Denver has been craving the creative confections of chef Ian Kleinman ever since he had to close the Inventing Room at 2020 Lawrence Street last fall. A four-day doughnut pop-up at Fruition last month sated our sweet tooth temporarily, but a person can only go so long without exploding whipped cream, liquid-nitrogen ice cream and rosemary cotton candy. That's why it's great news that Kleinman has found a new home for his high-tech ice cream parlor and dessert joint. The Inventing Room Dessert Shop, as it will now be called, will find new life later this year in the SloHi Village development at 4431 West 29th Avenue, across the street from Tennyson neighborhood favorites Hogshead Brewery and Dudleroy's Bagels.

"It will be kind of like what we did downtown but with a whole bunch of new design elements," Kleinman explains. Another bonus for customers (and a real rarity in central Denver): The new development will include 48 underground parking spaces.The shop will be about 1,000 square feet and will also include a private room for parties and other events. At the new Inventing Room, Kleinman will expand to six days a week (Tuesday through Sunday) and will also schedule more Gobblefunk tasting dinners for those who appreciate the savory side of his repertoire.

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Chef Ian Kleinman at his new Highland Inventing Room location.

The Inventing Room

But for sugar lovers, Kleinman has plenty of new treats in store, including a virtual-reality s'mores waffle, where customers will strap on goggles and embark on a trip down a chocolate river while being bombarded by marshmallow meteorites — all while enjoying bites of chocolate, marshmallow and graham cracker.

Kleinman opened a semi-mobile version of the Inventing Room in Dubai at the beginning of the year, and will soon have a permanent home there, too: on a new, 9 million-square-foot island called La Mer, which seems appropriately whimsical for his culinary style.

Kleinman expects to open the Highland Inventing Room in August, with the Dubai outpost coming later in the year. He has also re-branded the catering wing of his business, which he's run for the past ten years, as Catering by the Inventing Room, to differentiate it from the dessert shop.

The chef says he had many options when it came to picking a new location, but it essentially came down to where he and his wife, Stacey, felt most at home. Welcome home, Ian.

Something new from the Inventing Room: Butter Beer Float with Brown Butter Ice Cream.

The Inventing Room

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