Every Restaurant Opening and Closing This Week, September 10-16

It's a good week for taco lovers in Denver: Tacos Selene, one of the area's best taquerias with outposts in Aurora and Littleton, now has a location in Denver proper, at Tenth and Santa Fe. Its street-style tacos are just $2 each, served on a corn tortilla with onions and cilantro and an array of salsas.

Tacos are also now being served at Zeppelin Station. The RiNo food hall recently cleared out all of the FAM Hospitality Group concepts that were operating there, making way for five businesses to move in, including taco spot Purisima. Rounding out the new lineup is Rock N Lobster Roll; Soi Kowboi, which moved from Gold Point; Gyros King; and Miami-based Pesto Italian Cuisine.

There's a new soul-food spot on East Colfax; Mattie's Soul Food debuted this week in the space that was most recently home to Game Lounge and was DJ's Colfax Cafe before that. On the same strip, the former home of Annie's Cafe, which closed in June after 41 years in business, is now the second location of Spice Room Neighborhood Indian Bistro (the original is on West 38th Avenue).

Following its debut in Boulder last month, New York-born ice cream brand Van Leeuwen has opened its second Colorado scoop shop. Check out our ranking of some of its staple flavors.

After taking a summer break, restaurateur Jared Leonard (who also owns Campfire in Evergreen, Grabowski's at the Source and AJ's Pit Bar-B-Q) has reopened his Montreal-inspired French brasserie Au Feu in Wash Park. It's now open as a cafe and bakery from 7 a.m. to noon, serving pastries from Reunion Bakery as well as coffee and espresso from Italian brand Lavazza. An updated dinner menu that includes several new items will be available from 5 to 10 p.m.  
Saying goodbye this week is a big name in local craft beer: Black Project made ales produced by naturally occurring yeast and bacteria through spontaneous fermentation. Its owner, James Howat, announced the closure on Instagram, saying that "a combination of business decisions that were made prior to and not expecting a pandemic, followed by decreased foot traffic, rising rent and raw material prices, and a changing beer market, among other things — have made it so that it isn't possible for me to go on making the kinds of beers I want to make."

In other openings-and-closings news:

• Stem Ciders will close its original RiNo location on September 30; it will reopen as Howdy Bar shortly after, and Stem will move into the nearby, now empty Preservery space by the end of the year.
• Sour beer bar and restaurant Goed Zuur in Five Points will shut down October 9-27 for a remodel before reopening with some big menu changes.
• The five-month-old Fuel & Iron, a Pueblo-themed bar, will be transformed into Honor Farm, a haunted bar, by early October.

Here's the complete list of restaurants and bars opening and closing this week:
Restaurants and bars opening this week:*

Gyros King, 3501 Wazee Street
Mattie's Soul Food, 1490 Eudora Street
Pesto Italian Cuisine, 3501 Wazee Street
Purisima, 3501 Wazee Street
Rock N Lobster Roll, 3501 Wazee Street
Soi Kowboi, 3501 Wazee Street
Spice Room Neighborhood Indian Bistro, 3100 East Colfax Avenue
Tacos Selene, 1001 Santa Fe Drive
Van Leeuwen, 1459 Larimer Street

Restaurants and bars reopening this week:*

Au Feu Brasserie, 81 South Pennsylvania

Restaurants and bars closing this week:*

Black Project Spontaneous and Wild Ales, 1290 South Broadway

*Or earlier and not previously reported.

Know of something we missed? Email [email protected].