We spent some time up in northern Minnesota this past weekend and had a wonderful time. People always rave about Betty’s pies, and while the pies there are delicious, the rest of the food seem as pretty lacking from our experience. So, we stopped at the Rustic Inn for a nice dinner (and pies).
The menu is nicer than a lot of places we’ve been to up north and they take pride in their creativity and customer service here. They’ve got a variety of things that you’ll have to choose between, but our decision didn’t take long. I needed the black cherry smoke BBQ pork ribs and D.Rough got the Wild Rice Meatloaf. I somehow talked myself out of getting the Castle Danger Beer battered onion rings, and then as soon as I saw someone else’s order, I regretted that decision immediately. They’re massive, so only order these if you’re going to share them – they look incredible.
The whole time we were waiting for our food (which wasn’t terribly long), there are multiple chalkboards listing the pies that are available today. Literally almost every angle in the place you can see the pie menu – smart thinking, since it saved D.Rough time on deciding after we ate our food.
The BBQ ribs were absolutely great. They were fall off the bone, but not in that sloppy way – they still had that great meat-y chew to them. The BBQ sauce itself was quite good, as well. There were a lot of ribs on the plate too, 8 altogether, stacked up really fancy, like a little log cabin. That’s about ¾ of a rack, so I hope you’re hungry. The horseradish mashed potatoes were some of the best I’ve had, and I truly do not like horseradish. Just awesome.
D.Rough’s meatloaf was also out of this world. It’s got some Italian sausage mixed in with the wild rice, as well as some spices that make it taste borderline Cajun. It’s super creative and delicious! Again, the mashed potatoes on her plate were the same as mine, so also awesome.
Even though we knew which pie slices we were going to get, we still had to figure out how we were going to split these things up. We finally decided to get one slice of pie to split between us while we were still at the restaurant, and then both of us would get our own slice to take back and eat later that night. We split a 5-layer chocolate pie at the restaurant. We kept laughing because with the 5 at the beginning, it looked like “Slayer Chocolate Pie” on the signs. It was fantastic. It had some whipped chocolate on top, as well as some cinnamon layers and a white chocolate layer. Really a delicious slice of pie.
For our road pies, D.Rough got the peanut butter pie and I pulled a surprise move and got the cherry and peach crumble. We didn’t get photos of these, but I promise they were awesome. I’m not a peanut butter guy, but D.Rough really raved about her slice. My crumble was one of the better ones I’ve had.
Do yourself a favor and go grab a bite to eat here. You won’t be disappointed with the selection or the quality. I’m glad we made it there and can’t wait until we go back!
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