March 3, 2022

A kitchen takeover at The Gaslight Lounge is kicking out “dive bar food done right.”

The Dive, which is a literal “hole in the wall” in the back of the longtime bar at 2206 W. 12th St. is the creation of Allen Wright, Tayler McCarthy and Jeff Von Holtum.

“It’s bougie dive bar food or dive bar food done right,” Wright said. “I don’t know how to describe it – from scratch, homemade. I like to think authentic, pure, relevant. Just trying to figure out what people want, what South Dakotans want and just do that and do it right. That’s the basic thing: just do it right. Get the basics down. Like ketchup. No one’s doing homemade ketchup, and that’s like a staple dive bar food.”

That homemade ketchup goes with the seasoned hand-cut fries, which can be ordered as a side and also come as a half-order with the entrees. All of the sauces, the signature B.Aioli, barbecue, thousand island, ranch and blue cheese, are made from scratch.

“With your chef background, I think it’s really important for you that we’re doing everything from scratch,” McCarthy said to Wright. “You know what I mean? We’re not buying frozen products and throwing them into a fryer. We’re actually taking our time with it.”

Wright and McCarthy – they’re the ones mostly in the kitchen, while Von Holtum takes care of customers and serves as the “fix-it guy” – work out of a tiny kitchen in the back of The Gaslight. Customers order through the “hole in the wall” that looks into the kitchen.

Because it’s a small space, the menu covers the dive bar food basics.

There are a couple of smashed quarter-pound beef patty burgers on potato buns: the original Dive Burger with cheddar, lettuce, tomato, caramelized onion and aioli, and the new BBQ Burger that also has bacon, homemade barbecue sauce and sweet pickled jalapeno.

They do chislic, of course, offering both beef and lamb by the half-pound and bone-in wings.

There’s a club sandwich, chicken tenders, a pulled pork sandwich with pickled apples and a Nashville spicy chicken sandwich.

“I’m hoping my Nashville chicken gets us famous,” Wright said. “It’s pretty good, spicy though. It has a kick. But chislic right now is kind of our claim to fame I feel. We get a lot of chislic.”

Other popular items include a taco salad in an edible bowl and candied bacon.

“We can barely keep up with the candied bacon,” McCarthy said. “People when they have it, it’s like it sells.”

All it takes is for one bar customers to order it. “We went like a week without selling it, and then one guy ordered it, and 15 minutes later we had like five orders for it,” Wright said. “It just flew.”

The three business partners worked together at another restaurant in town, where Wright served as chef and McCarthy as a sous chef. Wright’s background also includes being a co-founder of The Big Orange Food Truck.

McCarthy describes himself as the entrepreneur of the trio, getting an undergraduate degree at Purdue University and a graduate degree from the University of Illinois.

“It’s kind of nice for me to take the lead on one side, and Taylor takes the leader on the other,” Wright said.

And Van Holtum? “He’s the jack of all trades, master of none,” Wright joked.

“He’s a veteran and he just has a lot of life skills,” McCarthy said. “He’s a lot older than us, and that’s kind of nice though.”

Van Holtum is “that nice little bridge” to the regulars at The Gaslight, Wright said.

“We’re putting ‘aioli’ on there,” Wright said of the menu. “And people are like, ‘what?’ And we try to explain, and Jeff’s like, ‘It’s just mayonnaise with garlic.’ It just works. He’s able to bridge the gap.”

The Dive is hoping to draw more business into The Gaslight.

“It’s really nice to be in a chill place and have chill interactions or whatever. There’s lots of characters here,” Wright said. “But I also like this place because it looks outdated on the outside but it’s so nice inside. … I’m really hoping we’re a new catalyst for bringing people in.”

Hours are 3 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 11a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.