The end of summer isn’t all bad. For Colorado’s restaurants, it means a riot of fresh fruit and produce from starters to dessert menus. It means patios becoming just bearably cool after the 90-degree nights and before the snow comes. And it means packing in delicious road trip pit stops before it’s back to school (and to work).
The break is almost over, but at these three new Front Range restaurants, you’ll find lots of reasons to squeeze what’s left of the season.
For date-night: Noisette, Highland
First-time restaurateurs Tim and Lillian Lu have just opened a dreamy jewel box of a dining room on a surprisingly quiet corner in Lower Highland. The couple moved to Denver from New York back in 2018 to be closer to family and eventually open their own business. And, boy, four years later have they done it.
At Noisette, the Lus split kitchen duties, with Tim on the savory restaurant side and Lillian making the intricate desserts and breads as well as bonbons and pastries for her forthcoming bakery. Her bread service could inspire its own love poem with folded brown butter, the silkiest smooth texture and a hint of fleur de sel for spreading over baguettes.
Tim’s escargot in potato choux pastry is the sneakiest snail dish I’ve ever tasted. And his veggie choux farcie is a tender layering of squash, buckwheat and chanterelle mushrooms stuffed in cabbage and blanketed over by shaved truffles (it was made specifically for the chef’s vegetarian dad). The whole meal is served with an earnestness that makes it clear how the Lus have poured their hearts into and out from each dish.
3254 Navajo St.; 720-769-8103; 5-9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, 5-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; noisettedenver.com
For small-town charm; Marigold, Lyons
Chef Theo Adley has settled in a rustic-modern space on Lyons’ Main Street with his own dinner spot, after years of leading kitchens from Denver’s Populist to Southwest Colorado’s Dunton Hot Springs. Now Marigold’s menu consists of a dozen of Adley’s favorite meal-makers, meant to change seasonally and including (for the moment) nectarine and labneh pork spare ribs and cantaloupe salad with chevre, sweet onion and hazelnut.
The farm-fed menu with Northern Italian and Southern French-inflected dishes isn’t anything new to Colorado, but Adley’s evolving preparations of all of the above never do get old, either. Be sure to check out his team’s cocktail and natural wine lists before settling on a handful of plates to share and vowing to come back for the other half of the menu another evening.
405 Main St., Lyons, 970-987-1572, 5-9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, marigoldlyons.com
For a deli lunch: Pirate Alley Boucherie, Downtown
Chefs Kyle and Katy Foster are longtime Denver hospitality pros. He has butchered whole animals across town from Colt & Gray to Rebel and his own Southern comfort spot, Julep (all since closed). She has run the Highland cooking school destination Stir for 12 years and counting. Now the couple has found a sweet spot combining their two crowd-favorite concepts: Katy’s Stir and Kyle’s Pirate Alley Po’ Boys.
The latter gained a dedicated following as soon as the chef started making them at Julep over the lunch hour. Now, starting Sept. 8 at the Ice House building in LoDo, sandwich lovers will find Foster’s creations like the Roast Beef Debris with sweet potato chips, cabbage, remoulade and gravy (pictured). They’ll also find house gumbo, charcuterie and deli meats on fresh sandwiches.
The deli will share space with a larger outpost of Katy’s cooking school, Stir, where the Fosters are planning to host special events, including their own creative pop-ups and visiting chef dinners.
1801 Wynkoop St., opening for lunch Wednesday-Saturday starting Sept. 8, piratealleydenver.com
