Eli's Food and Cocktails

I think we have hit the point in which we have decided there must be better chicken wings around town than those served at Buffalo Wild Wings. Don't get me wrong, BWW hits the spot now and then and their sauces are great, but sometimes the wings are positively anorexic or naked (i.e. there is no sauce on them). The misses are memorable more often than not. So, we are in search of a better wing. I had recently come across a list of top wing spots in a City Pages blog post, so we decided to try one the other day.

We decided on Eli's as it is not too far away and we had been there a few years ago and the food was great then, but we had not made it back. We visited on a Sunday night, so it was pretty quiet when we arrived.

We started with an order of wings from the specials list, the Sirracha wings with a lime sour cream dipping sauce. The wings were large and very crispy on the outside with a flavorful wing sauce that was pretty spicy, but not overly so. I thought the wing sauce was a bit more interesting than your standard buffalo sauce.

I had the tuna steak sandwich, which was wonderful. The tuna was in pieces and not really a true tuna steak, though the pieces of tuna tasted very fresh and I loved the pickled vegetables on top.

John had the BLT with avocado. It was on toasted sourdough bread and had very good quality bacon on it as well. The tomatoes were very thick and juicy and not sad winter tomatoes you sometimes see this time of the year in Minnesota. The fries were pretty good; quite crisp.

Overall, we had a great visit. The food and service were both excellent. We need to try and stop in more often and try some of the other items on the menu.


Eli's Food and Cocktails
Downtown location:
1225 Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis, MN
612.332.9997

NE Minneapolis location:
815 East Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis, MN
612.331.0031