But over its thirty-year run, Jax has thrived and expanded — it now has five locations across the metro area and has became the foundation of the Big Red F Restaurant Group, which includes the Post Chicken and Beer, West End Tavern, Centro Mexican Kitchen and Velvet Elk Lounge.
At the helm of it all is Dave Query, who started slinging hot dogs at age fourteen, attended the Culinary Institute of America and founded Jax and the Big Red F Restaurant Group as its “chief pot stirrer.”
Jax's official anniversary is November 18. Ahead of that milestone, we spoke to Query about the last thirty years, how it all began, how Jax has changed and what we might expect from Big Red F in the decades to come.
Westword: Did you ever think Jax would make it thirty years?
I opened it when I was 29, maybe thirty — so you're young and you don't even think that far out. Now, thirty years later, I'm 61, and holy shit, man, was this a good run. Once we got to ten, fifteen to 25 seemed realistic. Once you get to twenty, you're starting to think God, could this be fifty? So, yeah, it's an evolution. You know, you don't open something thinking it's going to be a thirty-year-old business.
How many oysters do you think you’ve served since?
Around 7.5 million since opening in 1994.
To what do you attribute the longevity of Jax?
Most restaurants close within the first three to four years, and a large percentage of them close after six to eight. So, yeah, thirty is legit. We filled a niche in Boulder and in Denver. The Denver location is 28 years old in LoDo. The Fort Collins location is coming up on fifteen. So we just tried to go to communities where there wasn't a big seafood presence.
Getting our sustainability certification certainly cemented us into more legitimate offerings and more commitment to our guests and to the planet. And we've just had a lot of fun. The three oldest locations have a somewhat similar footprint. They're small, they're busy, they're frenetic, they're fun.
We've always consistently delivered really great food and service, and we've just had a remarkable, remarkable level of staff coming through these restaurants over the last thirty years. You know, it's all of them that make the experience so great. And for some reason, Jax just continues to attract the most incredible, incredible staff front and back of the house.
How did Jax come about?
When we opened in Boulder, you couldn't get an oyster on the half shell. So we filled that void, and not only did we offer an oyster on the half shell, we put an oyster cage and a shuck box right in the front, 4 feet from the front door. So you walked into what you were going for.
When you walk into a sushi restaurant, you see all that seafood in the case. Seeing what you've come to eat really enhances the guest experience. You walk into a pizza place and you see somebody up front throwing pies. Or you walk into a Mexican place and there's a little old Mexican lady making tortillas. It just sets the anticipation of like, “oh my god, I'm so excited to be here. Look at that. I can't wait to get into that.” So that design element certainly helps.
How much did you have to compete with the perception that Colorado couldn’t get fresh seafood?
Look, if you've got an East Coast restaurant serving West Coast seafood and a West Coast restaurant serving seafood from Japan or the East Coast, it's all about air flight. And so we stated that early. We're in the middle of the country. We've got a great airport, and we've got access to every single bit of fresh seafood that anybody on the coast has. And we just kept saying that over and over and over again.
The challenges were fighting that a little bit, where people didn’t expect much, being that we're in the mountains. What a dumb thing to say. You expect a good burger in Hawaii or in California, and they're not on the range and in the cow-producing areas. You expect a good chicken in New York City — I'm sure there's not a lot of chicken farms there. So it's just sort of consumer ignorance. But you never really wanted to call it that. Food is very accessible. It's how you handle it once you get it in your door, and how you treat it and how you respect it. That is the difference between good and bad, right?
Jax used to be one of the only seafood choices in town. How have you managed to compete with all the national chains that have moved in?
Yeah, more so in Denver with the competition with Water Grill and Ocean Prime. There isn't a lot of competition in Boulder or Fort Collins or Colorado Springs to our Jax locations. It's not easy. It's really hard, and it's challenging to embark on running a real fresh-seafood restaurant. You've got to be really up for the challenge. I've always equated it to juggling ice on a hot day. You don't have the shelf life that you do with some other products. You’ve got to be really on it, you know. It's a very fresh product, and it has to be served in its freshest state, so it's not for the weak of heart. If it was easy, they'd call it snowboarding.
How has being part of a restaurant group like Big Red F helped?
With size comes more expense. Bigger isn't always better. Certainly our buying power got better. We were able to ask more of our distributors and our vendors. We could get some products that weren't necessarily coming to Colorado — some fresh seasonal products like Nantucket-based scallops or Florida stone crab claws, or soft shell crabs from Maryland or the Carolinas. So when the time came that we were getting some harder-to-find product, we could say we can go through 100 pounds of this a week as opposed to ten.
What challenges have you faced over the years?
Well, certainly the housing crisis, 9/11 — COVID was a dunk for everybody. But no, when you're paying attention and running a small little restaurant, there's not a lot of curveballs coming. We haven't had any huge shortages of any certain product. Again, it’s not for the novice, running a fresh seafood restaurant. You have to really pay attention and source your vendors and source your product and have confidence in where it's coming from. But no, we've been lucky. There has not been a lot of big, big lightning bolts of any sort.
What were the more memorable trends that have come and gone (or stayed the same)?
Well, in relation to seafood, it's always been a healthy product. It's always been something that's good for your body. And so we've never run into these reports on cholesterol or beef or we're not really affected by these big trends, these big diet trends, these fads, like low carb. It's not what we do. We serve seafood, and it's really healthy. And so we have been very, very unaffected as opposed to other restaurants.
How has the Denver/Boulder dining scene changed over the years?
Drinking trends have changed. It's a lot more conscious consumption now. Certainly, COVID changed the way that people are eating in America. You know, that term "foodie" used to send shivers up chefs' spines, because foodies were just a nightmare. When somebody says, “Oh, I'm a foodie,” it's like, gag.
And now foodies are actually foodies. They spent two years during COVID in their pajamas learning how to break down a side of beef and how to make sausage and how to make risotto and pasta. And they were making beer in their basement, and they joined wine clubs, and they started digging into spirits and how distilled distillation works. So the customers have, in the last two or three years, become really intelligent. The dining knowledge, knowledge of food, and the passion around food. Because the knowledge is higher, the appreciation for it is higher. So it's been interesting to watch America sort of grow up around their food knowledge, as opposed to what it might have been twenty, 25, thirty years ago.
Jax founder Dave Query credits his staff with helping Jax find success over the decades.
Courtesy of Big Red F Restaurant Group
You know, there's just so much excitement around the joy of bringing a big plate of two or three dozen oysters on ice. Anytime you serve something on ice in a restaurant, it always really gets people's attention.
But it's been a pleasure at Jax Boulder. I grew up in Boulder, so I know a lot of people that I grew up with, seeing my old school teachers and classmates. With thirty years comes a lot of legacies. We’ve got employees that we had in 1994 who were just young kids, who we watched get married and have kids, and now there's maybe eight children of early employees interspersed around. There’s two of them at Jax Boulder. So there's been a lot of milestones of babies being born. Customers coming in with their kids in a car seat, and then the kid becomes a manager or a bartender or works in the kitchen.
Certainly when our chef during the 2008-2009 time period won Top Chef season five, Hosea Rosenberg. [His Boulder restaurant, Blackbelly, just celebrated a decade in business.] That was certainly fun and exciting to go through. We were able to go to the James Beard house and cook a dinner representing Jax. Doing that with chef Sheila Lucero, who has been anchoring the food at Jax for the last 26 years, is a legendary memory. Winning certain awards, like best seafood in the country in a couple of publications over the years, is certainly a lot of celebration.
It gets better with age, man. This restaurant gets better with age. I think we're serving some of our best food and delivering our most intelligent service. We're super pumped for what 2025 has in store.
How do you stay inspired and engaged after thirty years?
This is what I do. I started at Mustard’s Last Stand when I was fourteen, and I handed somebody a hot dog and they were blown away. They were like, “Wow, that was the best hot dog I've ever eaten.” I have been hooked with trying to put things in front of people that make them smile and create memories through delicious hospitality. It's addictive. I would not want to do anything else. It's the best job in the world.
What’s in store for the next thirty years?
You know, more of the same. It's certainly a different pace, going from thirty to sixty years old and from sixty to ninety, so I'm sure it'll be a little different. But we're working on a couple of new projects right now and keeping the ball going. Keeping it fresh. Trying to stay relevant and current and in the conversation. So more of the same, I'm sure.
For more information about Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar, visit jaxfishhouse.com.
