Drinking Wyoming: The Experience In Pinedale Lives Up To Its Name

Cowboy State Daily’s 'Drinking Wyoming' is presented by Pine Bluffs Distilling

This Pinedale restaurant has a name that says it all — The Experience at Lakeside

It is an experience, and a great one, at that.

The restaurant and bar sits beside Fremont Lake’s deep, blue, crystal-clear water surrounded by the beautiful Wind River Range off in the distance.

With sailboats and motorboats docked nearby, it’s not a stretch to feel as if one is sitting on the coast of some faraway European country like Italy.

And that illusion is not hurt one bit by The Experience’s cocktail menu.

Italian Iced Tea. Limoncello Lemondrop. Lakeside Godfather. Venetian Martini.

The restaurant serves up a tour of Italy for the tongue and, accented by a beautiful lakeside sunrise, it offers a one-of-a-kind experience in Wyoming.

But the Italian flair doesn’t stop with the cocktails on this menu.

There are quite a few Italian wines as well: Badia Di Morrona Tanteno from Tuscany, Cecilia Monte Nebbiolo Doc from Langhe, Poderi San Lazzaro Sangiovese from Marche, and that’s just a few from the red side. There are plenty of Italian options on the white and sparkly sides too.

For those who don’t drink alcohol, there’s still something special on the menu with Italian flair — house-made Italian sodas in flavors ranging from blackberry, blood orange and lemon to peach, pomegranate and raspberry.

The cocktails were all created by David Rivezzo, who said he wanted to pay a little bit of homage to his Italian heritage.

“A couple of restaurants that I managed before, their weak spot was always their bar,” Rivezzo said. “But I’ve always been drawn to the bar, and I’ve always loved mixing cocktails.”

Rivezzo, a musician at heart, has a knack for blending cocktails with tasting notes that are just so.

“My thought behind cocktails is, just because it has alcohol doesn’t mean it needs to taste like it,” he said. “Our margaritas, for instance. They’re 50% alcohol, but you don’t taste it. It’s an enjoyable beverage. Cocktails are something you should always enjoy.”

Wyoming Inspired Drinks

Not all of the cocktails on the bar’s menu are Italian. Some are Wyoming inspired, like the Wind River Huckleberry Tea.

It’s one of the restaurant’s most popular drinks, featuring vodka, gin, tequila, rum and triple sec, with fresh lemon and huckleberry, topped off with Twisted Tea.

What’s funny about this particular drink is that it was inspired when Rivezzo found an entire keg of Twisted Tea at the restaurant.

“I can’t stand Twisted Tea, and I had a whole keg of it I needed to sell,” he said. “So, I needed to come up with something interesting to make with it.”

The drink he came up with ultimately changed his mind about Twisted Tea, and the cocktail has since become one of his personal favorites — not bad for a drink he thought he was making up just to get rid of something he didn’t want.

Rivezzo hasn’t neglected whiskey in his cocktails either, knowing it is a Wyoming favorite. Lakeside Southern Punch uses whiskey as its base, accented with triple sec, cranberry, lemon juice, Sprite and a touch of sugary red grenadine for both color and sweetness.

And there’s the Lakeside Lounger, which walks in both the Wyoming and Italian worlds, with gin that’s been accented by Italian spirits like Orangecello and Aperol. That’s finished with some fresh lemon juice, tying all the flavors together in a refreshing way.

“Everything was specifically designed for our menu,” Rivezzo said. “I tried to create a bit of variety, knowing that people here in the Cowboy State like to have their whiskey drinks as well.”

Italian-Inspired Food

For those who want to do more than just sip cocktails by the sunset, this restaurant delivers a great experience on that front as well. But there, it’s not Rivezzo who is the star of the show, it’s his wife Cindy.

She is the one who designed the restaurant’s main dinner menu, and it goes very well with all the Italian wines and cocktails her husband created.

“There was no Italian food here, so we decided to do an Italian smokehouse,” Cindy told Cowboy State Daily. “We just wanted to bring something different to the community.”

Rivezzo helps his wife with smoking the meats for the day, but everything else is her show, and it’s quite a show at that.

Cindy went to the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena, California, which was a Le Cordon Bleu School offering some of the best classical French training in the United States. She’s had a wide array of experiences out in the culinary world, including catering for the Los Angeles Rams.

Her secret weapon, though, is something simple. She does as much as possible from scratch..

I wanted to make sure that everything I make on the menu is made in house,” she said. “So, 90% of my menu are things I make in house. The French fries, the bread for the sandwiches and burgers we don’t make, but I make everything else. I pickle my own vegetables, and all the sauces are made in house — barbecue sauces, mustards, and every pasta sauce is from scratch.”

Her fresh Italian-American take is reflected throughout the menu with dishes like Steak Tagliata, a garlic-rosemary marinated steak topped with a fresh cherry-tomato-arugula slaw over house potatoes, and Arrabbiata Shrimp, lemon-garlic marinated shrimp over angel hair in a spicy sauce.

That’s just a few of the dishes available for those who’d like an experience very akin to eating at a coastal restaurant in a European country like Italy, where the sun is going to slip like magic behind a veil of mountains while you eat amazing fresh food, with a perfectly mixed cocktail in hand. Salute.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.