Editor’s note: This is the second in a series on Denver-area food halls and marketplaces. We looked at the Stanley Marketplace in early April. Next up: The Source.
Avanti Food and Beverage is many things. It is, as it’s been billed since its opening in July 2015, a restaurant incubator, a giant warehouse of sorts that nurtures and grows cool food concepts. It’s also, as I heard someone call it, a modern-day food court for grown-ups. This downright chaotic hipster hub is also one of the toughest tables to get on a warm Friday night. Come at another time — say, for a weekday lunch — and it’s a less frenetic meet-up spot for people of all ages.
But let’s get back to what Avanti is in the most basic terms. It’s a large building that houses seven independent, shipping container-dwelling restaurants; five on the main floor and two upstairs. There is a central bar on each floor (because modern-day grown-ups like cocktails in their food courts) and a rooftop patio that is certainly one of the best in town.
One of the rules for Avanti’s restaurants is that no menu item can be priced above $15. But let me be clear, the food here isn’t necessarily bargain-priced. A burger at American Grind with cheese and a fried egg rings up at $11. Add fries and you’re up to $14, the price you’d pay for a burger and fries at many nice brick-and mortar-restaurants.
Quiero Arepas, said to be the most popular stall, makes delicious street-style Venezuelan sandwiches, but at about $10 each, they’re not exactly street-style prices.
If you’re looking for a cheap lunch, this generally isn’t the place, but there are still some values to be had. The Queen margherita Neapolitan-style pizza at Brava! Pizzeria is very good, and at $8 it’s one of the more reasonably priced items at Avanti. Follow it up with the $4 Italian S’more — two big, hand-made pizzelle cookies sandwiching Nutella and marshmallow, all toasted in an 850-degree oven — —and you’ll be beyond stuffed (and happy).
Chow Morso’s pasta bowls are $8 for a small and $12 for a large — way less than you’d pay at its parent restaurant, Barolo Grill. Chow’s romaine lettuce salad, covered in truffle aioli and brimming with dried mushrooms and sweet figs, is well worth $8.
Price aside, I have never eaten a bad meal at Avanti. It’s succeeding at its innovative goal of acting as a restaurant incubator — both because the food being cooked there is strong, and also because one of its original tenants, food-truck-turned-Avanti-resident Farmer Girl, made the leap to its own permanent location.
“We were the guinea pigs,” Tim Payne, chef/owner of Farmer Girl said of the original Avanti restaurants. “Being a part of any new thing, especially something as dynamic as that, was great. It (Avanti) did a good job of establishing my brand a little more and separating it from just a food truck, establishing it as something closer to a brick-and-mortar.”
Farmer Girl, now open in Lyons, found a permanent home sooner than expected and ended its Avanti lease early. (No skin off Avanti’s back; it has a long wait list of food entrepreneurs looking to test their concepts in the popular space.) But operating a restaurant in the real world is different than under the sheltered wing of Avanti. One tenant even described running a restaurant in Avanti as similar to “living in mom’s basement.”
“At Avanti, your world is an 8-by-20-foot steel box. Anything beyond that, you’re not responsible for. If there’s a problem with a bathroom, if the HVAC goes out, managing the bar program — you don’t have to worry about any of that. You get to focus on the food components,” Payne said.
While Payne had prior restaurant show-runner experience — besides the Farmer Girl food truck, he also ran Longmont’s now-defunct Terroir restaurant — not all the tenants are as well-established on the food scene. And that’s what makes something like Avanti so important. Chefs can take a chance without endangering their future financial livelihood.
“I’m not a big enough name in town to get a million dollars to open a spot,” said Kevin Grossi, chef/owner of The Regional, which specializes in takes on American comfort food. “I was a little bit of a gamble because I didn’t have a restaurant group backing me; it was just me.”
Grossi, whose fried chicken sandwiches have gained a following of their own, is looking into getting a stand-alone restaurant, but he’s worried about losing that built-in traffic that Avanti brings. Avanti is so busy that pretty much any restaurant opening up inside is guaranteed to succeed. That’s not the case outside of its walls, and it’s why some restaurants choose to stay.
Brava! Pizzeria has been there from the beginning, and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Same with Quiero Arepas. At some point, if more restaurants choose mom’s basement over the real world, Avanti might be put in the difficult position of giving some tough love and kicking out the kids.
But it’s not there yet, and it has a new kid moving in in September — QuickFish Pok Bar will replace Bamboo Sushi (same ownership), which is graduating to a brick-and-mortar spot down the street.
Pok is very of-the-moment, a trend popping up all over town that won’t necessarily become part of Denver’s permanent culinary lexicon. That’s the point though, right? Avanti exists to breed and develop new restaurants, yes, but also to illuminate what doesn’t work for local palates in a safe environment.
So far, it’s working.
Avanti Food and Beverage: 3200 Pecos St., Denver, 720-269-4778; AvantiFandB.com; Sun.-Wed. 11 a.m.-11 p.m., Thurs.-Sat. 11 a.m.-1 a.m. (restaurant hours vary).