Nearing almost the end of a busy month, with cocktails, pizza and a warm, cozy vibe on my mind, we headed to our 2023 Restaurant bucket list stop number one, Earl Giles Restaurant & Distillery. And it was just what we needed on a cold January Saturday in Minnesota. Outside, the temps plunging to below zero, inside, the place was almost full. It was 3:00 pm in the afternoon and that was a good sign. Although I had planned to make reservations, we really couldn’t pin down when we were actually going to get there, so we just put our names on the waitlist. They told us 30-45 minutes, so we settled into the waiting area and fortunately had the option to get going on a couple of cocktails while we waited.
Ordered via our phone, from a menu linked in a QR code, we tried the Penicillin (honey, ginger, cedar, lemon & gin) and the Gin Sazerac (fennel, birch, pandan, peychauds & gin), both of which were the perfect start to our afternoon. Just minutes after getting our cocktails, they called our name, so fortunately, the wait wasn’t as long as anticipated.
They brought us to a hightop table, with great views of the pizza oven and the bar. They did a fantastic job renovating this building…lots of time you see other concepts in similar spaces and they feel cavernous, cold and just exposed. Next time I would try to make a reservation to sit in amongst the plants, (how long does it take to water ALL THOSE PLANTS each week?!) at one of the cozy seating areas, with couches and overstuffed chairs. The server that brought us our first round greeted us again and we set in to deciding what pizzas we were going to try.
I am sucker for anything mushroom & cream, and my husband said that was a no-brainer so we ordered A Good Trip (onion soubise, braised wild mushrooms, gruyere, roasted garlic aioli & scallions) and were trying to decide between the National Treasure (red sauce, cheese blend, pepperoni, fennel sausage, peppers, onion & olive mix) or the straight Sausage (red sauce, cheese blend, fennel sausage) because again, we love a good fennel sausage on a pizza. Asking the server if we could add the olive mix, we settled on the Sausage pizza with that. They were both great! The pizza dough, was all it should be, light, crisp…and those mushrooms under that garlic aioli…mmmm!
And then it was on to round two…this time, I was ready to move on from Gin and decided on the Pau Hana (pineapple-vanilla, Bolivar bitters, archipelago cologne, liquid disco & Rum) and Mark ordered the Rabbit Kick (carrot juice, vanilla, lemon and Gin). Having only been open less than a year, this place has quite the following online. (read more about their story here) I put this place on my list for it’s “instagram worthy” posts I kept seeing in my feed and because we love pizza and cocktails, and I felt like it was the kind of place we’d feel right at home at. All the eclectic wall art, the hundreds of plants on huge racks that helped to divide the space and provide some intimacy throughout, the music – not too loud, but enough to add to the fun atmosphere. It all made for a really great time!
We normally aren’t much of dessert people, but the Butterscotch Pudding (house made “butterfingers”, whipped cream) kept walking by our table and I still had one more cocktail I wanted to try, the Spicoli Cola (kola, dark cherry, vanilla bean, whip, cherry & rum) so we loosened the belts and shared it. My apologies to the server, as I tried to dig through the layer of candy to get to the pudding, I managed to make a bit of mess. It was worth the effort. Don’t worry, we paced ourselves on everything, and our server was awesome not to rush us out the door so we had enough time to “digest” everything! Oh and PSA to those of you that need a restroom close by when you are drinking…prepare in advance for a bit of walk to those…you basically have to leave the restaurant and end up in the other end of the building.
And if you fall in love with something you try in one of their creative cocktails, you can buy it there and recreate it at home! (I have to admit I was very tempted to bring home a bottle of the Liquid Disco!) It was a fun trip and a great start to our 2023 Restaurant Bucket List! Next month…Travail!!!
