New downtown Italian restaurant EaTo opens with take-out puffed pizzas

The Eastside of chef named James Beard, Jamie Malone, transforms into an Italian restaurant and market called EaTo on Friday, August 6, bringing downtown Minneapolis a cool new place to enjoy pizza, salads, sandwiches, homemade sausages, coffees and soft ice cream.

EaTo will open in a few phases, starting with a new takeaway window and patio service for now (305 Washington Avenue South). Malone, whose acclaimed French restaurant Grand Cafe died out on Grand Avenue last fall, retains a consulting role at the reimagined company EaTo with help from chef Matt Henrickson. Monroe Enterprises, the hospitality team behind Grand Cafe and the most recent iteration of the space as Eastside, still owns it. The initial hours are 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

While Eastside lay dormant during the pandemic, Malone used the site to test the La Pistola and Woodfire takeout pop-ups. La Pistola’s taleggio and rosemary honey pizza is resurfacing at EaTo, and other opening pies come in varieties of confit chicken or cacio y pepe. Fried meats include steak-culottes with cream of mushroom and smoked button mushrooms, and a sandwich section offers an option of fried maitake or mortadella, fried chicken, and Gruyere.

EaTo also debuts a take-out creation that the kitchen calls pizza puffs, which consist of cheese pockets filled with spicy nduja or olive.

“It’s like Totino’s adult pizza rolls,” owner / operator Matt Monroe explains at Star Tribune.

Mixologist Marco Zappia from 3Leche is shaking up the classics with cocktails like a mandarin negroni. There are also espresso drinks, appetizers and digestives to start.

EaTo’s interior spaces will go live in the fall, starting with a coffee shop and market selling imported Italian products in October. In November, look for a meat counter selling take-out steaks and a bottle shop with selections from Grand Café sommelier and EaTo’s beverage manager, Scarlett Carrasco-Polanco. Wines purchased by customers can be blown and poured at the table.

Carrasco-Polanco also organizes August wines for Eater Wine Club, the site’s monthly wine subscription service. Its theme is centered on the migrations of grapes, that is to say wines rooted in the same family of grapes but produced many kilometers from each other.