What We Lost: 7 restaurants with iconic identities

If you talk to Denver's dining experts about pandemic losses and restaurants’ survival strategies, you quickly learn location was a key ingredient in helping restaurants survive. 

John Imbergamo is a restaurant consultant and marketing strategist in Denver.

“It's important to understand how the pandemic affected different geographic areas in town,” he explained. “So downtown, we have 120,000 people that were coming downtown to work every day. They no longer came downtown. And so if you were a place that did breakfast or lunch business downtown that meant your entire consumer base disappeared overnight.”

The neighborhood restaurants suffered tremendous losses as well, but in many cases were able to survive by transitioning to take-out only strategies.

The Denver Metro area lost a lot of great places to eat during our year of isolation. Over 100 restaurants decided to permanently close their doors during the pandemic. Not all the closures were directly caused by pandemic-related shutdowns; some were real estate deals, other closures were already in the works. But in most cases, COVID-19 was a major factor in the decision to close.

Rocky Mountain PBS spoke with Imbergamo and food writer and editor Ruth Tobias of The Tasting Panel Magazine about seven of those restaurants who said goodbye for good.

1. The Market

The Market, on Larimer Square, announced it was closing in April 2020, the early days of the pandemic.

On April 14, The Market staff posted on social media, “We've had an incredible run, and we're deeply grateful to the Denver community for letting us be a part of your lives - from your morning coffee run and lunches with friends to your yearly Spring Fling traditions and family celebrations, and so many moments in between.”

Imbergamo recalled that no matter the season, people would always sit out on the patio to drink an espresso, even if it was snowing.

“Apparently that spring fling cake had such a reputation that people can’t let it go,” Tobias added. “And so people are recreating it in honor of The Market.”

2. Armida’s

Since the 90s, Armida’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar proved to be one of the ost popular places for being to get together and pretend to be a rock star.

“Where else in Denver do you go for karaoke?” Imbergamo asked.

But in July of 2020, Armida’s owners announced it would be shutting down, saying goodbye to karaoke, and reopening as a new restaurant called La Milpa.

3. The Palm

“The Palm was a big freaking deal,” Imbergamo said. “The Palm was kind of the ‘be and be seen’ place at lunch.”

In an article about the Lawrence St. restaurant’s closure, Colorado Politics described The Palm as a “power-lunch watering hole for lawyers, politicos and businessmen.”

The restaurant owners announced they were shutting down the location in March of 2020.

The Palm was a franchise. The first location opened in New York City in 1926. The Denver location opened 70 years later.

4. Denver Diner

Location was key to Denver Diner’s success, Imbergamo explained, as well as the fact that it was open 24/7. Still, that didn’t save the iconic diner, located at the intersection of Speer and Colfax, from shutting down in January 2021.

In Westword, Patricia Calhoun described Denver Diner as “a haven for night owls as well as those looking for a spot for a casual morning meeting, quick lunch or comfort-food dinner.”

5. Tom’s Diner

“I don’t know that anybody will necessarily miss the food at Tom’s Diner specifically if I’m being honest,” Tobias said with a chuckle.

Imbergamo facetiously questioned if anyone had ever gone to the diner while they were sober. 

But Tom’s was indeed popular, and although the diner shut down during the pandemic, fans of the structure’s “Googie” architecture will be comforted knowing it is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

6. El Chapultepec

One of the highest-profile pandemic-era closures was that of El Chapultepec, the historic jazz club and cantina that shuttered in December 2020.

“Losing El Chapultepec will be one of the biggest losses of the pandemic,” Tobias said. She added that a trip to the jazz club and cantina was considered a “rite of passage” for people in Denver.

“It was such an important piece of Denver history in terms of jazz,” Imbergamo said. The club hosted the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and even Frank Sinatra since it first opened in 1933.

It was the city’s oldest jazz club.

Owners did not want to be too quick to blame the COVID-19 pandemic on “The Pec’s” closure.

“Of course the [pandemic] played a part in it,” co-owner Anna Diaz said, visibly emotional during a press conference, “but there are so many things that led to this choice.”

“The jazz musicians, the blues musicians, they shouldn’t have to time their sets around the baseball innings,” Diaz said, gesturing to Coors Field across the street. “They should be able to play their music and the crowd just be there to enjoy them, and that’s been really difficult to manage, and we’ve been doing it a long time.”

Read more about the reaction’s to The Pec’s closure here.

7. Racines

Imbergamo said Racines, which closed in July 2020, was a “restaurant that marketed itself as being a big part of the community.”

The owners of Racine had planned to close in January 2021, but the pandemic accelerated that process.

“Everybody could come to the restaurant. It didn't matter,” David Racine told Rocky Mountain PBS last summer. “Construction people, theater people, business people. We were trying to create regular clientele, people who would come here more than once. I think over the years we became successful [at] that.”

Tobias agrees with that assessment: “It seemed to attract several different groups of people who considered it ‘their place.’ And when you’ve got everybody considering a place ‘their place,’ that’s pretty successful.”

“Restaurants aren’t just about food,” Tobias concluded. “They’re about a lot of things. They’re about community, and about feeling at home somewhere besides home."