Now, owner Miles Odell is officially opening reservations for his twelve-course fine-dining tasting menu, dubbed the Counter at Odell’s. The concept launches on March 28 in the same building as his namesake bagel shop.
But there will be no bagels on this dinner menu. The Counter is inspired by Odell’s Japanese training and the principle of kaiseki — a traditional, multi-course Japanese dining experience that emphasizes seasonality, balance and artistry.
Kaiseki leans heavily into seasonal ingredients and traditionally follows a course structure that, at the Counter, will be “cold dishes, steamed dishes, grilled dishes, a robata charcoal dish, then six to eight courses of sushi toward the end of the menu, followed by a seasonal dessert,” Odell explains.
The chef's deep appreciation for traditional Japanese cuisine stems from his multi-decade training in the discipline. After studying at the French Culinary Institute in New York City, Odell worked at several Michelin-starred restaurants including Nobu, Masa and Bouley. He was selected as one of fifteen chefs worldwide for Japan’s prestigious Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ Culinary Ambassador Program, for which he moved to Kyoto and ended up working under Gion Sasaki, a three-Michelin-star restaurant known for its innovative take on kaiseki.
Eventually, Odell moved to Aspen, then Denver, doing private chef stints. But after years in Japan, then Colorado, the New Jersey native found himself craving good ol’ bagels and lox. “It’s something I’ve always loved eating, and being a part of for the holidays,” Odell says. He started making bagels with Colorado grains and, with encouragement from friends, began selling at the Highland Square Farmers' Market during the 2023 season. His bagels quickly gained fans and at the end of the season, Odell leased the former Denver Bread Co. space in the West Highland neighborhood.
It took a year of renovations before Odell's Bagel opened but from the very beginning, the plan was to also use the space for dinner service. “When I was talking with our architect, from day one, [the Counter at Odell’s] was what we had in mind,” Odell says. “It was a blank space, so we put in all of the counter, the lighting above the counter, and new bathrooms. We even put an elevator in so that we could use the basement as a production facility for the bagels and for the dinner concept.”
However, Odell and his team wanted to make sure the bagel production side of the business was settled and in good hands before he turned his attention to dinner. “I’m glad we’re opening now instead of a month after we opened the bagel shop, because we’ve put a lot more thought and detail into it than we could have if we just opened right out of the gate,” says Paul Lysek, who has worked with Odell since last August and is the shop's general manager and beverage director.
By not rushing the opening, the team had time to co-design handmade ceramics with artists from Colorado, New York City and Japan. They also could focus on sourcing locally and hyper-seasonally, “gaining inspiration from what’s available of the Colorado bounty, which we think has amazing ingredients," Odell notes. "It’s also a shorter season, so learning how to extend those when they’re out of season with preservation."
Some producer partners include Unsung Farms and Switchgear Farms, both of which Odell knows from his farmers' market days.
A dish cooked on a robata grill with binchotan charcoal will be part of the tasting menu.
Jeff Fierberg
Anticipate the menu to change every week; the lineup for opening night is still in flux, but Odell offers some teasers. For the charcoal dish, he’s thinking of a binchotan-grilled Colorado lamb with everything spice miso. Many of the cooked dishes will focus on dashi, such as the “steamed Thai sea bream dish. It has grated turnips in it — it’s a really comforting late-winter, early-spring dish and I think that will set the tone before we start our sushi courses,” says Odell. He’s especially keen to take advantage of the fresh seafood available right now, such as Blackthroat seaperch, bluefin tuna and Santa Barbara spot prawn.
The tasting menu will cost $150 per person; for an additional $85, diners can add a wine pairing that Lysek describes as "very natural wine, a low intervention-focused wine program. We’ll have sakes as well, both iconic benchmark producers as well as some off the beaten path.” Cocktails will be available, with selections such as the Rice Stirred Negroni, a traditional negroni stirred over sushi rice; and the Japanese Whiskey Sour made with Terada Honke’s Katori 90, yuzu and shiso.
It’s an interesting intersection — bringing Odell's Jewish heritage and Japanese culinary training under one roof as a natural reflection of his personal and professional journey.
Although there will not be bagels on the tasting menu, there could be some fun interplay between the bagel and dinner concepts. For example, the excess salmon skin from the lox might be dehydrated as a chip for an appetizer at night, and the fruit used for dessert might appear as a bagel preserve. The teams might also take advantage of each other’s equipment, using the bagel oven to slow-cook root vegetables or finishing off the pastrami in the robata grill.
Initially, the Counter at Odell’s will run from Friday to Sunday nights by reservation only, with plans to expand to five evenings a week.
But first, the team has to get through opening night, which will be the first time Odell has run a full-service kitchen in years. “I can’t help but feel a little nervous about opening a new concept,” he admits. “But I am so excited to finally get to play with and cook all these ingredients that I haven’t cooked in a while. It’s gonna be really exciting.”
The Counter at Odell's opens on March 28 and will be located inside Odell's Bagel at 3200 Irving Street. Reservations are now available on Tock.
