St. Petersburg’s best Indian food and Florida’s top craft distillery walk into a Sunday brunch, and no, this isn’t the setup to a joke. It’s the best thing to happen to your weekends since someone invented sleeping in.
St. Petersburg Distillery, the family-owned craft spirit operation at 800 31st St. S., has teamed up with The Twisted Indian for a weekly collaboration called St. Petersburg Distillery Gets Twisted. Every Sunday from 11 am to 2 pm, the distillery’s relaxed outdoor setting fills with Twisted Indian’s brunch menu and specially crafted cocktails, including a Mango Lassi cocktail made specifically for this pairing. The distillery’s new spring cocktail menu is also on offer, because apparently just the Mango Lassi wouldn’t have been enough of a reason to show up.
Let’s be clear about what we’re dealing with here. The St. Petersburg Distillery isn’t some weekend hobby project that two guys started in a garage after watching too many cooking shows. It’s a high-quality operation that’s been crafting small-batch, award-winning spirits since 2014, using locally sourced Florida ingredients to produce whiskey, rum, gin, and vodka with a level of care that frankly makes you feel a little guilty about your last liquor store run.
Then there’s The Twisted Indian. Chef and owner Lokesh Vale has spent years redefining what Indian food can look like in St. Pete, and the answer, it turns out, is spectacular. His menu is a love letter to bold Indian flavors filtered through an unapologetically American lens, featuring Bollywood Bowls, Naanwiches, Ginger Garlic Naan, and enough other options to make your first visit almost certainly the start of a regular habit.
Photo via St. Petersburg Distillery
Match made in heaven
These two St. Pete staples share a Sunday together, and the pairing makes so much sense it almost feels like someone should’ve done it sooner. The Twisted Indian’s bold, complex flavors and St. Petersburg Distillery’s handcrafted cocktails aren’t just complementary, they’re practically finishing each other’s sentences. The spice and richness of Vale’s cooking finds a worthy match in the distillery’s carefully crafted pours, and you’ll probably finish your Mango Lassi wondering how this wasn’t always a thing.
There are also lawn games, including Twister, which means that at a place literally called “Gets Twisted,” they’ve set up an honest-to-goodness game of Twister on the lawn. That’s either the best branding decision anyone’s made this year, or a very happy accident. Either way, it works.
Head to the distillery every Sunday from 11 am to 2 pm. It’s local, it’s casual, it’s outdoors, and your Sunday brunch plans just got considerably more interesting.