Few dog breeds have as wild a following as corgis. With their stubby little legs and fluffy butts, these royal canines beloved by the late Queen Elizabeth have earned a fanatic fan base. So, it’s no surprise Denver has a pub named after one. Enter Wild Corgi Pub at 1223 E. 13th Ave., where the drinks are strong, the meats are smoky, and the muse is a mischievous corgi named Winston.
“When he was a puppy, the joke was always that I was going to drop him back off at the fire department because he was a bad little baby,” explained Wild Corgi owner Dusty Jones. “He would keep me up all night crying [and] he even ate through my couch, so he’s naughty.”
Eight years later Winston is more of a couch potato than a couch eater, but those wild puppy days inspired both the pub’s logo and its namesake.
“We had about 250 names that we’d written down, and I just kept coming back to Wild Corgi,” Jones said.
The Dog Behind the Bar
“I was looking over my little sister’s shoulder while she was on Instagram and I saw a bunch of puppies,” Jones shared, recalling Winston’s origin story. “I told her to find out where they were because I wanted one, and then a couple weeks later I had a puppy.”
Winston is “part purebred, part sneaky little neighbor dog,” said Jones. Legend has it, he added, the neighbor dog, a Jack Russel terrier, snuck in and got the two female dogs pregnant.
“Winston is very small, you wouldn’t know that he was mixed with anything, he’s just much tinier than a regular corgi,” he continued.
He should know, Winston isn’t the pub owner’s first corgi. He’s had two others before, Fievel Mousekewitz (a mixed corgi named after the leading mouse in An American Tail) and a purebred named Jasmine Honeypots. Winston carries the surname Honeypots as well, after Winnie the Pooh, thanks to a habit of running around in a red T-shirt when he was little. Jones also currently has another dog, Miley, a 12-year-old mini golden retriever.
The Man Behind the Bar and the Dog
Jones didn’t follow a traditional path into the industry. With a 15-year career in telecommunications, he only discovered bartending after a chance encounter while driving for Uber Black. His passenger, the owner of the now-closed Marion Street Tavern, needed a bartender.
“He was like, ‘I need a bartender,’ and I was 33 at the time,” recalled Jones. “I just kind of slipped out, ‘I wish I could do that,’ and he said, ‘You’re hired.’”
Jones quickly worked his way up the ranks, moving to head bartender and then general manager in less than a year. Then, seven years ago, Jones bought the place outright and transformed it into the Wild Corgi. His goal was to create a true neighborhood bar that also had the freedom to experiment. When the pandemic hit, Wild Corgi shifted focus to food, expanding the smoked meats program and leaning into the role as both bar and restaurant.
The Pub Today
The pub itself is a true neighborhood spot. It’s cozy and familiar, with a dark bar, shelves lined with more than 100 whiskeys, and a menu full of smoked meats and comfort classics.
“We got the smoker because we wanted to do something different. There wasn’t really a sit down barbecue place at the time, especially in the neighborhood,” Jones shared. “My chef, Daniel Bombard, is amazing. He thinks a lot about what he’s doing. We use some of my mother’s recipes growing up, and then it’s a lot of trial and error.”
On the menu you’ll find creamy mac and cheese, fish and chips, smoked brisket and corned beef, and housemade tiramisu. Make sure to order the smoked chicken wings too, it’s one of the best in the city and there’s a ton of sauces and dry rubs to choose from.
It’s all approved by the dog too, added Jones. “Winston’s been known to eat some of our smoked steak when he’s a good boy.”
As for the drinks, there’s always at least one cocktail featuring the infamously beloved Malört, which the crew calls Corgi Kool-Aid, alongside rotating smoked cocktails and seasonal menus shaped by the whole bar team.
“We’re the number one Malört account in the state right now,” Jones proudly stated. “We actually just won the [Malört x Mover and Shaker Bar Crawl] infusion contest. My bar manager, Ariana Peak, made a 1000 Island fat-washed Malört, served with a pinwheel made with our smoked corn beef and Swiss cheese.”
Corgi Community
While being a neighborhood bar would have been enough, Jones quickly realized that the corgi angle gave it some extra woof.
“I’ve met somebody from almost every continent because there’s a lot of crazy corgi owners,” he said. “It’s been really fun to bond with customers over that.’
That sense of community spills over to the bar, where TVs flash cheeky memes and, most importantly, photos of customers’ dogs. In fact, you can submit yours by emailing Dusty at dusty@wildcorgipub.com.
“People get really excited when they see their dog pop up on the TV,” said Jones. “I probably have two or three hundred backlogged puppies I need to get to.”
As much as the corgi community has embraced the pub, Jones has embraced the corgi community right back. The bar supports local dog events like Corgi and Friends Take Over the Park and Tour de Corgi in Fort Collins, and regularly raises money for Bandit’s Band-Aids, a nonprofit that helps pet owners cover medical bills. The bar’s upcoming seven-year anniversary party will once again direct a portion of proceeds to the organization.
“We are such a tight community and that was one of my big focuses, to be a neighborhood pub,” Jones expressed.
The community connection extends beyond dogs. Enjoy events such as Trivia Tuesday, Wing Wednesday (where you can get 20 wings and a beer for $25), and poker night on Thursdays. During its quarterly Puzzlapalooza event, teams race to complete a 500-piece jigsaw while sabotaging their opponents with Malört shots and corndog breaks. And when the holidays roll around, Wild Corgi goes all out, especially for Corgi Christmas, when the pub transforms into a full-blown winter wonderland of decorations and themed cocktails.
The bar has also become a platform for local artists. Jones encourages anyone without a space to display their work to bring it in, and he’ll hang it in the lounge at no cost. Each piece goes up with the artist’s Venmo or contact info, so if a customer wants to buy it right off the wall, they can.
”We’ve got a guy that does an art series called, ‘Kinky Corgis,’ which are drawings where the corgis are in negligee or S&M gear,” he said with a laugh.
While the corgi connection adds to the fun, for Jones, the dogs are more than just mascots.
“When I’m having a bad day they just jump up on me and stare at me like, ‘What are we going to do dad?’ he said. “That unconditional love is everything.”
Visit Wild Corgi Pub on Mondays from 5 to 10 p.m.; Tuesday through Thursday from 5 p.m. to midnight; Friday and Saturday from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.; and Sunday from 4:30 to 10:30 p.m. 1223 E. 13th Ave., Denver, wildcorgipub.com
