Beloved Diner Near DU Campus Closing in November

Greek greasy-spoon go-to Pete’s will shutter in November.

No, not Pete’s Kitchen, the neon-drenched diner waylaid by lane closures and construction dust kicked up by the Bus Rapid Transit construction along East Colfax Avenue. It’s struggling, sure, but it’s safe for now thanks to an outpouring of community support.

Ditto for Pete’s Satire Lounge, the Kitchen’s boisterous sister bar next door. With nearly 63 years under its belt, the Satire may just weather this storm.  

And Pete’s Central One will keep dishing out its traditional Greek fare in Washington Park West, though it’s decidedly no diner –  even as “lane repurposing” on Alameda threatens to complicate things there, too.

But come November 9, it’s curtains for Pete’s University Park Cafe, the neighborhood staple kitty-corner from the University of Denver that legendary restaurateur Pete Contos took over in 1995 (one of eight joints that ultimately came to bear his name, and the third to close in recent years). As Contos family members gather in a booth at “the UP,” as they call it, to share the news, you can sense that they are grieving – just as they did when Pete passed away in May 2019.

A restaurant’s closure is “never a good thing,” says Liz Contos, Pete’s widow and wife of fifty years.

“It’s sad,” echoes her son-in-law, Dean Phillips, who estimates that he’s been at the UP for at least two decades. “When you lose places where you walk into a restaurant and the guy that owns the place is working up front, when you lose family-owned restaurants, that’s tough. What are you left with? A bunch of chains.”

“It’s really hard,” says Nikki Phillips, Pete and Liz’s daughter and Dean’s wife, as she ruminates on how the family is going to break the news to the neighborhood.

Even the characteristically Pollyannaish Alex Barakos, Pete’s 27-year-old grandson who joined the family business in 2020, goes somber for a moment. “At some point, the chips are just stacked too high against us,” he sighs.  

This same sort of disappointment — with a touch of indignation — will likely color the community’s reaction to the news of Pete’s University Park Cafe’s pending closure as word gets out. That’s because life happens at local restaurants, shared over souvlaki skillets and heaping helpings of eggs Mazatlán. If folks necessarily own their life story, they feel a sense of ownership of the places where it unfolds.

“We’ve had people who’ve told us, ‘My fiancé asked my father for my hand in marriage in one of your booths,’” offers Nikki.

Or consider the high school athletes who “come to Denver on a recruiting trip and sit here over lunch and decide, ‘I love it, I’m going to sign, and I’m going to come to DU to play lacrosse or play hockey or play volleyball,” Dean says. He adds that Pioneers hockey coach Jim Montgomery plopped down at the Pete’s counter for breakfast after leading the team to its 2017 national championship – with the trophy in hand.

Against the UP’s tidy brickwork, parents bid tearful goodbyes to their sons and daughters as they move them into the dorms at DU. The same kids may sober up from their first college party experience as they tuck into a cheeseburger. They return with their parents, years later, to celebrate graduations and job offers. All the while, local pols hold court over coffee, rumpled professors grab lunch while redlining journal articles, and hungry Denverites pop in for a gyros melt as a once-every-so-often treat.

The key difference between the people who own moments at Pete’s University Park Cafe and the people who own Pete’s University Park Cafe is the various stressors of keeping the doors open – and the solemn burden of deciding to close them once and for all.  

Ultimately, Alex says, economic conditions are “forcing us to raise prices, and that goes against everything [Pete] stood for.” 

Offers Liz, “Our places are for anybody. In this type of place, you can’t be charging $25 or $30 for a hamburger, or for a gyros sandwich.”

Says Dean, “Pete’s model was to give people good food, at a good price, with good service. I don’t know if he could say he would ever charge you $17 or $18 for bacon and eggs.”

Adds Nikki, “The goal has always been a good plate, at a reasonable price, so that anybody could afford it.”

It’s a chorus ringing out from walk-in freezers all the way to Mayor Mike Johnston’s State of the City address: It’s too expensive to run a restaurant in this city. Costs are up on just about everything, from food to insurance to cleaning supplies. Denver’s tipped minimum wage doesn’t help. At $15.79, it’s $4 per hour more expensive than the state’s tipped minimum and more than seven times the federal standard – which adds up quickly at an adequately staffed restaurant.

That’s not to mention that in an increasingly uncertain economy characterized by rising prices, “eating out is the first thing to go when people get squeezed,” Alex says. “That’s the first thing people are going to do to cut back to make ends meet.”

In that way, the economics of a family restaurant are much the same as those of a family: You make tough decisions to get by. As Pete’s family tells it, the attempt to keep Pete’s University Park Cafe afloat against these headwinds increases the likelihood that all four of the remaining Pete’s spots will sink – including the Satire and Kitchen on Colfax.

But not if Pete’s family has anything to say about it. “We can’t lose that corner,” Dean says. “That’s Pete’s corner. That’s where he put his blood, sweat and tears.” By consolidating, the family hopes they can grow the other businesses just as Pete and Liz grew from the Satire to several restaurants to the third generation of the family business. “This is a chance for us to get back to the dream again,” Dean continues. “To start dreaming some more.”

The closure is also a chance to bring the family together in the family business for the first time since Pete passed away and Alex came to town. The paradox of running four “family” restaurants, after all, is how little time it leaves for each other. “As a family, we’ve never really had the chance to interact together in the restaurant setting,” Dean says. “I’ve been here [at Pete’s University Park]. Alex has been there [at Pete’s Kitchen and Pete’s Satire Lounge]. It’s like ships crossing in the night. With this, I can go down and work at the Kitchen and we can take that place to another level that we never thought we’d get to.”

“Most of our family dynamic has been to divide and conquer,” Alex agrees. “This is the first time we’re going to be conquering together in one spot.”

It’s a flash of youthful optimism, which Alex may have inherited from his grandpa, who took over the Satire in 1962 at age 28. Success in the restaurant business often stems from keeping that sort of hope alive even as you navigate the stress, uncertainty and sadness of a decision as tough as a restaurant closure that will affect employee livelihoods and neighbors’ lives.

In turn, the ask from Pete’s family for the legions of people for whom Pete’s University Park Cafe means something is simple: Keep the faith. “The goal here is to go out on our own terms,” Alex adds. “We want this place to celebrate thirty years. We want to fill it up before it goes with people who have loved it.”

Pete’s University Park Cafe will close on Sunday, November 9. For loyal customers, it may feel like a funeral. The challenge is to think of it more as the right choice at the right time for the people making it, akin to something like a retirement, which usually involves novelty greeting cards and the occasional engraved wristwatch, not eulogies or maudlin tears.

Or, perhaps, it’s not so very different from those tearful DU parents saying goodbye to their children over breakfast at Pete’s at the tail-end of move-in weekend: A devastating end to one chapter, buoyed by the hopeful start of a new one.

For customers who want that new chapter to be part of their life story – in moments, at least?

“We’ll still have the Satire,” Dean says. “We still have the Central One. We still have the Kitchen.”

And even as new pages turn, there are flashes of the old — like the portrait of Pete Contos hanging in each of the remaining establishments. As his family takes a leap of faith like the one that Liz and Pete took when they opened the Satire in 1962, let there be no doubt: In this era, just as in the past one, each will remain “Pete’s.”

Pete’s University Park Cafe is located at 2345 East Evans Avenue and will be open through November 9. For more information, visit petesrestaurants.com.