Earlier this month, chef Jennifer Jasinski and longtime business partner, Beth Gruitch, announced that they would be closing one of their four celebrated Denver restaurants and would “pass the baton” at two others. But the pair will hold onto Larimer Square’s Rioja, which was their first restaurant.
“We’re not dead yet,” Jasinski laughed as she referenced a Monty Python bit to describe the newest phase of her lauded 25-year-plus career in Denver.
But Stoic & Genuine, which is inside Union Station, will close on Sept. 1, while French staple Bistro Vendome and the elegant, Iberian-flavored Ultreia will both be taken over by restaurateurs who have worked with Jasinski and Gruitch at their umbrella company, Crafted Concepts.
The news came around the same time that several other well-known or upscale Denver restaurants, including Cantina Loca, D Bar, Bistro LeRoux and Citizen Rail, have shuttered. But for Gruitch and Jasinski, the move has been a long time coming.
“The pandemic beat the crap out of us,” said Jasinski, a James Beard Award winner and “Top Chef Masters” finalist who has trained legions of chefs over the decades. “It aged me a lot. It put us through the wringer. It felt like 10 years in two-and-a-half years.”
“A lot of people had time off, and meanwhile Jen and I and a couple of the executive teams arerunning around, and trying to do to-go, and pivot, and reinvent ourselves,” Gruitch added about the chaos that overtook the restaurant industry at the time. “It was hard. It was really hard. It was really hard after it, too. Wasn’t just during it.”
As an example, Jasinski pointed out the exploded cost of a simple, everyday kitchen staple:
disposable latex gloves. “Latex gloves were, like, $30 a case [before the pandemic],” she said. “They went to $100 a case because there’s a shortage, right?” But “there’s no shortage now” and a case of gloves has only gone up — to $110.
“Nothing went back,” Gruitch added.
So, after captaining four restaurants through the violent seas of the pandemic and arriving onthe other side, the two decided it was time to step back a bit.
But their influence will remain front and center. “So many people came up through that company, even mercenaries who just worked for a couple of shifts,” said Adam Branz, who helped found Ultreia in 2017 and will now take over as sole operating partner. “I’ll be in a kitchen and I’ll hear something come out of a chef’s mouth and I’ll go, ‘Oh, that was Chef Jen.’ ”
Jasinski and Gruitch were “foundational” to Denver’s current dining landscape, he added.“I feel their presence in this city and I think that will be around for a long time.”
Branz, who left Ultreia to open Split Lip, which is located inside the Number Thirty Eight bar in the River North Art District, also returns as executive chef at Ultreia, 1701 Wynkoop St. Bistro Vendôme, 2267 Kearney St., goes to Tim Kuklinski, an 18-year veteran of Crafted Concepts.
John Imbergamo, a Denver restaurant consultant who handles marketing for Crafted Concepts, said he’s “proudest of the ‘family tree’ that populates” the local restaurant scene. People who got their start at one of Beth and Jen’s restaurants percolate through the best restaurants in town.”
That tree includes local James Beard nominees Dana Rodriguez (Carne, Work & Class, Super Mega Bien), and Top Chef stars Carrie Baird (The Fox and the Hen) and Jorel Pierce, who helped conceptualize Euclid Hall, another Crafted Concepts restaurant that closed in 2020.
Now it’s back to where it all began: Rioja, their cozy Mediterranean hideaway at 1431 Larimer St., which celebrates its 20th anniversary in November. Gruitch and Jasinski opened Rioja
in 2004 after working together at Hotel Monaco’s upscale Italian restaurant, Panzano.
“Everybody [except Beth] told me what I couldn’t do at Panzano,” Jasinski said. “‘Oh, you’re notgonna sell seafood … It’s only a steakhouse mentality here.’ And maybe I was ignorant, anddefinitely stubborn, definitely pig-headed — Beth probably has some better words than me — but Iwas like, no. If I make delicious food, like ‘Field of Dreams’, if I build it, they will come.
“And we did Rioja and we built that,” she said. “I felt like we were doing good work in our ownlittle way. We were providing a service that maybe wasn’t there before. We were doingsomething that the people of Denver wanted, and that felt great.”
For Jasinski, a Californian, her career in Denver was partly good luck. She wound up here whileworking for Wolfgang Puck, but decided to stay to test her chops.
“I moved to Denver and I wanted to see if I was as good of a chef as I hoped I was,” saidJasinski. “I felt like Denver not only gave me a chance but believed in me. … I got to meet my business partner, the best person in the world, Beth Gruitch, in Denver. I got to meet my husband” — fellow chef Max MacKissock — “in Denver. Icreated this life that is really amazing.”
Gruitch, who is originally from Colorado Springs, managed restaurants in Chicago and Las Vegas before returning to Colorado in the late 1990s.
“Colorado is home to me,” she said. “Being close to family — not only my family, but the family of restaurants, the restaurant community, our staff — that’s what [Denver] means.”
Originally Published: August 21, 2024 at 6:42 a.m.
