Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Gingers gastropub finally set to open
When the COVID-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, lately wears 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 blocks west 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 sometimes we called people more professional than us.”
Love and Brown knew little about carpentry back in March, when the coronavirus hurled South Florida into lockdowns. Then hired contractors and painters stopped showing up.
“No one was pushing papers, everything was 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 from Love’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 den was 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. Then we 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.”
Gingers won’t fix your flat this time, although there will be plenty of bike racks, says Love, a regular
of the on-hiatus Critical Mass group rides that wind through Fort Lauderdale. A central bar area will host weekly punk and bluegrass acts, but its dining room will add or subtract seating based on “how the night goes and how popular it gets,” she says.
She intends the food to be as freewheeling as the venue. The menu, still being finalized, will include gastropub staples such as hamburgers ground inhouse, chicken wings and charcuterie plates. But most of the lineup will rotate daily: fresh-baked breads and pastas, Floribbean fare such as mango mahi-mahi and Cuban sandwiches built with brined pork tenderloin.
In charge of the Gingers kitchen is Inchoate (The Keg on 6th, Reed’s River House), a chef-turned-art gallerist whose Oakland Park studio shut down in April because of the pandemic. His gallery’s artwork will instead hang inside Gingers, as will pieces from rotating local artists, he says.
“We’ll do ramen bowls, soba noodle dishes. I used to make this delicious, giant egg roll that’s the size of a White Claw can,” Inchoate says. “I’ve worked in restaurants where customers order the same predictable thing every day, and I guess that’s great for a restaurant chain. But that’s not us. We really find our wealth in our friends and community, and good beer.”