Winona's oldest restaurant since 1938.
About us.
Lakeview Drive Inn was founded in 1938 and is an original family owned and operated drive inn (in) restaurant. We are not a chain, theme, or “fast food” restaurant per say, as our food is made to order and of a very high quality. We never cook anything in the microwave and never serve your food from a bin of pre made or warmer held items. Our employees are friendly hometown kids that want you to get the best meal and service they can provide. Lakeview’s Root Beer is made from scratch with our own exclusive recipe. We also make our homemade diet root beer with NutraSweet for those looking for a no sugar or diet variety. When eating at the inside counter, the outside picnic tables or in you car, we serve our root beer in old fashioned frosted mugs. We hold these heavy glass mugs in freezers at below zero temperatures to make your drink frosty cold. Our carhops have been waiting on (called curb service) the people of the Greater Winona Area since 1938 and Lakeview is proudly Winona’s Oldest Restaurant. Dining is an experience at the Lakeview Drive Inn and is like a step back in time. With a view of Sugarloaf, Lakeview Drive Inn is located on the Shore of Lake Winona and is a taste of days gone by.
Lakeview carved its 100 year old Elm tree stump into a giant root beer barrel on Wed, Aug 17th, 2011. Award winning chainsaw artist Curtis Ingvoldstad did the project from start to finish in 1 day!
Stop by to take a look or take a picture. It looks really nice in the evening lit up with our LED spotlight. (the installation of the light was donated by Matt Wardwell Electric).
Click on the picture to see the progression of the carving on our Facebook page.
Lakeview Drive Inn was built in 1938 by Emil Berzinski and was called Emils.
In 1940 a large front was added to the small building.
The building was fully enclosed in 1953.
Here is Lakeview today.
