Dio Mio and Redeemer Team Opening Pizza and Pasta Joint in Wash Park

Eight years ago, chefs Spencer White and Alex Figura, along with co-owner and director of operations Lulu Simone, brought something new to RiNo when they opened their fast-casual pasta joint Dio Mio. In 2022, the team doubled down in the neighborhood with the addition of Redeemer Pizza, which ranks among the best places to get a slice in the city.

Now, they're adding something new once again — in a different part of town. Johnny Bechamel's, which will serve both pizza and pasta and was among our most anticipated openings of the year, is set to debut this summer at 81 South Pennsylvania Street.

"It's a bit of a reimagined combination of Dio Mio and Redeemer," Simone says. "It's going to be ull service. It's going to be a different style of pizza but the same Redeemer sourdough, and we'll have a full bar and a pretty robust takeout program."

The location was most recently home to the short-lived AJ's Pit Bar-B-Q Steakhouse, one of the many concepts that restaurateur Jared Leonard opened and closed during his time in Denver. Last week, Leonard's last remaining Colorado restaurant, AJ's Pit Bar-B-Q, was seized for unpaid taxes...just days after staff staged a walkout.

Before he opened the AJ's Steakhouse offshoot in Wash Park, Leonard operated several other concepts in the same space, starting with Budlong Hot Chicken in 2020, followed by Montreal-inspired French eatery Au Feu in 2021 and Clairette in 2023.

Now, the space is getting a fresh start under new owners who have proven their skills at running successful concepts in RiNo. "For the last handful of years, we've been looking at other neighborhoods and trying to imagine where we see us fitting best," Simone notes. "We wanted to do another Denver concept that wasn't going to create competition for ourselves. The Wash Park neighborhood felt like it was just far enough away that we can cater to that south Denver crowd."

The team is familiar with the area, having frequented Uncle's Wash Park location next door for years. Johnny Bechamel's will also be across the street from Carmine's on Penn, which is known for its traditional red sauce fare served family-style. (Like Dio Mio, it's  among the best Italian restaurants in the metro area.)

"We feel pretty strongly that what we're going to doing is so different," Simone notes. "Spencer and Alex are still thinking really creatively and outside the box on how they want to approach — rather than Italian food — what we call 'flour and water-focused.'"
Those who've visited any of Leonard's concepts can expect this spot to look completely different when Johnny Bechamel's opens. "We feel like the layout of the space didn't lend itself well to a good flow of service as well as approachability for the average passerby," Simone notes. "It's going to look entirely different in there. The only thing that's gonna be the same is the location of the bathrooms. Beyond that, we're flipping it on its head a little bit."

The addition of Johnny Bechamel's marks another change for the team, which is officially forming a restaurant group, Mama & Papa's Hospitality. "When it was just Dio Mio and Redeemer and we were finding our footing as a team, it didn't feel necessary to establish a restaurant group," Simone explains. "But once we started ideating for Johnny Bechamel's and other concepts we have in the hopper, it felt like it was time to introduce the team behind it as more of a brand."

So far, White and Figura have been the faces of the restaurant group, and "I think they have done a really incredible job of creating these incubators at both Dio Mio and Redeemer to get young chefs in and help them learn their way through," notes Simone. "So creating Mama & Papa's Hospitality group was very much a way for us to put an umbrella over the concepts."

It's also a way to help the brands "match our personalities," Simone says of the change. "If you spend any time with any of the three of us, we're not super serious people, and we wanted to have some more flexibility with where the concepts in the restaurant group can go while still staying true to the family-friendly, comfortable vibes but allowing us to spread our wings creatively."

As the opening of Johnny Bechamel's gets closer, "it just feels exciting to be back in the place of being creative and developing concepts that we feel are really going to fit the neighborhood," Simone says. "Opening Redeemer in the pandemic was an interesting time. ... Now, we're like, if we can open a restaurant in the pandemic, then we can do these things. Let's take the leap."

For updates about the opening of Johnny Bechamel's, follow it on Instagram @johnnybechamels.