As Pickle Barrel closes, restaurant with craft beer bar will replace it
Feb. 27, 2023
A longtime neighborhood sandwich shop has closed, but it’s being replaced by a second location for a restaurant known for its “dive bar food done right.”
The Pickle Barrel, which opened in 2004 in the Park Ridge Galleria at 26th Street and Western Avenue, closed Feb. 11.
The Dive will offer a family-friendly restaurant that also will serve as a craft beer bar, said Allen Wright, who owns the business with Jeff Von Holtum. They’re hoping to open March 13.
“We hit the extremes of the market,” Wright said of The Dive’s food. “We make food for the everyday person … and we put a culinary touch on it.”
The Dive took over the kitchen in The Gaslight Lounge a year ago. Among its offerings are burgers, sliders, a Nashville-style chicken sandwich, chislic, beer-battered mushrooms that are locally grown and hand-cut fries with housemade ketchup.
Diners will find those menu items and new ones like charcuterie and cheese boards, smoked salmon and other smoked meats, Wright said.
“It’s going to be beer hall food while leaning into more of the healthier options too.”
The Dive initially will serve lunch only.
“There’s only that lunch crowd over there now. That’s where the beer and wine will help,” he said, noting the beer and wine license is on the City Council’s agenda for March 7. “Hopefully, by the summer, we’ll have lunch and dinner … expand those hours and become that neighborhood spot.”
Also in the plans are brunches on the weekend with mimosas and beermosas.
“That menu will be simple things but also fun things: pancakes, eggs Benedict, poached eggs, stuff like that,” Wright said. “Kind of like what you find downtown.”
Wright has been busy giving the space a face-lift with new colors on the walls and different artwork and adding a bar top.
“The color scheme is like an old cigar lounge, a very classy feel but then cheese it up a bit,” Wright said. The restaurant has seating for about 50 customers and 32 more at the tables in the enclosed hallway for the retail center.
He’s thinking about adding plants in that area, which is filled with sunlight, “to make it more welcoming so families can hang out there.”
The Dive in The Gaslight on West 12th Street will remain open. Wright envisions simplifying the menu to burgers and other “express” offerings.
For the owner of The Pickle Barrel, deciding to close “was a really sad decision to make.”
Customers weren’t given notice that the sandwich shop was going out of business.
“Everything came together so quickly,” Katelyn Cameron said of the deal with The Dive. She bought the sandwich shop in 2020 from the original owner. Jenny O’Brien opened the franchise of the small Montana-based chain in 2004 at Park Ridge.
Cameron said she tried to find a buyer, but “there were some restrictions from the franchise that meant the brand couldn’t continue in South Dakota.”
Cameron and her husband, TJ, own other businesses, including a few startups that have been taking a lot of his time, she said. That left her to work full time with the other businesses and keep up with their kids’ activities.
“I wasn’t able to be there as much as I was in the beginning,” she said of The Pickle Barrel, which they took over in March 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting down the city. The business survived that hit, but not being able to find staff or devote time to being there herself, meant it had to close, she said.
“I was and am very proud to have been able to rescue The Pickle Barrel and keep it going the past three years,” she said. “It was closed when we took it over. I really, really loved that sandwich shop, and I’m really going to miss it. But everything is always changing.”
She’s excited about The Dive taking over the space. The couple tried the food, which she said was “really great.”
“I really hope our regulars and our foot traffic (in Park Ridge) gives them a chance and enjoys them as much as we do.”
The Dive will honor the sandwich shop’s Square gift cards.
