Rioja at Twenty: Serving Up Two Decades of Memories

Chef Jennifer Jasinski and Beth Gruitch partnered twenty years ago to open Rioja, their first restaurant. Looking back over two decades, the story of Rioja says a lot about the development of the Denver restaurant scene, the evolution of Larimer Square, the rise of women chefs...and the importance of staying true to delicious food and attentive service.

As the Crafted Concepts partners marked Rioja's anniversary month, they joined with longtime PR pro John Imbergamo to reminisce about Rioja and to choose twenty milestones from the past two decades (repeating an exercise they did at the end of the first decade).

Here is the latest lineup, in chronological order:
November 22, 2004: Opening Day
Jasinski, a chef who got her start with Wolfgang Puck and then led the kitchen at Panzano, and Gruitch, a front-of-the-house veteran, had already talked about partnering on their own restaurant when they got word that a prime space was opening up in Larimer Square. That historic block was just beginning to gain a reputation as a chef-driven area, but they couldn't tell anyone that longtime mainstay Josephina's was closing (taking its "Chugalug Tuesdays" sign with it). "Moving to Denver, I thought Larimer Square was the coolest place," Jasinski recalls. Future investors were not as excited; one said that Larimer Square was a spot just for "honky-tonks and bad restaurants." But the partners persevered. "I always figured we'd be in a popular area," notes Gruitch. "We wanted to add to the excitement of what was happening there. Good timing."

Even so, the opening "seemed to take forever," she remembers.

December 15, 2004: Publication of "Pressure Cooker"
After reporter John Lehndorff and photographer Marc Piscotty shadowed the partners for months, the Rocky Mountain News published a sixteen-page special section devoted to the opening of Rioja just three weeks later. "I should have quit that day," says Imbergamo, noting that a new venture just doesn't get publicity like that. These days, with the Rocky gone for fifteen years, no new venture gets publicity like that. "Every other PR person in the city was angry."

Jasinski — who was shown running across Larimer on the cover — and Gruitch knew a story was in the works, but had no idea how major it would be. "It kept evolving and getting bigger and bigger," recalls Gruitch. "To see it as a pullout, wow."

March 2006: Food Network Thanksgiving Challenge
Denver-based High Noon Entertainment brought the popular cable network to Denver to film a holiday special full of big- name chefs from Boston and New York...and Denver, in the form of Jasinski. "It was the first of its kind," she says. "Pretty cool."

August 25-28, 2008: Democratic National Convention
Against all odds and some much bigger contenders, the Democratic National Convention came to Denver in late August  — bringing lots of big names and culminating with the nomination of presidential candidate Barack Obama. The partners remember it through the lens of sleep deprivation. "The anticipation, the big buyouts," Gruitch recalls. "Looking around the full dining room at midnight, it felt like a New York restaurant."

"Not much sleep," adds Jasinski. "But so much attention to Denver itself. Woo!"

Spring 2010: First James Beard Nomination — Semifinalist, Best Chef Southwest
While up in Boulder, Frasca Food and Wine's Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson had been honored with the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Southwest in 2008, no chef in Denver had ever won...and now Jasinski was in the semifinals in the Best Chef Southwest category. "I'm part of the conversation," she remembers thinking. "It was just amazing."
2011: The Perfect Bite Cookbook
Publishing a cookbook was the "culmination of all we'd done so far," remembers Jasinski. "The coolest restaurants have cookbooks." But that doesn't mean creating a cookbook is easy. "You don't know what you're getting into," admits Gruitch. They talked with the staff about favorite dishes, Jasinski redid the recipes to make sure they were all formatted in the same way and would work for any cook...and then the publisher disappeared. Imbergamo ultimately found another in Singapore, and had to bribe the original publisher's designer to send the files there.

"I love it that people still comment that the recipes are great," says Jasinski. Unfortunately, they can't reprint the cookbook: The second publisher, too, has disappeared.

September 2012: Finalist on Top Chef Masters
In late 2012, Jasinski suddenly disappeared from Denver, only to return six weeks later on Valentine's Day. Where had she been? Los Angeles, where she was a contestant on Top Chef Masters. "We had to lie to everybody," she says of her stint on the popular show. Although she wasn't the champ (she was one of three in the finals), she won a double-elimination challenge to come back from the banished, a victory that helped her enjoy the rest of a very stressful time. "It isn't fair," she notes. "It's TV."

May 6, 2013: James Beard Winner for Best Chef Southwest
"Amazeballs," says Jasinski today, which is a little more demure than the "Holy shit" she uttered on stage at the James Beard Foundation Awards ceremony when she learned she'd won. "I was super blown away." It was a big win all round, which gave a boost to the business as it was heading into its tenth year. It also cured the imposter symdrome that Jasinski admits she was suffering from for a while.

Female chefs weren't winning big awards in those days, Imbergamo notes. This changed that for good.

March 9, 2014: Porc Cochon 555 Winner
Jasinski had participated in one of the legendary porkorific competitions before, but Alex Seidel landed in hog heaven that time. This round, her posole Porc Cochon "was just too good," she says. "They couldn't deny it."

March 20, 2014: Visit Denver Tourism Star Awards
Rioja had entered the scene right as Denver restaurants were getting more respect nationally...and Denver itself finally took note when Visit Denver, the city's official booster group, honored the partners with a Tourism Star. "I thought it was a huge honor," recalls Gruitch, who went on to serve on Visit Denver's board helping to push restaurants as part of the hospitality and tourism industry.

"People would tell us when they'd travel, they'd check the James Beard list," Jasinski says. And then they'd come to Rioja.

January 2015: Full Remodel of Rioja
Ten years after it had first opened on a tight budget, Rioja closed for five weeks and a full gut job. "We didn't have a tremendous amount of money to translate our dream into a restaurant," explains Gruitch of the original buildout. "We did the best we could at the time." But now times had changed. "We asked ourselves, if we want Rioja to be relevant into the future, we want to make this look totally different. How?" recalls Jasinski. The result? "It's just gorgeous, timelessly beautiful."

Spring 2016: James Beard Outstanding Chef Semifinalist
Jasinski moved out of the regional categories and into the top tier of the chef competition. "It just blew me away," she remembers.

September 2018: Slow Food Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, Turin, Italy
Rioja was hopping, the partners had added other restaurants — but they still managed to get to Italy in 2018, for a Slow Food special event. Jasinski wound up cooking with Alice Waters, "as well as a bunch of other really great people," says Jasinski. And the next year, Slow Food came to Larimer Square.

Spring 2020: James Beard Outstanding Restaurateur Semifinalist
This time, both partners were recognized for their work in the industry. "Such an awesome thing," recalls Jasinski. Just one problem: The honor came during COVID, with little celebration and considerable controversy over other picks.
2020: Nation’s Restaurant News 50 Most Influential Women in Food Service
The honors just keep coming. "Sometimes I'm just blown away," admits Jasinski.

2021: Nation’s Restaurant News Menu Masters Hall of Fame
This award went from just print to the plate, with a big party at Mile High Station. "All the people who got the award before me, including Wolfgang Puck," muses Jasinski. "All giant names, Wow, thank you. I feel like we got some recognition during the pandemic for all the things we were trying to do." And they did plenty, offering up the Rioja kitchen for charitable efforts and helping out on numerous projects. (Note: Rioja was the last place I ate on March 16, when the city shut down restaurants; it was also the first place I ate when they reopened.)

October 10-12, 2022: Fortune Most Powerful Women
The event in Laguna Niguel, California, was "inspirational," Jasinski recalls. "All these amazing, powerful women were there," including Melissa Gates. Jasinski attended all the events...then cooked dinner for the group.

2023: Visit Denver Tourism Hall of Fame
Rioja wasn't yet twenty, but the partners were recognized with a lifetime achievement award for what they'd done for the industry, starting with Rioja. "You look at the people who've been honored before you," says Gruitch. "I thought it was really nice."

And it came at a momentous time for the restaurant industry, which has been going through tough times in Denver. This past summer, Gruitch and Jasinski decided to shutter Stoic & Genuine, their first restaurant in Union Station, and named new partners at Ultreia and Bistro Vendôme. That gave them more time to focus on Rioja as it headed to a big twentieth birthday.

October 3, 2024: Twentieth-Anniversary Dinner With Wolfgang Puck
Wolfgang Puck wasn't going to miss a party honoring the venture started by his protégé, even if he didn't respond to the invitation for eight months. "He's very busy," notes Jasinski. "That's an understatement. He was just so happy to come out, and said that it was really important." Not only did he come out, but he table-hopped, took selfies with the diners and  told incredible stories, many about Jasinski.

"I truly think the love and respect he has for Jen was incredible," says Gruitch, adding that he lit up the room "like a proud papa."
November 13: Twentieth-Anniversary Party
But the party wasn't over yet. On November 13, Rioja held a sold-out celebration — and then some — that highlighted all the chefs, winemakers and beverage people who'd essentially grown up with Rioja. Some had worked there, others had worked on their own places at the same time. Among these other local heroes were chefs Carrie Baird, Dana Rodriguez, Hosea Rosenberg and Troy Guard — who gave Jasinski an action figure of herself. 

It was a night shared by just 220 of their closest friends. "Everyone respected everyone else so much," says Jasinski.

"So much fun," concludes Gruitch. And after the event, the partners sent a check for more than $10,000 to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which hosts performances so many people have paired with an early dinner at Rioja over the decades.

And the fun's not over yet. After years of repairs and renovations by new owner Asana Partners, Larimer Square has lost the scaffolding and gained new businesses and events that are livening up a block where Rioja was often one of the only bright spots.

The refresh is exciting for Gruitch and Jasinski, who just signed a new ten-year lease for the Rioja space. While their flagship stays the course, they're excited about other projects, too, which their organizational moves this past summer made possible.

"There are so many memories made at Rioja," Gruitch says, "and so many more to make."

Rioja is open daily at 1431 Larimer Street; find out more here.