A Local's Guide To Tonka Bay: What Fits Inside One Small Village
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
Tonka Bay is small enough that a resident can name every business on Manitou Road from memory. That is not a complaint. It is the entire point. When your downtown is one block long and your waterfront is essentially one address, the places that survive have to be good enough to be worth walking to twice a week. The village has quietly ended up with exactly that.
If you already live here, you have probably already sorted your Saturday into a familiar arc: Caribou in the morning, an errand, maybe a bowl at Country Club Lanes with the kids, and dinner on the water. This post is not going to tell you Tonka Bay is a hidden gem. It is going to look closely at what your compressed downtown actually contains in 2026, what has changed recently, and where the small friction points sit if you plan on using any of it this weekend.
Almost every non-lake business in the city sits on a short stretch of Manitou Road. The city's own business directory is remarkably short, and it reads like a walking tour:
Five addresses, five kinds of Saturday. The compression is what makes it a neighborhood rather than a strip. A dentist appointment, a haircut, a coffee, a pizza, and two frames of bowling can be booked into a single afternoon without moving your car once.
The lakeside half of the village lives at a separate address on Lakeview Avenue, and one more, Tonka Bay Marina, sits on Tonka Bay Road. That is essentially the map.
If you want a shorthand for how Tonka Bay actually feels to live in, spend an hour at Country Club Lanes. It runs twelve lanes on Manitou Road, and the pricing tells you what kind of place it is: a package of ninety minutes of bowling, shoe rental, and a small pop or juice box runs $13.99 per person. That is not a market-rate number for a metro-area entertainment business in 2026. It is a number set by a locally owned operator who has been at the same address for more than two decades and treats the lanes as community infrastructure.
The league lineup makes the same point. There are men's, women's, coed, seniors, juniors, and high school leagues, plus a special needs league with accessible bowling ramps. The oldest active league bowler is 90. The youngest is 7. There is a Thursday women's morning league. Cosmic bowling shows up on select nights. Kids Bowl Free is honored here during posted hours.
For a resident, the practical read is this: Country Club Lanes is a real reservation on weekend evenings and during birthday-party season. The lane count is small enough that Saturday afternoons fill quickly. If you are walking in with four kids at 2 p.m., call first.
Something worth updating your mental map on: Hazelwood Food + Drink now operates three locations. The Tonka Bay original on Manitou Road has been joined by Bloomington near Mall of America and a St. Louis Park location. The Tonka Bay kitchen still runs its scratch menu out of a rotisserie and wood-burning pizza oven, still serves signature brunch on Saturday and Sunday, and still keeps 11–4 lunch and 4-to-close dinner hours seven days a week.
Why does this matter for residents? A restaurant expanding from one room to three tends to change in small ways: reservation pressure on Saturday brunch, private-dining bookings that spill into peak hours, occasional menu recalibration to travel across kitchens. Tonka Bay is now the flagship in name only. If you have been treating Hazelwood as a walk-in neighborhood spot, brunch weekends in particular are worth a phone call.
For anyone who hosts out-of-town family, Hazelwood also runs a dedicated private-dining program for events at the Tonka Bay location. That is the room to know about when a graduation dinner or a milestone birthday lands on your calendar.
The lakefront half of the village lives at a single address, 135 Lakeview Avenue, home of Caribbean Marina and, since InnerBloom Hospitality took over the restaurant, Lost Bay. Lost Bay converted what had long been the Caribbean Marina restaurant into a tiki-vibe lakeside patio with island-inspired cocktails, a summer DJ schedule, and seafood-leaning American plates.
The hours are the important part for planning. Lost Bay is closed Monday and Tuesday, opens at 3 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, and runs 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday through Sunday, with an 8 p.m. Sunday close. It is not a lunch destination on a Tuesday. It is very much a Friday-after-work or Sunday-late-afternoon destination.
The wharf is small compared to the larger lakeside operations elsewhere on Minnetonka, which is worth setting expectations on if guests arrive expecting Lord Fletcher's-scale docking. Boat-in seating exists. It is not unlimited.
Lost Bay's wharf is small, Country Club Lanes has twelve lanes, and Hazelwood's rotisserie feeds three cities now. Tonka Bay does not need bigger. It needs its handful of places to stay good.
Tonka Bay Marina at 220 Tonka Bay Road is the largest full-service marina on Lake Minnetonka. It has been family-owned since 1991, sits on more than six lakefront acres just southwest of Big Island, and handles boats from 20 feet up to about 55 feet, along with dry stack, in-water slips, fuel, winterization, and a waterfront clubhouse. One 2026 operating change: fuel is credit-card only, no cash sales.
The other slip option is the city's municipal dock program, and this is where most residents run into a wall. All municipal docks are currently rented. The 2026 dock applications were due March 13, 2026, and if you missed that window the only path in is the wait list. If a slip matters to you for 2027, put the wait list application in this fall rather than next spring.
Two lake-wide rules that changed recently and are relevant to anyone launching a boat out of Tonka Bay:
If you have a teenager who is going to drive the pontoon this summer, that permit is the thing to knock out before Memorial Day, not the week of the Fourth of July.
| Where | Address | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Hazelwood Food + Drink | 5635 Manitou Rd | Weekend brunch, private events, wood-fired pizza |
| Joey Nova's Pizzeria | 5655 Manitou Rd | NY-style takeout, casual weeknight dinner |
| Country Club Lanes | 5601 Manitou Rd | Family bowling, leagues, birthday parties |
| Caribou Coffee | 5663 Manitou Rd | Morning coffee walk |
| Sanctuary Salonspa | 5647 Manitou Rd | Salon and spa services |
| Lost Bay | 135 Lakeview Ave | Lakeside dinner and cocktails, Wed–Sun |
| Tonka Bay Marina | 220 Tonka Bay Rd | Slips, dry stack, fuel, service |
An honest resident's Saturday inside Tonka Bay does not require leaving the village. Coffee at Caribou at 5663 Manitou. A haircut at Sanctuary next door at 5647. Ninety minutes of open bowling at Country Club Lanes with the kids, done for about fifty-six dollars for a family of four. Pizza pickup at Joey Nova's for the sitter, then a walk to the waterfront and a tiki cocktail at Lost Bay before the DJ starts.
If you are entertaining out-of-town family, the boat-based version of that day is a launch from Tonka Bay Marina, a slow lap around Big Island, a Wharf lunch at Lord Fletcher's over in Spring Park, and back for dinner on the Hazelwood patio. Either way the whole day happens inside a two-mile radius.
That radius is the honest case for Tonka Bay. Not that it has everything. That it has enough of the right things, close enough together, that a full weekend actually holds together without a car trip to Excelsior or Wayzata. For residents already here, that is a quiet luxury worth paying attention to when a neighbor asks what there is to do.
If you know someone weighing a move into the Lake Minnetonka communities, or you are curious what your own Tonka Bay home would look like on today's market, Johnathan Harvath with Lakes Sotheby's International Realty knows this village block by block. Let's Connect.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Johnny combines deep local knowledge, innovative marketing, and personalized guidance to help clients achieve their real estate goals with confidence.