#HOP ALLEY WESTWORD SLIDESHOW WINDOWS#

The menu will include a few staples, but will change based on what’s seasonally available, which may lead to some unique fare. Denn has connections to local farms like Cure Organic Farm in Boulder, where he’s worked throughout the pandemic, as well as to ranchers and East Coast “fish folk,” as he calls them - relationships he's developed over his over two-decade career in restaurants. Kristin Pazulski Point Easy’s menu will be farm-to-table, though the team winces at that term. “Point Easy is feel-good” - when the restaurant and staff run smoothly, translating seamlessly to a positive guest experience. “Looking at past experiences, the times I’ve been most frustrated is when you let things get ,” Denn explains. The time that the three have spent working in hospitality has shaped their vision for what they want this new restaurant to be. Now they've joined forces to “make our dream restaurant,” Denn says, in a neighborhood where he and his brother have lived and in a space where they formerly patronized M&D's Cafe and the Whittier Pub. Putting this idea into action does not mean lowering standards or taking shortcuts, but rather communicating before an issue gets out of hand, dealing with problems head-on instead of letting them fester, and addressing things before a situation reaches, as the trio says, “point chaos.”ĭuring his hospitality career, Denn worked at Duo and Il Posto as well as the Kitchen in Boulder, where Dan also worked in the front of the house for twelve years and where the two met Bruch, who was also an employee there.

#HOP ALLEY WESTWORD SLIDESHOW WINDOWS#

'We serve aggressive food, and our music is a little louder than normal.Brown paper-covered windows at 2000 East 28th Avenue have piqued the interest of Whittier neighborhood residents. That spot has been a local restaurant and hangout for decades, as M&D's Cafe for more than thirty years and then as the Whittier Pub from 2013 to 2020 now it's set to reopen as Point Easy by the end of the year.įor industry vets Dennis 'Denn' Phelps, his brother Dan Phelps and business partner Andy Bruch, the name reflects their philosophy, honed during years of working in the industry: Keep things easy. 'If you really enjoy dining out, what's the point of going to the same type of experience?' Lee asks. Who better to cut Hop Alley's dan dan mian, an addictive, rich noodle dish with a serious bite, than Tupac or Nas? Who else could stand up to the show-stopping salt and pepper soft-shell crab than Jay Z or, yes, Kanye? Why have we castrated ourselves as diners, settling for sub-par ambient music and menus with little peppers warning us how spicy a dish is? 'So I might make those songs in the beginning higher-energy.' It might be A Tribe Called Quest.' Come Saturdays, Lee says, Hop Alley will have a line by the door before it opens, diners hungry for an evening of adventurous eating. 'It'll be hip-hop, but it might not be Rick Ross.

Lee likes to start his playlists on a more mellow note to jibe with the energy of the restaurant as it's just coming to life, especially if they're to be heard by the weekday crowd. I think it can be a very thoughtful tool to use.' 'For me, as far as restaurant experience, music can set the atmosphere in a very particular way.

For him, music is an integral part of the dining experience. Linnea Covington Lee, who also makes the playlists for his LoHi ramen shop Uncle, isn't a secret DJ by night. From the award: 'The eatery's instant success when it opened at the end of 2015 was proof that Denver diners are ready to be challenged, titillated and rewarded with a whole new world of gustatory experience.' We even named Hop Alley Denver's best new restaurant in 2016. Since opening in 2015, the RiNo joint, whose food is inspired by Lee's childhood trips to Hong Kong, has won praise from nearly every critic in town. But we try to do as much as we can to warn people of what we're about,' Lee says, laughing. 'We get more complaints about noise than the average restaurant. No one was flinching.īut they have before, says Tommy Lee, Hop Alley's owner and resident DJ. This was Yeezy.Ĭurious, I looked around the restaurant, half expecting a patron to throw his napkin on the ground and storm out. It wasn't the nice, Polo-shirt-wearing Kanye of Late Registration, either. Which is why I was surprised to hear West blaring at Hop Alley recently. A polarizing figure at best, a Kardashian at worst. Bring up his name to the latter and you'll get eye-rolls, long sighs, and a diatribe of reasons why West is an untalented egomaniac. Humanity falls into two camps: people who love Kanye West, and people who hate Kanye West.

Hop alley westword slideshow