What It Really Takes to Open a Restaurant In Denver Today

On January 29, Dear Emilia, the highly anticipated new restaurant in RiNo, celebrated its grand opening.

As the ownership trio of chef Ty Leon, hospitality director Heather Morrison and Austin Carson cut the ceremonial ribbon, their eyes beamed a mixture of pride and weariness, their laughs a cathartic release. To the public, the event marked the start of the group’s second restaurant since the 2020 debut of Wash Park pasta temple Restaurant Olivia. But for the team, it was the end of a long, grueling grind.

By any measure, Dear Emila is already a massive success. The critical response is downright fawning. Reservations are booked out through April. So it’s hard to believe that just over a year ago, Dear Emilia almost closed before it even opened. 

“We were going over budget, and we were working as hard as we could to get it down to a place that was feasible,” recalls Carson. “I think it was Heather who was going to ask, point blank, whether we can get out of this. … It was a very emotional meeting.”

That’s a sobering reality familiar to nearly anyone who has had the quixotic dream of opening a restaurant. Before the flashy ribbon-cutting, the slick social-media influencer posts and the newspaper write-ups, the path to success is often a gauntlet of sacrifice, anxiety, determination and blind faith, all taking place entirely behind the scenes. 

To learn more, we embedded with the Dear Emilia team for the last three months of a journey that had began nearly two-and-a-half years earlier.

A Sweetheart Deal

The origin of Dear Emila came in the form of a 2023 phone call from property-management firm Schnitzer West. As fans of Restaurant Olivia, the brokers wanted to offer the team first shot at a ground-floor space in a new office building, the Current. 

Initially, the Olivia team wasn’t certain they were ready for a second restaurant. But after visiting the space that August, they fell in love with the idea of creating something from scratch. No legacy surprises behind the walls. Everything brand-new, and to their specifications. 

After securing a guarantee that they’d pay no rent before receiving a certificate of occupancy, they signed the lease in April 2024. The kicker? Schnitzer West would foot nearly the entire bill for building out the restaurant infrastructure needed in the completely empty space. 

“Basically, if you picked up the place, turned it upside down, and shook it, all the stuff that comes free is our responsibility and the stuff that stays fixed ultimately belongs to them,” says Carson. 

By all accounts, the Dear Emilia Team had a sweetheart deal. As it turned out, they needed it. 

Developing the Vision

Lease agreement signed, now the team needed a concept to set the tone for the menu, the space and the overall direction. The goal was never simply to open “Olivia 2,” but rather expand the concept to new themes. 

According to Leon, Dear Emilia was envisioned as a love letter to the Emilia-Romagna region — home to such quintessential Italian favorites as Parmesan cheese, prosciutto, tortellini and ragu alla bolognese — that blended the technique and traditions of the area with ingredients local to Colorado. 

The goal was to create a restaurant reflecting a unique “sense of place” that’s the foundation of Italian cuisine, whereas Restaurant Olivia is more focused on the art of pasta and all of its forms, without regional specificity.

“There really isn’t a sense of place at Olivia,” Leon notes, “unless the place is inside of a ravioli.”

Reality Sets In

Deal in hand and vision in place, the effort quickly turned to planning the buildout — which is when complications came almost immediately. Running a restaurant is one thing. Building a restaurant is another. 

A scan of the foundation revealed underground cabling that required repositioning the walk-in cooler, among other things. The plumbing for the toilets had to shift ten inches. Each adjustment to the design required approval first by Schnitzer West and then by city inspectors, meaning something as simple as a one-inch adjustment could translate to twelve weeks of delays. 

“There’s an order of operations with the city,” explains Carson. “The first person has to get in and sign off before the second person can get in, and that second person’s still contingent upon the third person coming in to sign off. So if something goes wrong early in the process, inches turn to feet turn to miles real quick.”

Then came the tariff impact, which forced a revision of many of the original decor elements, thanks to increasing material costs. The wine cellar designed as a glass-enclosed space became a drywalled room. The material for the chef’s counter went from locally milled custom wood to stainless steel, and then to simple butcher’s block. Ovens, meat slicers and gelato machines all got downgraded to less expensive options. Shelving plans got…shelved. 

“We had our hearts set on this big, beautiful, shiny restaurant that we signed off on initially,” says Carson. “It was like for the first time in our lives we were going to get this chance to use really high-level, high-tier equipment, and it was just one by one getting checked off. And it was rough.”

But things got much rougher. 

A Catastrophic Surprise

In 2021, Denver City Council had passed an ordinance dubbed Energize Denver that, among other things, established energy efficiency rules for new commercial construction, which the Current (and by extension, Dear Emilia) had to comply with. 

That meant the restaurant had to power the kitchen entirely with electricity, even though it would be using gas. The cost of meeting this requirement decimated Schnitzer West’s share of the construction budget, leaving Dear Emilia with more of the bill than they’d budgeted for. 

“When we entered into this project, we weren’t anticipating spending any money on construction,” says Carson. “We ultimately ended up spending about $300,000 all in, and over half of that was as a result of this one specific thing.”

That’s when the project nearly shut down. The team went from dreaming about building their dream restaurant to considering throwing up raw drywall and foldout tables from a thrift store just so they could start serving food to pay off the costs. 

“It was terrifying,” Carson recalls. “These are numbers I can’t just write a check for. If we didn’t have the ability for the three of us to step in and work [at Olivia] to increase income and push that money in the direction of the new project, I don’t think we would have been able to complete this.”

The Pop-Up

Through a loan and a massive amount of sweat equity, the budget gap was closed and construction resumed. By mid-December, things had progressed to the point where the focus returned to the food. As the final touches were being applied to the space in RiNo, Restaurant Olivia hosted a Dear Emilia pop-up dinner for longtime regulars, friends and press to test the menu. 

Spirits were high as Leon ran the staff through each dish and the servers lined up for a taste, asking questions and jotting down notes to prepare for service. This was, after all, the first time the Emilia menu would be shared with the public. 

Minutes before the doors opened, the lights dimmed and the mood got tense. All banter and chatter stopped. Any questions were answered in short, tight, clipped responses. It was clear that nerves were starting to fray, and the importance and weight of the evening began to set in. 

“It’s all coming to a head tonight,” said Carson during the staff meeting. “I’m nervous.”

“I’m not,” responded a beaming Morrison, turning to Leon. “Your food is awesome.”

The Punch List

After the holidays, on January 6, some twenty people filled the Dear Emilia space, placing strips of blue tape on little flaws, omissions and general areas in need of improvement. Days earlier, a press release had announced the January 29 opening. The date was set. The restaurant…wasn’t.  

This exercise is called the punch list walk-through—the last time the team can make requests for changes that can be completed by opening night.

Despite the fact that the tables were still stacked up against a pillar, waiting to be installed, Morrison had an optimistic smile on her face.

“This is exciting!” she said, comparing the project to making pasta — a few flaws give it character, but aren’t the goal. “When you pay this much for something, all these little details matter. And while it’s okay to have imperfections, why start with them?”

By the end of the day, there were hundreds items to address on the punch list, and 23 days to address them before the grand-opening ribbon would be cut. 

The Mess

A week before a media preview dinner was scheduled and eleven days before the grand opening, a worker repairing the kitchen hoods inadvertently set off the Ansul fire suppression system, spewing chemical foam all over the kitchen and ruining days of prep work. 

The cleanup cost precious preparation days and left the previously pristine stainless-steel hoods noticeably streaked. To make matters worse, the gelato machine imported from Italy, the basis of the entire dessert program, didn’t work. 

Chef Leon hadn’t ordered enough bison meat to make the buffalo mortadella, so he switched to locally produced prosciutto. And the barrels of aged balsamico that were to make up the “batteria” at the entrance still hadn’t arrived. 

For a man who’d just lost his showcase appetizer, his signature dessert and his first-impression entryway, Leon was strangely calm and accepting, turning his attention to a still-ongoing list of items needed for the kitchen. 

“I’m done with the stressing part,” he said. “The reason why Heather, Austin and I opened up a restaurant is because we can do whatever we want. So if we don’t open with a tasting menu, that’s okay. We can do a second or even a third grand opening. Nobody can tell us otherwise, right?”

The Opening

When the Dear Emilia team finally cut the ceremonial ribbon on January 29, they were not only announcing the grand opening of their new restaurant, but also cutting all ties to the emotional roller coaster that had defined their days (and sleepless nights) for more than two years. 

From now on, it was not the worry of “what if,” but the more concrete challenges of “what’s next?” 

In the end, the project went more than $300,000 over-budget. The opening was delayed at least six months (depending on when you want to start counting).

After all the cuts and compromises, Emilia’s owners estimate they opened with about 65 to 70 percent of what they had originally envisioned. Even on the day of the ribbon-cutting, the electricity kept going out.

Was it worth it? 

“Hell, yeah,” says Morrison, ever the optimist. “Absolutely. It’s like childbirth. Mother Nature makes you forget all that other stuff.”

“Yes?” says Carson, almost begrudgingly, brow furrowed with the day’s concerns. “But the baby’s not out yet.”

“Yeah,” says chef Leon, with his trademark nonchalant calm. “We’ve had our ups and downs, but at the end of the day, yeah… we’re here now.”