What's New in LoHi Denver This Summer: Notable Shifts

As Westword reported, in early 1917, Buffalo Bill Cody died in Denver, and his body was held at the Olinger Mortuary complex on Boulder Street while everyone waited for the ground at Lookout Mountain to thaw enough for burial. That building still stands at 1575 Boulder Street. It just got its third restaurant tenant in about twenty years, and the story of how that happened tells you more about how LoHi actually works than any list of new openings could.

If you've walked past that corner lately, you've probably noticed Teocalli Cocina where The Post Chicken & Beer used to be. What you might not know is who's actually behind that swap, and why the answer matters more than the menu.

Three Restaurants, One Address

Big Red F opened Lola Coastal Mexican in that Olinger space almost twenty years ago, relocating an existing concept from Platte Park into what was then a neighborhood on the way up. Lola ran there until 2021, when Big Red F swapped it for an outpost of its own fried-chicken concept, The Post Chicken & Beer, a banner it had introduced back in 2014. The Post closed in December 2024, and the space sat dark for the better part of a year.

Here's the part that gets missed if you only read the headline. Teocalli Cocina, the restaurant that took over the space after obtaining its liquor license that May and opening that September, isn't a stranger to the building. The chef running the LoHi kitchen, Julio Gaspar, previously worked at Lola in that exact space before joining founder Grant Hopfenspirger as head chef when Teocalli opened its first location in Lafayette back in 2019. When Big Red F founder Dave Query was looking for someone to fill the space after the Post left, he pointed Hopfenspirger toward it directly.

"There's history in everything we do," Hopfenspirger told Westword about the LoHi location, and in this case he's not exaggerating for effect. The space wasn't discovered. It was handed off between people who already knew each other.

Teocalli had been quietly building a following in Lafayette, Arvada, and Longmont before it made the jump into one of Denver's most competitive dining blocks. That expansion has worked so far. The birria, carnitas, and $6 happy hour margaritas draw a steady crowd even a block from Alma Fonda Fina, the Michelin-starred restaurant that helped make that stretch of LoHi a destination in the first place.

A nearby restaurant owner is part of that story.

A Connection Across the Block

Johnny Curiel, whose Alma Fonda Fina earned a Michelin star and sits around the corner from the Olinger building, had worked with Teocalli before its LoHi opening, consulting on the opening menu for the original Lafayette location years earlier. The two operators had a working relationship long before either of them had a foothold in LoHi together.

Curiel's own presence in the neighborhood has only deepened since. Last November he opened Mezcaleria Alma right next door to Alma Fonda Fina, a mezcal-and-small-plates concept built around more than 120 agave spirit expressions. He didn't take the opportunity to plant a third banner somewhere new in Denver. He built sideways, on the same block, next to the restaurant that made his name.

One pattern in LoHi's food scene this year is operators expanding from existing businesses and relationships, bringing established concepts to new locations.

What Else Moved This Summer

A few other updates worth knowing if you haven't been paying close attention:

• Wildflower, the tasting-menu restaurant tucked inside the boutique hotel on Navajo Street, picked up a Michelin Young Chef Award for Aiden Tibbetts this year, along with a Michelin Recommendation. It's now the kind of reservation locals book a week out rather than a walk-in option.
• Cerebral Brewing opened its third taproom on Lowell Boulevard, in a converted church that now pours the brewery's full range of hazy IPAs and sour ales alongside Outside Pizza operating out of the same room.
• Origami Den, a Saturday-only omakase speakeasy tucked beneath Sushi Hai on West 32nd Avenue, opened quietly in late 2025 and has built a following almost entirely through word of mouth rather than any real marketing push.
• Little Man Ice Cream, still scooping out of its 28-foot steel milk can on 16th Street, remains exactly the kind of place where the line wraps the building on a warm evening and nobody minds waiting.

These are extensions of things that were already working.

The Bar That Admitted It Outgrew Itself

Recess Beer Garden has run its sprawling patio on 17th Street for eleven years. This year its CEO, Jason Romero, described how the business changed over time: the family-friendly spot he opened over a decade ago became more of a going-out destination, with late nights and loud music.

Rather than trying to walk that identity back on 17th Street, Recess is building the version of itself it used to be somewhere else. This spring the company announced plans for a family-friendly, dog-friendly location in Virginia Village, on the east side of Denver, with a patio roughly double the size of the LoHi original. This summer it added a second expansion, a spot inside the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus, opening in August, in a building with its own beer history as the former home of the Tivoli-Union Brewery.

Put plainly: Recess isn't remodeling the flagship. It's letting the 17th Street location keep being the loud room and building the calmer version of itself elsewhere. That's the same instinct you see in Curiel building next door instead of across town, and in Teocalli slotting a chef who already knew the building back into the same kitchen. Nobody is trying to reinvent what's already working. They're just giving each version of it its own address.

What Doesn't Move

For everything that's turned over on Boulder Street and 17th Street this year, the actual rhythm of a LoHi weekend hasn't changed much. The pedestrian bridge at 16th Street still carries foot traffic across the South Platte into Commons Park and downtown, the same route it has for years. The Highlands Street Fair just marked its 43rd year, running along West 32nd Avenue between Perry and Irving Streets on June 20 with the same mix of live music, local food, and shopping it's had for decades. Little Man's line still forms most warm evenings, same as it always has.

That's really the point. A neighborhood this dense with restaurants and bars is going to look chaotic from the outside, storefronts changing hands, chefs moving between kitchens, bars opening second locations across town. Across these moves, some operators have ties to the area, while some businesses are bringing established concepts to new locations. The building that once held Buffalo Bill's body has housed several restaurant concepts, including Teocalli.

If you're the kind of person who notices these things about your own neighborhood, The Stairway Team spends a lot of time doing exactly that kind of tracing, block by block, across Denver. Reach out any time you want the same kind of read on what's actually happening near you.