Ask anyone who has lived for at least a few years in this gateway to the Rocky Mountains, and they’ll say Denver has changed.
It’s younger and edgier, and it bubbles with an energy wholly absent when the city was “nothing but a big ol’ cow town in the early ’80s,” as one local said. Like most places, the change is principally seen in rising home prices (bad!) and a blossoming food and drink scene (good!).
But the food and drink explosion has come in one particularly broad and curious form: the food market.
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Food markets have bubbled up from coast to coast, driven by successes like New York’s Chelsea Market and the Ferry Building in San Francisco. But in Denver, a city of 650,000, it’s a trend on overdrive. Four food markets have opened during the last three years, and another is expected by the end of the year.
They tend to have commonalities: rehabbed old buildings, a broad variety of options, beer as a central component and McDonald’s need not apply.
“There’s a big push for independent, local operators out here,” said Mark Shaker, one of the founding partners of Stanley Marketplace, which plans to open a 140,000-square-foot expanse of restaurants, offices and retail by the end of the year. “No one wants to go to a strip mall anymore, so the question is how do you do something that creates an experience?”
That question is being answered across Denver in a way that locals are embracing and tourists should not miss.
The Source
It’s the one that came first and made Denver rethink the possibilities.
The Source opened in 2013 in the RiNo (River North) neighborhood, a place that was an afterthought to much of the rest of the city at the time. It’s now a neighborhood in full transformation and will include a 10-story hotel beside The Source by the end of 2017.
Housed in a 30,000-square-foot, 1880s-era foundry, the building was being used for storage when Kyle Zeppelin found it — brick walls, barnlike, concrete floor and spray-painted graffiti on the walls. He left the art because it tapped into the energy he wanted.
Vendors include a butcher, a baker, a coffee shop, a cheese shop, two restaurants and Crooked Stave, one of Denver’s most buzzed-about breweries.
The Source describes itself as a “one stop shop for elevated food from all independent businesses.” Or, as Zeppelin calls it, “The new form of Main Street.”
3350 Brighton Blvd., www.thesourcedenver.com
Avanti Food & Beverage
If a tourist wanted to visit just one of Denver’s food halls, this should be the one. It’s tough to beat grabbing a beer and relaxing on the second floor patio with a view of the Denver skyline.
Avanti opened last year in the LoHi neighborhood (Lower Highlands — they love their silly neighborhood nicknames) and, like its siblings, exists in a handsome, renovated building. Still visible in peeling paint on the outside are the words “Dodson’s Variety Store: Hardware, Groceries, Furniture” with an old-time Pepsi logo.
Most of the food halls also wade into nonedible pursuits — flower shops are particularly popular. But Avanti is strictly food and beer. Five stalls and a bar anchor the first floor, and three more counters and another bar sit on the second floor. Businesses typically sign leases of between nine and 24 months, with a plan to start their own brick-and-mortar operations once they get things humming at Avanti.
For a late lunch, I stopped by Souk Shawarma and at the counter guy’s recommendation ordered a chicken shawarma sandwich with falafel added for crunch. I was glad to hear that the order would be ready in “five or six minutes because we make the falafel fresh.” I grabbed a beer and chatted with bartender Geoff Piasecki, who previously worked at The Source and said the food hall craze “is definitely the hip thing right now. People love it.” It’s especially popular for dates forged on Tinder.
“You can always tell how it’s going,” he said. “We had three dates going well at this end of the bar the other night. Down at the other end, not so good.”
3200 Pecos St., www.avantifandb.com
Union Station
For decades, Denver’s downtown train station was simply a place to pass through on the way to somewhere else.
But with the city’s renaissance — and especially the one that has happened downtown — Union Station came to be seen as an opportunity. And in 2014, the old train station was reinvented as a gathering place for eating, shopping, lounging and even sleeping. In addition to 13 vendors — restaurants, a bookstore, a flower shop and a coffee shop — the 112-room Crawford Hotel (www.thecrawfordhotel.com) has been elegantly shoehorned into the top floors of the historic building. Dining options included one of the hottest breakfast spots in town (Snooze), a restaurant launched by a James Beard Award-winning chef (Stoic & Genuine) and a ’30s-era cocktail bar (The Cooper Lounge).
Amid the people staring into laptops with steaming cups of coffee and chatting away with friends on a Thursday afternoon, Union Station was barely recognizable as a train station (other than the trains pulling up outside the building, of course). Sadly, the shuffleboard table in the center of the room sat unused. But its presence made Union Station a special kind of train station.
1701 Wynkoop St., www.unionstationindenver.com
Central Market
The most recent addition (for now), Central Market opened in September in the RiNo neighborhood, one mile from The Source.
It’s a gourmet market co-founded by Jeff Osaka, a prominent local chef, that’s home to 13 local vendors, including a butcher, a chocolatier, a creamery, an ice cream shop, a cheese purveyor, a bar and a pizza place.
I bellied up to the counter at The Local Butcher in the center of the room, where two things were on the menu: an Italian beef sandwich and a meatball sub. I went for the meatball sub — hearty, fresh and even a touch gamy — in a good way. The bread was pillowy fresh, with a slight crunch.
Business had been so good, owner Justin Herd said, that he was already contemplating another location. Few of the vendors on an early Saturday evening seemed to have grounds for complaints. The place was packed.
2669 Larimer St., www.denvercentralmarket.com
Stanley Marketplace
By the end of the year, the Denver area will have its fifth and arguably most ambitious food market to date.
Mark Shaker initially envisioned opening a beer hall in Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood (site of the city’s old airport), but when he was offered the old Stanley Aviation plant a few hundred yards away in the neighboring suburb of Aurora, he jumped.
As Stanley Marketplace, the massive space will be home to 53 businesses, including nine restaurants and another half dozen food stalls. There also will be a gymnastics center for kids, a yoga studio, a dentist, a day care center and a brewery called Cheluna. And Shaker is getting his beer hall, on the building’s southwest corner — 30 taps in a 7,000-square-foot, indoor-outdoor space.
“This kind of thing has been going on for centuries, creating community and a sense of place,” Shaker said.
In Denver, they’re updating the model.
“When people have a choice, they want to support small and local,” Shaker said, “and that works best when all these businesses are together — not when sandwiched between a Claire’s boutique and a TGI Friday’s.”
2501 Dallas St., Aurora, www.stanleymarketplace.com
Twitter @joshbnoel
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