First Look: Acclaimed L.A. Chef Debuts Intimate Denver Chef’s Counter

“This isn’t Bar Chelou,” asserts chef Douglas Rankin, who moved to Denver last August after shuttering his two-year-old, award-winning Pasadena bistro following the fires that devastated nearby areas. Now, he’s introduced what he calls Bar Chelou’s “grown-up little brother,” Petit Chelou, a six-seat, six-course chef’s counter tasting-menu housed inside Hop Alley, at 3500 Larimer Street. “Chelou” is French slang for “weird” or “odd,” hinting at the unconventional style Rankin prefers.

The basics: The price is $125 per person, with some optional supplements, a la carte wine, cocktails and N/A drink options, and an $88 wine pairing that you should definitely opt for.

Rankin has been cooking in the space since October, when he launched a residency there, but this marks his first step toward opening a Denver brick-and-mortar.

Who is Douglas Rankin?

Before striking out on his own, the chef worked under big names such as José Andrés and Ludo Lefebvre, including a stint at Lefebvre’s tasting-menu spot, Trois Mec. “That was one of the best restaurants I’ve ever worked in. This is really kind of a return to that, but my way,” Rankin says.

During its run, Bar Chelou was named one of the best new restaurants in the country by Eater in 2023, and landed on the Los Angeles Times 101 best restaurants lists in 2023 and 2024. 

“I like to get people out of their comfort zones,” Rankin notes, adding that Petit Chelou is not meant to be a serious, contemplative dining experience. Here, guests are encouraged to interact and laugh with Rankin and Sommelier Jacob Roadhouse, a familiar face to Hop Alley regulars; he brings a big personality to his role, creating thoughtful, playful pairings for Rankin’s dishes. “We’re trying to be the anti-tasting-menu tasting-menu place.”

What is Peit Chelou?

“It’s the fine-dining version of what I’ve been wanting to do for years,” Rankin says. Since arriving in August, he’s been “figuring out how things worked here,” and admits that he was “nervous about produce — but turns out, it’s way better in a lot of ways to me,” particularly thanks to our very own Willy Wonka of produce, Mark DeRespinis at Esoterra Culinary Farms, which is where Rankin is sourcing nearly all of his produce.

His move to Hop Alley resulted from a cold call when Rankin saw the restaurant’s ad for an executive chef. He and Hop Alley owner Tommy Lee hit it off right away, and while both realized that Rankin wasn’t the right fit for the executive chef role, the chef’s counter was available. “I really love being here — Tommy and I get along really great,” Rankin says. “This has just been a dream come true, couldn’t be a better landing spot.”

Now that he’s made the chef’s counter his own and is bringing Petit Chelou to life, “my plan is for it to be here until we move it somewhere else,” he adds, describing the cuisine as a French Japanese tasting menu, rooted in gastronomy with a lot of Japanese ingredients and Japanese technique. … Bar Chelou was a busy bistro, which was fun, which we still have plans to do here.” But for now, he’s focused on introducing diners to his culinary style, twelve nightly covers at a time.

What’s on the menu?

Dishes will change regularly depending on what’s available from Esoterra and other local farms, and will shift with the seasons. Here’s a rundown of what we tried during a very impressive media preview this week.

Crispy potatoes
Rankin says diners can typically expect a snack to start, and ours was a throwback to a popular Bar Chelou dish. These crispy potatoes take two days to make, and the result is a creamy interior with a nice bite outside. They cover a creamy aioli and are dusted with yuzu togarashi and nori. It wasn’t a boundary-pushing beginning, but rather a bite rooted in comfort and a lovely way to ease into the meal.

Kinmedai crudo
Things ramped up quickly flavor-wise with the first course. Crudos have been everywhere, and it’s become rare to find one that stands out, but Rankin succeeded with this dish. It begins with kinmedai, a prized fish also known as golden eye snapper. It’s aged on the bone for one week before being thinly sliced and laid over the chef’s take on tonatto sauce, made with white anchovy instead of tuna, resulting in a bright, acidic edge. Tucked throughout are deposits of bright red pepper relish. The dish is finished with a peppery Italian olive oil — “I never use olive oil from Italy, so you know this one’s good,” Rankin notes — and Japanese sancho pepper, which has a slight numbing effect.

Tempura
Rankin admits he has a tempura obsession and has spent a lot of time perfecting his technique, which is apparent after you try this dish. Getting the battered and fried treatment: locally foraged hedgehog mushrooms from Canolo Farms. Flour from Japan is flown in specially for this preparation, which involves vodka and a freezer to create a glass-like tempura coating that melts in your mouth. The mushrooms are good enough to eat on their own, but this dish reaches new heights of pleasure thanks to the sauce meunière with which it’s paired, essentially brown butter emulsified with lemon and Koji for saltiness. The whole thing is topped with grated cured egg yolk, a shower of mimolette cheese, a few chamomile greens and smoked mushroom bonito made from the mushroom scraps. “Nothing is wasted,” Rankin notes.

Kohlrabi
“Vegetables are really my thing,” Rankin says. “I like transforming them into flavors you would never think they could have.” And we certainly never thought of kohlrabi as the basis of a comforting noodle dish before this meal. Rankin had been serving a different turnip dish, but when Esoterra offered up kohlrabi instead, Rankin got creative. “I’m pushing myself to use stuff from the farm and not order from any place other than local farms,” he notes. To create this dish, the kohlrabi is sliced very thin and cut into tagliatelle-like noodles by hand. The scraped pieces get juiced to form the base of the broth, which is infused with butter, nutmeg, Koji, garlic, and green and black peppercorns. The “noodles” are then gently cooked in the broth for about ten minutes before being lightly grilled, plated in the broth and topped with charred alium. “It is the essence of kohlrabi mounted with butter,” Rankin says,” and you definitely need to pick up the bowl to drink up every last drop.

Squid
Knobby, almost mealworm-like crosnes (Chinese artichoke) pair with perfectly cooked squid in this dish that plays with a lot of fun textures, including salted black sesame seeds that pop a bit as you take bites. Other flavor components include lime leaves, Thai red chiles and dill, plus kabosu, which Rankin and Roadhouse have dubbed the new yuzu, or the “new Japanese it-trus.”

Potato
The meal slows down for this course, which is like the ultimate form of the interior of a baked potato; it’s a dish that Rankin created at Trois Mec with Lefevbre. “There’s a Chef’s Table video about it and basically in the video, [Ludo] acts like he created the whole thing,” Rankin jokes (or is he…?). Here, he’s taking back some ownership of the dish, which starts with a bed of soubise (a classic, creamy French onion sauce — Rankin seasons his with white pepper). Then, peeled potatoes are steamed and riced directly on the plate, creating an ultra-fluffy texture. Brown butter, salt, an aged cheddar collab from Jasper Hill and Cabot, and bonito finish off this rich, starchy course that will have you rethinking how you treat potatoes.

Quail
“I realized when I got here that I have never done a quail dish in my life,” Rankin admits, but he’s not one to shy away from a challenge, for himself or for diners. Eating with your hands is encouraged in order to tackle this whole quail that’s marinated in shaoxing wine, Koji, ginger, garlic and local fennel fronds. Potato and tapioca starch form the gluten-free crust, and a duck reduction is painted on the bird, which is dusted with furikake and served over a sauce made with vin jaune, a French yellow wine.

Mont Blanc
The dessert is an ode to the highest mountain in the Alps and Western Europe and a winner for hazelnut fans, combining a dome of chestnut pastry cream sprinkled with marzipan. Within the dome, you’ll find candied hazelnuts, hazelnut tuiles and hazelnut foam.

Would we return?

Happily! Rankin’s excitement for this fresh start is contagious, and his food leans towards fun instead of the over-precious plates that sometimes dominate fine dining.

“I learned a lot,” Rankin says of his time running Bar Chelou. “I learned that when I had everything I wanted — I always wanted a restaurant in L.A. — I really wasn’t that happy. But when I take a look back, I try to focus on the lesson and not the loss. … Starting over sucks, but at the same time, this feels a lot more true to who I am. This is pure freedom of expression — I cook without boundaries here.”

Despite the worldly influences and tasting-menu format, Rankin aims to create comfort food through a fine-dining lens, and we’re excited to see how that vision continues to evolve in Denver.

Petit Chelou is located inside Hop Alley at 3500 Larimer Street and is open starting at 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, with two seatings nightly. For more information and to book a reservation, visit hopalleydenver.com and follow @petitchelou on Instagram.