LoHi brunch spot expanding into Baja burrito concept on weekdays

Burritos might not be the first thing you’d think of when trying to bring something new to Denver’s food scene. After all, you could close your eyes, spin around three times and walk 50 yards in any direction in Denver, and find a place to buy a burrito. 

But that’s exactly what Lydie Lovett came up with when deciding to expand her LoHi weekend brunch spot, Wilde, with a new weekday concept: Baja Burritos, expected to launch next week.

Lovett hopes her spin on the Mile High staple will offer something new and different by leaning into the Baja-style burrito she grew up with in Southern California. 

“There’s only a couple of places out here that do that San Diego-style food,” she says. “I’m always hearing about a lot of transplants here missing the components that make a Southern California breakfast burrito.”

That means no rice and no beans — and definitely no green chile. Instead, her burritos are stuffed with French fries and crisped up on a flat griddle before serving. 

Regulars at Wilde will find the concept a bit familiar. The most popular item on the brunch restaurant’s menu is the Baja Burrito, a blend of carne asada, eggs, French fries, cheese, avocado, and jalapeño crema, all wrapped in a 14-inch flour tortilla shell sipped par-cooked from Grand Junction. 

“Fries is really kind of the thing,” she explains. “I actually get a little upset when people say no fries and want to add rice and beans into their burrito. Like, that’s not how it’s made!”

When Baja Burritos opens, it will expand upon Wilde’s fan favorite with a broader line of breakfast and lunch burritos. That includes a chile relleno burrito, surf-and-turf with shrimp and carne asada, Nashville hot chicken breakfast burrito, beer-battered fried fish burrito, and a pollo asado burrito, all for roughly $15. 

“I think it’s better just to do one thing and do it really well,” Lovett says.

There will also be taco options on the menu for $3 each, along with a line of house-made salsas, corn elote, horchatas, aqua frescas and more. 

This isn’t Lovett’s first culinary pivot. The Encinitas, California, native first entered the Denver food scene in 2017 after traveling here to buy a food truck for her fried chicken pop-up, Chicken Rebel. She initially planned to bring the truck back to San Diego, but after the truck she was promised proved suboptimal (it was quite the drama), she parked it at Finn’s Manor. Like many Denverites, she stayed. 

Eventually, the Chicken Rebel food truck became multiple Chicken Rebel restaurant locations before consolidating to just one outpost in LoHi, which she later closed and replaced with what is now Wilde. Earlier this year, she reduced Wilde’s hours of operation to just weekends, which she says is better for the brunch crowd. 

“Brunch is so synonymous with the weekend, like bottomless mimosas; people hang out for a long time,” she says. “It’s not so much a breakfast place. Most of our customers start to come in around noon, so that really impacted the weekday business.”

Baja Burritos was born out of the need to fill weekday hours while maintaining labor management, and to serve the local market in a new and, hopefully, welcome way. 

“I’m really so excited about this concept,” she says. “I’m trying to lean into more of a fast-casual lunch menu during the week, and then be ‘Wilde’ on the weekends, which I think has a nice ring.”