Start from 22 curated places around New Ulm, MN, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Lola - An American Bistro
A breakfast-and-lunch spot inside a restored downtown building with exposed brick, high ceilings, and a serious coffee program using locally roasted beans. The kitchen turns out handmade pastries, baguette sandwiches, pot pies, and rotating seasonal lunch specials — honest scratch cooking in a room that feels more like a Minneapolis cafe than a southern Minnesota main street. Outdoor patio seating in warmer months. Opens early.
George's Fine Steaks & Spirits
A proper dinner steakhouse in a downtown building — the kind of place where the prime rib special draws regulars from a 40-mile radius on Friday nights. The menu runs to classic cuts, seafood, and scratch sides in a setting that mixes white tablecloths with a genuine lack of pretense. Dinner only, and it fills up.
Trails & outdoors
Grassland and Ridge Trail Loop
A 2.8-mile loop inside Flandrau State Park that circles the campground area while passing through restored tallgrass prairie, open ridge lines with views over the Cottonwood River valley, and a stretch of lowland forest. The elevation gain is gentle — about 130 feet — making it manageable for most fitness levels while delivering genuine variety of terrain in a short distance.
Cottonwood River Trail
A 1.9-mile easy trail that tracks the Cottonwood River through Flandrau State Park's floodplain forest, passing the WPA-era quartzite buildings and the park's sand-bottomed swimming pond. The terrain is almost entirely flat and the canopy stays dense even in summer, making it a cool shaded walk on warm days. Best as a standalone easy stroll or as a warm-up leg before the Grassland loop.
Things to do
August Schell Brewing Company
Beyond just drinking beer, Schell's weekend brewery tours are a genuine window into 160 years of family brewing history — walking the original limestone lagering cellars, the working brew house, the museum of antique brewing equipment, and the Victorian mansion grounds. The peacocks roaming the gardens are an unexpected detail that regulars always mention. One of the best small-brewery touring experiences in the upper Midwest.
Brown County Historical Society & Museum
Three floors of exhibits in a National Register 1910 post office building, anchored by an award-winning permanent exhibit on the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 and rotating programming on German immigration and 20th-century Brown County life. The building itself is one of the finest examples of German Renaissance civic architecture in the state — the staff are uncommonly knowledgeable and willing to dig into specifics with curious visitors.
Landmarks & sights
Glockenspiel
A free-standing 45-foot carillon tower in the heart of downtown with 37 bells and rotating figurines depicting characters from New Ulm's German immigrant heritage, including a brick mason, a flour miller, a beer drinker, and a polka band. The full mechanical show runs several times daily — plan your walk to arrive at the top of the hour. The adjacent plaza is a natural gathering spot on summer evenings.
Hermann the German
A 102-foot copper-and-iron statue on a hilltop park southwest of downtown, honoring the Germanic chieftain who defeated Roman legions in 9 A.D. You can climb a tight spiral staircase inside the pedestal to an observation deck for a panoramic view over the Minnesota River Valley and the town laid out below. Congress designated it a national symbol of German heritage.