Clyde is both the name of a new restaurant coming to Capitol Hill this fall and the name of a French bulldog.
“He’s our muse,” said Christopher Fehlinger, who, with his husband Jon Lipshutz, is planning the restaurant and wine bar for the space previously occupied by Le Central. “And our food taster,” he said, smiling.
Clyde is also the name of the design shop that Lipshutz will set up in the eastern corner of the building at Eighth Avenue and Lincoln Street. But Clyde’s primary offering will be the restaurant, which Fehlinger plans to open this fall with a “modern rustic” menu and a wine bar with 500 labels — most of which they’ll open for wine by the glass, he said. The design shop will sell kitchen wares, including some items from the restaurant’s kitchen, as well as home decor items.
Clyde’s sample menu (on for an Open Table contest Fehlinger entered) includes cheese and charcuterie, plus plates that draw from both farm and sea: toasted farro and beets, razor clams with chiles, five-spice pork collar and hickory-grilled rabbit with hush puppies and corn bread.
They’re focused on offering Denver’s growing millennial population accessible options, both in the design store and on the restaurant’s menu.
“A lot of young people moving here, they’ve got disposable income but they’re not going to buy $5,000 couches for their apartment that they’re going to move next year,” Fehlinger said.
Fehlinger has been in the restaurant business for decades. He got his start at New York’s Union Square Cafe for Danny Meyer, then worked at Babbo with Mario Batali. He’s also worked in Los Angeles, but Fehlinger and Lipshutz were living in Santa Fe most recently. From Santa Fe, they traveled to Denver often and said they fell in love with the city.
“You can still do a business like this without having a million dollars in the bank,” Fehlinger said. “We call it a pop-and-pop shop.”
They moved here a few months ago, and they say they’re hiring a local chef — but they aren’t willing to reveal the chef’s name just yet.
Local contractor CB Maintenance was working on the restaurant’s interior Tuesday afternoon. Much of the building’s original charm, like the brick walls and the Tetris-like floor plan, will remain. But the French-inspired paintings sprinkled throughout the space from Le Central’s days will be painted over in the coming days.
“You don’t want to take a space everyone loves and gut it,” Fehlinger said.
“Le Central was here for 30 years, so you could run a successful business in this space,” Lipschutz added. “Everyone we’ve mentioned it to says ‘We loved Le Central,’ so there’s a real buzz just around the space.”
Le Central, known for its colorful murals and steamed mussels,
The size of the building — more than 5,000 square feet — and comfort of a location that held a beloved restaurant for decades led them to choose this building over finding space in Denver’s popular RiNo neighborhood.
With so much space to work with — which has not one but three existing kitchens — the owners are considering an array of options: a speakeasy in the basement, a wholesale bread bakery, a coffee and breakfast bar in the main room. In the meantime, though, other realities, like the new roof the building’s owner is installing in October, are taking precedent over the creative possibilities the space presents.
That aforementioned Kickstarter? Just before Fehlinger and Lipshutz scooped up the space, Fehlinger entered a contest at. Clyde is one of the finalists; Fehlinger and Lipshutz are
The story has been updated to reflect the correct intersection names — the location of Clyde is Eighth Avenue and Lincoln Street.