Show an accomplished restaurateur a storied old building in a busy urban night-life district, give him two years, and he’ll show you his interior-design masterwork.
Jesse Morreale, along with chef and business partner Sean Yontz, wanted El Diablo Cocina y Tequileria to look like nothing they’d done before — more old-world Mexico than the kitschy Latin pop references that characterize such previous ventures as Tambien.
They accomplished that at El Diablo, which opened Friday night on the corner of First Avenue and Broadway, through a top-to-bottom rehab of the 1905 building that was once the chichi First Avenue Hotel. It had long been vacant.
After all new systems were in place — including wiring, heating and plumbing — Morreale enlisted local artists to blanket El Diablo’s walls with reproductions of classic Mexican murals and religious iconography.
He hunted down a collection of art- deco Mexican iron, , stained-glass light fixtures and antique train lanterns. Then he wrapped up the entire look with muted, metallic earth tones set off by the occasional pop of blue-green, red and black — colors generally associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe.
“I like the Mexico that’s in the cities, not the big resort towns,” Morreale says. “Each little component echoes that.”
One of his biggest compliments recently came from a tequila distiller who visited the new 6,000-square-foot dining room at El Diablo and said it mirrored many of the restaurants he remembered from his childhood in Guadalajara.
“It’s exactly what I wanted — rustic and comfortable,” Morreale says.
El Diablo, 101 Broadway, is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner plus a late-night menu. More information at 303-954-0324.
