Refreshed Mercantile Reopens at Union Station Friday

"So much about being a great chef is more than just cooking. And I think all we were doing the last three years was just cooking, and we lost our soul," says chef and restaurateur Alex Seidel, who opened Mercantile inside Union Station in 2014. On January 1, the Michelin-recommended restaurant closed for a refresh and on Friday, February 21, it will welcome guests once again. "This is a really good opportunity to push the reset button."

A lot has changed for Seidel in recent years. In 2021, he sold his Larkspur farm and creamery, and last month, he closed his first restaurant, Fruition, after an eighteen-year run. Mercantile, which also has an outpost at DIA, nearly closed, too.

"Owning businesses for the last eighteen years has been very special and I've been very fortunate to work with a lot of great people over the years. But I think at the end of the day, I started to get so far removed from actually cooking or working with chefs, talking about food. In the last four years, it's just been HR and financials," Seidel says, admitting that those are not his strong suit, or what he enjoys. "For me, it was like, how do I get back to doing the things that I love?"

Mercantile had turned into a place that Seidel didn't love. "I didn't like going into my own restaurant, and I didn't know how to repair it," he recalls.

In 2018, he'd been named Best Chef Southwest at the James Beard Awards for his work at Mercantile. In Seidel's acceptance speech, he thanked then-chef de cuisine, Matt Vawter, who later became the restaurant's executive chef. But in early 2020, Vawter left to open his own restaurant in Breckenridge, Rootstalk, for which he won a James Beard award of his own last year.

Vawter's exit left big shoes to fill, Seidel recalls, and under its new executive chef, "we got away from who we are. We got away from some of the ideals that I set in place for years and years, the relationships. Next thing, I turned around and half my purveyors that I've worked with a long time were essentially fired by the previous chef."
And then there was what was happening outside the restaurant. "It's no surprise to anyone that downtown and Union Station have had challenges," Seidel says. "We've been no different."

So around two years ago, he met with Sage Hospitality Group president and CEO Walter Isenberg. "I shared with him that my ten-year lease was going to be coming up and I really didn't think I could continue Mercantile from a financial perspective," Seidel says, "and asked him if there was any interest in working together. Walter, being a pioneer of Denver who really believes in downtown and its ability to come back, and believes in Mercantile, he didn't want to see it closed."

A partnership with Sage was officially announced last August.

Last year, Seidel also brought on a new executive chef, Alex Grenier, who trained at the International Culinary Center and has worked in Northern California restaurants such as Left Bank Brasserie, Hedge Row and the first Nobu in the Bay Area. He also helped open and still partially owns Five Points cocktail bar Welton Room. "It's been really great to get to know him," Seidel says. "He's certainly a driven individual, someone who shares the same ideal as I do."

After moving to Denver in 2017, Mercantile was the first restaurant where Grenier dined. "It's always held a special place in my heart," he says, adding that getting the job as its executive chef was "a little bit of a manifestation."

Seidel and Grenier spent the last year talking about Mercantile's reset, and now they're excited to share the new menu with diners. The offerings are centered on seasonal, locally sourced ingredients from the purveyors Seidel has spent many years building relationships with, and the menu will change four times a year.

Sage Hospitality's in-house design team, Sage Studio, handled the interior refresh, which includes lots of brass and pops of green plus "improved lighting, enhanced acoustics, and additional seating options, including an invitingly redesigned private dining room with seating for up to ten people," according to a press release.
The former market area is no more; it's been replaced with a cafe where guests can grab a casual, counter-service lunch. Brand new is a $35, two-course prix fixe lunch option available in the dining room.

"We have two really different types of main clientele," Grenier notes. "One of them is the traveler — they're coming in off the train and they want to come in and get something quick." For that type of guest, Grenier is excited about the new lineup of salads and sandwiches.

The prix fixe option is designed for the second set of clientele — "the corporate type of crowd," Grenier says, who are looking for something a little more upscale for their business lunches. That menu includes some soups, salads and vegetables to start, followed by entree-style dishes including vegetarian options. "We want to make sure everyone can come in and have something that speaks to their diets."

The dinner menu is divided into four sections — Earth, Sea, Grain and Pasture — and all dishes are designed to share with the table. Highlights include charred broccoli with Caesar, white miso, bacon and garlic crumb; octopus with muhammara, saffron, frisée and pepper escabeche; a 36-ounce Brunson Meat Co. dry-aged ribeye with mushroom conserva, sweetbreads and beef jus; and Grenier's current favorite, scallops with yuzu emulsion and vichyssoise.

"A lot of the plates that you'll see now revolve around simple elegance," Grenier says.

The bar program got an update as well. Overseen by Roilen Ivester, it includes gin and tonic service with a build-your-own garnish bar, as well as a large-format seasonal sangría.

This summer, Mercantile will also add weekend brunch.

The reset has Seidel feeling personally refreshed. "Now that I have this support, Alex [Grenier] and I actually spent like a week and a half in the kitchen every day together, and I haven't done that in years. That's good for my soul," he says.

Both Seidel and Grenier hope that Mercantile's reboot can be part of the comeback of downtown. "We want to bring vibrancy back to Union Station and to downtown," Grenier concludes. "It's been struggling and maybe we can do that. ... Maybe we can be a pillar to help rejuvenate that."

Mercantile is located inside Union Station at 1701 Wynkoop Street and will be open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch, 2 to 5 p.m. for happy hour (in the cafe only) and 5 to 9 p.m. for dinner starting February 21. For more information and to book a reservation, visit mercantiledenver.com. To plan private events or buyouts, email [email protected].