Since 1971, the Flagstaff House Restaurant in Boulder has been one of the state's stalwarts of fine dining, weathering public fickleness, food trends that came and went, and continual proclamations that formal hospitality was a thing of the past.
Much of the credit for its staying power can be attributed to Flagstaff founder Don Monette, who on February 14 — a holiday that likely found his beautiful creation packed with lovebirds sharing the four-course tasting menu — passed away “with his loving family by his side at the age of 85, just four days before his 86th birthday,” according to the tribute posted on the restaurant’s website.
The restaurant’s Instagram feed shared this on February 15:
Don Monette was a true pioneer of the Colorado restaurant scene and fine dining world. His risks and sacrifice led The Flagstaff House Restaurant to be highly regarded amongst the global restaurant stage. Don founded The Flagstaff House on November 1st of 1971. With help from his beautiful wife Carole and his sons Mark and Scott Monette, they worked tirelessly to develop The Flagstaff House into a restaurant for Boulder, a restaurant for Colorado, and a restaurant for everyone.
Don clearly cared about food from early on — he was a cook in the Army, and he fell in love with Colorado when he was stationed with the 10th Mountain Division in Leadville during the 1950s. Carole was his high school sweetheart from his hometown of Lake Linden, Michigan, and once he was out of the service, he returned to the Upper Peninsula and married her. In 1963, they moved to Boulder, where he first worked as manager of the Village Inn Pancake House, and then later founded the Viking Restaurant and Golden Buff Coffee Shop.
His family says that when Don learned that the building on Flagstaff Mountain was for sale in 1971, he told them of his dream of making it a world-class destination. "From the start, he wanted the Flagstaff to be a place where, when people walked through the door, they would feel a connection," says Adam Monette, Don's grandson, who now owns the Flagstaff and serves as its general manager. "He wanted to be the kind of restaurateur who treated everyone as special as he thought they were."
To this former restaurant critic, though, Don Monette was the kind of restaurateur who always wanted to talk through problematic meals and always called to say thank you when things went well. As did his sons, who obviously learned their good manners from Dad.
The first time I ate at the Flagstaff House, things didn't go well. In fact, they went really, really badly, and Don insisted on knowing why. We wound up spending a good hour on the phone after my meals, and I walked him through the issues. He vowed to make things better, and he did — I returned annually from then on and never had anything less than a stellar experience.
I revisited for a review in 2001, and that visit was particularly magical. I was living in rural Elbert County at the time, and once a year, I would get a limo and treat my gal pals who lived in the area to a meal at a restaurant I was reviewing for Westword. That year, one of the women was not a fan of wine — a real shame in a place famous for its spectacular wine list — and she asked if they had Bud Light. They did not.
So the staff practically did somersaults trying not only to find a beer she would like (the server actually went out to his car to see if by chance he had Bud Light in his trunk), but also to make her feel comfortable — and they even brought her wheat beer in a champagne flute so that we could all toast in the same classy manner.
During my follow-up chat with Don after the review came out, I thanked him for his staff’s kindness, and although I didn’t write down his exact words, I’ll never forget the gist — it was something to the effect of, 'We don’t ever want to make our guests feel like their tastes are wrong.'
"That's exactly the way he was, and exactly how he taught us to be," Adam says. "He found the common ground with everyone. He was just a very funny and happy person who loved life and loved people."
While I’ve never met Adam, I can tell that he’s following faithfully in the family footsteps, because my most recent visit to the restaurant last year found the same attention to detail, the same gracious service, the same mind-blowing wine list, and the same creative fare.
It’s a heck of a legacy Don left — and I'm raising a champagne flute of wheat beer to him right now.
