You gotta know when to hold ‘em . . .

Driving past Lake Calhoun, who wouldn’t be impressed by the arching and luminous presence of Tryg’s, one of the hottest restaurants to open last year? Looking at Tryg’s, a $3.5 million temple of style and cuisine, who would have guessed the same hole in the ground has birthed three restaurants, all owned by the Truelson family?

Tryg’s path to existence is not only a great story—proving that it takes fifty years to build some restaurants—but also exemplar of some of the toughest lessons in the restaurant biz. (Full disclosure: My wife, Rishia, is a longtime pal of Tryg Truelson’s spouse, Valerie.)

His father, Raymond, opened his first drive-in burger restaurant in 1953 on University Avenue in St. Paul, and he called it Porky’s. It operated until 1979, when he closed it, a victim of the fast food boom and the decline in the concept’s basic appeal. He had three other Porky’s by that time (21st Avenue at Lake, 57th Street at Lyndale, and at the current Tryg’s location). All three have closed since then, but the 21st and Lake location, when it was shuttered in 1975, became Nora’s, named after Raymond’s wife and business partner. Nora’s eventually moved to the spot where Tryg’s is now, replacing Waldo’s Pizzeria, which held the space post-Porky’s. The location where Tryg’s stands today has been the site of four restaurants since Raymond and Nora bought the parcel in 1960.

Growing up in the business and working every restaurant job there, from washing dishes to flipping burgers, Tryg says he learned that you don’t fight trends. “We have shut down all our restaurants at one point or another. With Nora’s, the 21st and Lake location became overrun with crime and we had a good offer, so it was time to sell. The west Lake location was the largest drive-in between LA and Chicago, but when its time passed we opened a Nora’s there. A few years ago, I realized that it was way too difficult to keep coming to work (at Nora’s). You run out of ideas, and let’s face it, we were also running out of customers. Ten percent of them were dying every year. The neighborhood was booming, and we were going nowhere. We had the best location in town and were underachieving, so we decided to tear it down and start again. My mother put a lot of faith in me and we opened Tryg’s, and it has worked out wonderfully.”

Tryg was also savvy enough to acknowledge what he didn’t know. Tryg’s is a hugely upscale restaurant, at odds with the populist ethos of his family’s previous ventures. It’s absolutely right for its tony locale, but rather than assume he had all the knowledge to swim with the fancy fish, he brought in Shea Architects to design the space and the experienced culinarian Philip Dorwart to build and execute the menu. Burgers and shakes surrounded by glass and vinyl, it ain’t.

Patience seems not to have skipped a generation either. Tryg’s dad used the “hang on to the building and the concept will come” approach on more than one occasion, and Tryg is doing it again at the 50th and France site (Giorgio’s) he bought last year. It’s sitting empty, waiting for the right idea.

Oh, and the original Porky’s in St Paul? It reopened in 1990 and has been going strong ever since, proving that, like Capri pants and blue plate specials, what’s old is new again, provided you can hang on long enough—and own the land.

Reach Andrew Zimmern at azimmern@mspmag.com.