Once again, Troy Guard got an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Months after signing a lease at 1900 Lawrence, the restaurateur is back in action. This time, he’s headed south to the Denver Tech Center with another new spot: G&G Surf Club.
He expects the seafood-oriented version of his flagship steakhouse Guard and Grace to open by Nov. 1.
“Obviously the Guard and Grace brand name is strong, and we just want to play off of that,” said Guard, who moved to Houston, Texas, two years ago after building a restaurant empire in the Denver.
He did something similar with his first restaurant, TAG, which opened in 2009 and had subsequent variations like TAG Burger Bar and TAG Raw Bar. With G&G Surf Club, he’ll serve high-end steaks, salads and pastas alongside more fish dishes that pay homage to his past.
“It lets me dive deeper into my upbringing, which the first seven years were in Hawaii, the next seven in Seattle and then in San Diego,” Guard said. “I’ve lived around the ocean pretty much my whole life. I didn’t move to Denver till I was 30 years old.”
Guard signed a 15-year lease with landlord Edgewood REIT for the prebuilt space at 8100 E. Union Ave. in the Penterra Plaza building.
The 9,000 square feet were supposed to be home to an upscale restaurant called Golden Oak developed by venue hospitality company Oak View Group, which moved its headquarters to Denver in 2023.
Golden Oak was slated to open in early 2025 and be a training ground for OVG’s chefs, according to the Denver Business Journal. The firm spent upward of $10 million to build out the spot, sources tell BusinessDen.
But Golden Oak never opened. OVG didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. Guard declined to comment on OVG’s situation.
Guard said his restaurant group will put “significant dollars” into the space to change a few things around the edges. He’ll also add an island bar and a raw bar.
Guard said he spoke to the landlord five years ago about putting a Guard and Grace there. But they couldn’t make the numbers work.
“And five years later they called us up and said they might have another opportunity for us,” Guard said. “So we went and looked at it and saw some things that need tweaking, but itap got great bones.”
Similar to the upcoming 1900 Lawrence location, which just started the design process last week ahead of a fall 2027 opening, Guard said he got a great deal, although he declined to discuss specifics.
“I’m not really excited about the way Denver is right now, but we’re banking on it getting better and these really-hard-to-say-no-to opportunities,” Guard said. “If this were a regular opportunity I wouldn’t have done it.”
His other restaurants in town, which include the breakfast spot HashTAG and Mexican outfit Los Chingones, are down 15% across the board in Denver. That figure includes Guard and Grace, which Guard said is flat so far this year after consistently growing since its 2014 opening.
The G&G Surf Club will be Guard’s second DTC spot after Los Chingones, which has been in the area for nine years at Belleview Station. That location is outperforming his other spot in RiNo — something thatap flipped since the pandemic.
“To me, DTC is way stronger than downtown,” he said. “During COVID, a lot of people went to Cherry Creek and DTC down south. You just have more business and more buildings. … Downtown Denver is not what it used to be and continues to go down.”
Nevertheless, Guard sees his yet-to-be-revealed 1900 Lawrence concept doing what Guard and Grace did at 18th and California streets 12 years ago.
“Guard and Grace was in the dark dead zone of Denver. It was off the beaten path,” he said. “And we helped revive that area.”
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