Southern Hospitality and Carve Barbecue Call it Quits in Colorado

Southern cooking may be hotter than a buttermilk biscuit right now, but Southern Hospitality is on the skids — at least in Denver. The two locations of Southern Hospitality, at 1433 17th Street downtown and 7431 Park Meadows Drive in Lone Tree, have gone dark, along with parent company Southern Concepts' other restaurant, Carve Barbecue, at 1000 South Colorado Boulevard.

Southern Hospitality was founded in New York City with Justin Timberlake as an original investor (though he's had no ties to the restaurant for years); the downtown Denver outpost sprang up in 2013 with singer Ryan Tedder and his father, Gary, in the ownership group. After that, Southern Concepts Restaurant Group, Inc. (which only operated the Colorado locations) launched Carve in 2015 under then-CEO Mitch Roth before Jim Fenlason took over the position last year.

The past few years have seen a surge of new Southern restaurants in Denver, with Low Country Kitchen and Tupelo Honey leading the way while other eateries have embraced grits, fried chicken and biscuits to cash in on the cuisine's popularity. Barbecue, too, has experienced a renaissance, with the likes of GQue Championship Barbecue, Roaming Buffalo and Wayne's Smoke Shack smoking up the scene and Owlbear Barbecue and Rolling Smoke set to open as brick-and-mortar operations this summer in RiNo and the Stanley Marketplace, respectively.

Looks like Denver's newfound love for the Deep South couldn't keep Southern Hospitality from being deep-sixed.