Too Small To Fail

It was the best of times, and then, in a stir-fry flash, it was the worst of times. Before the novel coronavirus, the restaurant business in Denver—and in most of the country—was experiencing a golden age. Here, our dining establishments both nurtured and reflected an exuberant American food culture: adventurous, multi-cultural, eager to master the old ways and invent new ones. The northwest side of the city, RiNo, and other neighborhoods roared with Big Restaurant Energy, and recent openings, such as Sunday Vinyl, suggested that Denver was on the cusp of a new, supple urbanity.

Enter the virus, stage left. We became culinary shut-ins. Almost the first effect of social distancing (“Social D,” as my friend Andy Clark of Louisville’s Moxie Bread Co, calls it; see “The Grain King” on page 40) laid bare how much restaurants underpin our desire for social communion, a need almost as deep as our need for food itself. Let’s call that communing imperative “Social C.” In the tug-of-war between Social D and Social