After 13 years doing business in Lower Highland, followed by a week closed for renovations, Lola restaurant has reopened with a shiny, new reality-TV-style makeover.
The restaurant got a redesign this month by Hollywood designer Kari Whitman. It also got a brand new chef, plus a menu overhaul (with not a single former item left intact), featuring dishes from Baja, Mexico, blended with the Mediterranean.
Chef Javier Plascencia was previously a James Beard Award nominee for best new restaurant for his Bracero Cocina de Raíz in San Diego. Now he’s making Denverites Tijuana Caesar salads, Yellowfin tuna aguachiles and shrimp and octopus tacos.
Along with the menu, the restaurant, too, feels like it’s sitting beach-side, rather than on the corner of 16th and Boulder streets.
Sea glass lighting, thick ropes for room dividers and ocean blue paint contrast with fresh white tiles.
“Lola needed a big kick in the ass,” owner Dave Query said at the reopening. “We were a little off-track.”
He added that he’s excited for “another 13 years” in business.
1575 Boulder St., 720-570-8686; loladenver.com; 4-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday (until 11 p.m. Friday), 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday