Popular Boise restaurant, distillery opens stylish Garden City location. Heated patio?
Idahoans curious about a prominent new building constructed last year in Garden City soon can step inside — and order a tasty gin martini.
(Don’t forget those blue cheese-stuffed olives.)
Popular Idaho restaurant and distillery Bardenay is set to open a stylish new location next week at 3100 W. Chinden Blvd., between the Stagecoach Inn and Riverside Hotel.
After private weekend events, the highly anticipated food-and-drink mecca will welcome the public starting at 11 a.m. Monday.
“We’re super excited,” Bardenay President Peter Goodwin says.
Joining an array of Garden City breweries and wineries, the roughly 6,500-square-foot hangout will offer dining for up to 90 customers inside — and about that same number on an enclosed, heated patio.
Like other Bardenay locations, the restaurant will be kid-friendly. Bardenay’s food menu ranges from burgers and sandwiches to tacos, satays, soups, salads and more.
Bardenay launched its original flagship location in 1999 at 610 W. Grove St. in downtown Boise. Since then, the brand has grown to Eagle and Coeur d’Alene. There’s also an offshoot inside the Boise Airport.
When founder and CEO Kevin Settles launched it in 1999, Bardenay was a groundbreaking endeavor — “the nation’s first restaurant and distillery,” its website proclaims.
The Garden City expansion illustrates how successful the concept has become. It’s Bardenay’s largest distillery — by far. With two gleaming stills visible through glass in the restaurant, it has the potential to double the brand’s liquor production, Goodwin says.
Bardenay creates vodka, lemon vodka, gin, aged rum, ginger rum, amber rum, rye whiskey, fruit-flavored liqueurs — even a coffee liqueur.
The newest Bardenay will focus most of its year-one attention on American-style whiskey, Goodwin says. “It’s not going to be bourbon,” he explains, “because we’re not Kentucky.”
Boosting liquor production will allow Bardenay to compete more intensely with national brands on liquor-store shelves, he says. It also allows Bardenay to open a future restaurant without investing in its own distillery. Or to open another Coyne’s, Bardenay’s sister restaurant in Eagle.
Hours at the new Bardenay will be 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
