Gingers gastropub finally set to open
When theCOVID-19 pandemic halted construction of Zoe Love’s new gastropub, Gingers Bar and Restaurant in Oakland Park, she rented power tools and built it herself.
Love, Gingers’ co-owner and bartender, latelywears her hard hat outside the restaurant, slated to open this October in a quiet, U-shaped strip mall on Oakland Park Boulevard, a couple of blockswest of Dixie Highway. At daytime passersby (and followers on Gingers’ Facebook page) can usually spot Love jackhammering into sidewalk or buzzing into plywood with circular saws.
“We cut everything, screwed everything, turned it into tables and chairs and shelving and cabinets and employee lockers and a bench,” says Love, who custom-built furniture with business partner Stephen
Brown. “And sometimeswe called people more professional than us.”
Love and Brown knew little about carpentry back inMarch, when the coronavirus hurled South Florida into lockdowns. Then hired contractors and painters stopped showing up.
“No onewas pushing papers, everythingwas closed for months,” Love says. “It’s a little boring this summer but this has been a fun project.”
And a time-consuming one. The 4,000-square-foot restaurant comes from Love, Brown and Thaddeus Inchoate, three alumni of the hipsterific craft-beer hangout Two& on Las Olas Boulevard that shuttered in 2018. The name comes fromLove’s reddish-blonde hair and Brown’s bushy beard.
As with Gingers, Love brought a similar DIY spirit to Two&, which stuck out like a bent bicycle spoke on ritzy Las Olas Boulevard, its curious name inviting more questions than it answered. On any given night, the locals-oriented denwas a bicycle repair shop, craftbeer bar and antiques store, with charmingly mismatched midcentury furniture, karaoke and live punk music.
“At Two&, we knew it was important not to be so rigid,” Love says. “That’s what I liked. We started with craft beer and wine, then liquor. Thenwe added a bike shop, then art on the walls, then antiques, and it attracted a diverse group of folks. Gingers is that kind of place. We’re here for local people to unwind, and things will get strange from time to time.”
Gingerswon’t fix your flat this time, although there will be plenty of bike racks, says Love, a regular