About Peg's Countryside Cafe

At the Countryside Café, we've been serving delicious fare for more than 30 years at our local landmark on the corner of Highway 55 and County Road 116 in Medina. We serve breakfast and lunch all day long and have a great time doing it.

Opened in the 1950s as the Knotty Pine Café, the restaurant was known as Frenchie's Diner when Peggy Rasmussen bought it in 1975. "If we're closed," says the sign on the door to our bright yellow and red cafe, "just slide your money under the door." With sentiments like that, you might expect Peggy to be a down-home purveyor of folksy philosophy and stick-to-your-ribs home-style cooking. And she is. But she's also a nationally recognized community leader and businesswoman, and former president of both the Minnesota Restaurant Association and the Twin West Chamber of Commerce.

Over the years, she taught herself short-order cooking (not bad for someone whose brother said the pancakes she made as a teenager could pave a sidewalk), went back to school for a business degree, and developed a national reputation for her business savvy, baking prowess and community involvement. In 1996, General Mills named Peggy one of 75 women across the country to embody a modern-day Betty Crocker image. Photos of the women were incorporated into a computer-assisted composite image. Peggy proudly displays that photo -- she claims Betty has her left ear -- alongside thousands of photos of restaurant regulars on the Café's wall.