Hutch & Spoon launches breakfast and lunch on Larimer Street

If you have a killer spoon collection, you may as well open a restaurant. That wasn't quite the way it happened for Tracy Zimmer, the owner and executive chef of Hutch & Spoon, a breakfast-and-lunch joint that opened two weeks ago in the 125-year-old Charpiot building at 3090 Larimer Street.

But Zimmer, who's also a server at Deluxe, Dylan Moore's funky restaurant at 30 South Broadway, does have a spoon fetish, as evidenced by the spoon displays mounted on the weathered brick walls in his restaurant. And he's wanted to open his own restaurant ever since he put a spoon in his mouth, so to Zimmer, it all makes sense. "I have a thing for spoons. I equate them with comforting foods, like soups and chili, and I've wanted a restaurant forever, so I worked on the physical space for over a year and now I have a place where friends and family can gather," he explained.

The friends and family part of the equation, says Zimmer, is how he came up with the "Hutch" in his restaurant's name. "Hutch is evocative of a meal centered around the people you love, the piece of furniture with the china that encourages you to sit around the table and share thoughts."  In other words, if you're looking for a place to eat a meatloaf and cheddar sandwich or a curried chicken salad sandwich -- the two biggest sellers on the chalkboard menu, according to Zimmer -- you'll need to leave your laptop at home and survive without Wifi. "I want the people who come in here for coffee, a snack or a meal to rest their brain, at least for a moment."

If you're brain won't chill, you can exercise it by checking out Zimmer's spoon collection -- just a small fraction of his entire stockpile -- and the really cool furnishings in the space, most of them salvaged from Bud's Warehouse and Habitat for Humanity.

Hutch & Spoon is open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more info, call 303-296-2317.