Reader: Denver Has Great Food, Even If Traffic Is Worse

If you’ve lived in Denver for a while, you’ve heard this: If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. The same is now true of our city in general, writes Gretchen Kurtz in this week's review of Ship Tavern. Blink and that brick warehouse is a food hall, that empty lot/historic home/you-name-it is an apartment complex. The debate over old versus new is getting more heated by the day, and even restaurants — once an escape from real life — are caught in the crosshairs.

Exhibit A: The Campus Lounge, an old Bonnie Brae watering hole that Dan Landes reopened after major repairs and remodeling; it sank within months. But Exhibit B, Ship Tavern, a remnant of even older Denver, has taken a different tack, Kurtz notes. And readers appreciate that it's still around.

Says Daniel: 

When the old Trader Vic's was directly across the street, it was a trip trying to get back and forth....classics...old school. Makes me want to cry. So cool.

Adds Matthew: 

Old Denver, Old Seattle, Old Portland, Old Chicago (no pun intended). I’ve lived in all of them. All of them are now too expensive, and non-expressive. Time to simply live, as best you can, we no longer have the luxury of what could have been.

Chasing what was doesn’t matter. Even Nashville or Charlotte which were southern sleepy but thriving towns have now become trendy and cool places to live, which inevitably means.... more expensive.

Rachel replies:

 I just wish there was a way to embrace the new without rejecting the old. So few people have respect for our cultural and architectural history.

But then there's this from David:

Denver has great food. What is lacking is a diversity of great food (and some might say that there's a correlation with the people), especially compared with coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles. But it's changing: As more people from places like NY and LA move to Denver, perhaps the food scene will improve, even if traffic gets worse.

Keep reading for more on old Denver and new, including links to recent stories:

"Ship Tavern Steers a Course for Old Denver"

"Ten Old Denver and New Denver Restaurants: Paired and Compared"

"Dan Landes on Old Denver, New Denver and Leaving Denver"

After selling first WaterCourse Foods, the landmark vegetarian restaurant he started two decades ago, then City, O' City, Landes is moving to Mexico, "exploring and writing my inner truth in an attempt to understand our illnesses and how to heal," he writes.

Wait five minutes, though, and things change, especially in Denver. No sooner had Kurtz finished her review of Ship Tavern than a deal was finalized to sell the circa 1892 Brown Palace for $125 million to Crescent Real Estate LLC of Fort Worth, Texas. This is the second time the hotel has sold in four years, but only the fifth in its 125-year history.

Crescent promises to "usher in a new era of luxury and refinement for the iconic property." Will that include changes at Ship Tavern? Should it?

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