shut down due to Covid restrictions. The seating is limited and they now have a contactless menu system but still great appetizers, sandwiches, and flatbread pizzas, and an awesome beer selection. We also noticed some staff changes and they seemed genuinely happy and excited to see us. This place is a gem and they really need your help and support to survive. Highly recommended!