Restaurants & dining in Esko, Minnesota
Part of the Esko neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
This is the shortest dining section in the guide, and honestly so. Esko has one restaurant.
Eskomo Pizza Pies sits at 3 Highway 61 East, at the corner of Canosia Road and Highway 61 in what passes for downtown Esko, doing pizza, wings, burgers, sandwiches, and wraps for takeout and delivery daily. It is the community's default Friday night, its team dinner, and its post-game stop, and in a place with no bar, no cafe, and no grocery store, that gives one pizza counter an outsized civic role.
Everything else is a drive, and the drive is short. Cloquet, ten minutes west, has the county's real dining: Gordy's Hi-Hat at 415 Sunnyside Drive, the 1960 drive-in still run by the Lundquist family and the most famous restaurant in Carlton County, plus The Jack on Cloquet Avenue, Pedro's Grill and Cantina, Carmen's, Heather's Cafe for breakfast, and Sammy's Pizza. Streetcar Kitchen & Pub is a few minutes further southwest in Carlton. That is where Esko households actually eat out.
For anything beyond that, Duluth is 22 minutes: Canal Park, the Lincoln Park craft district, and the full range of the metro's restaurants and breweries. There is no coffee shop, brewery, or bakery in Esko, and there is unlikely to be one, because there is no commercial district for it to occupy. Households here make coffee at home.
Sit-down Mexican at 3 Highway 61 East, on the Canosia Road corner, and currently the restaurant trading at Esko's one commercial address.
The pizza counter long treated as Esko's default, at the same 3 Highway 61 East address. A different restaurant is now listed and trading there and nothing current can be found for Eskomo, so this may be a business that has changed hands. Confirm before relying on it.
The 1960 Cloquet drive-in still run by the Lundquist family, about 10 minutes west, and the single most famous restaurant in Carlton County.
One of Cloquet's better-regarded sit-down rooms, at 1016 Cloquet Avenue, about 10 minutes west.
Cloquet Mexican restaurant at 7 8th Street, a regular destination for Esko families.
Pub and kitchen in Carlton, about 12 minutes southwest, known for burgers, salads, and craft beer.
Cloquet cafe at 1304 Cloquet Avenue doing breakfast all day and lunch, the nearest sit-down morning food to Esko.
Longtime Cloquet bar and restaurant at 1410 Prospect Avenue West, about 10 minutes west.
Hours and menus change, confirm with each business.
Restaurants & dining next door
Ten minutes west, the county's largest city, with the grocery, hospital, and restaurants Esko does not have.
CarltonSouthwest at the Jay Cooke gateway, the county seat, which absorbed the former city of Thomson in 2015. Similar rural river-corridor character with its own ISD 93 schools.
ProctorFifteen minutes northeast up I-35, an older railroad town with a small district and much lower prices.
Fond du LacDuluth's far western neighborhood down the river, the closest Duluth address to the Carlton County corridor.
HermantownThe other small-district family suburb in the metro, newer housing and closer to Duluth retail.