Bite Me

Just ask Keller. The way I hear it, that knife came pretty close.

Leftovers: I'm not the only one concerned about the current state of the restaurant industry. Chuck Koch, owner of the Bear Creek Tavern on Highway 74 in Kittredge, reports some disconcerting developments in his neck of the woods. "Just because I was thinking about it," he says, "I went out driving the other day, and I counted 45 restaurants open between here and El Rancho. Forty-five! That's counting everything, the little cafes and sandwich shops, but still that's a lot, don't you think?"

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The Kitchen

1039 Pearl St.
Boulder, CO 80302

Category: Restaurant > International

Region: Boulder

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I do. "And you know," he continued, "a lot of these people, I'm sure, are what I call 'trust-fund babies,' right? People who say, 'Oh, wow! Let's have some fun and just open a restaurant!' They get money from divorce settlements, and they say, 'Let's open a restaurant.' What they're really trying to do is build a monument to themselves."

Chuck and his wife, Martha, have soldiered on at Bear Creek for 24 years, turning their place from a serious, country-fried biker bar -- "a very, very rowdy roadhouse," is how Chuck remembers it -- into a respectable restaurant. Today, it's not even a tavern anymore, but officially the Bear Creek Restaurant, remodeled into a romantic -- though still cluttered, country and quirky -- getaway restaurant with mahogany-topped booths bought at the Redfish property auction, new floors and subdued lighting. Of course, the stuffed bear is still standing right in the middle of the dining room. If a man learns anything after a quarter-century in the business, it's to never mess with the mascot.