Denver’s Odyssey Italian Restaurant reopened this month with a spiffy new kitchen, remodeled dining rooms, and a major expansion on deck, following a February fire that closed the beloved Capitol Hill eatery.
“It’s been a hell of a journey,” said general manager Ned Nichols, who was painting newly installed shelves at Odyssey while fielding The Denver Post’s questions. “I moved over here from Ollie & Park’s, which is closed permanently now, but we’ve also been able to retain a couple staff from there. And I’d say we kept probably 80% of Odyssey’s front-of-house staff.
“It’s just that everybody at Odyssey hasn’t done their jobs in 6 or 7 months,” he added, “so we’re still getting our feet wet.”
The Uptown restaurant Ollie & Park’s, which is also owned by Odyssey founders Jason Alfonso and Hallie Thomas, suffered its own blow in May when a U-Haul truck barreled into the building at the corner of East 17th and Park avenues in Denver, smashing a 30-foot-high window and shuttering the place.
The American-style tapas spot had only been open for about a year and a half, and Nichols knew that the closure would mean the end of the place, he said.
“It was devastating. A death blow,” Nichols said. “Those first 2 years are critical for a restaurant to build clientele. You don’t make any money, you just do that. And we’d have to start over, which is impossible.”
Instead, the former Ollie & Park’s space will soon become Odyssey Uptown, with work likely beginning next month. Its replacement windows, which were made in Baltimore, need to be installed. But the structural integrity is there, Nichols said, having had a trio of engineers approve it.
In the meantime, Odyssey Italian has expanded its menu thanks to the addition of a new grill in the kitchen, given that the back-of-house had to be remodeled after the February fire. That will allow them to begin offering entrees such as grilled Colorado lamb, pork, filet mignon and teres major — a beef cut also known as “the bistro filet.”
Despite remodeling the overall interior of Odyssey, owners Alfonso and Thomas retained the same decor and feel, and even resisted the temptation to knock down walls to turn spaces into one big room.
It helps that they own the 100-year-old building, Nichols said. The same layout will greet diners, who have been quick to return, Nichols said. That includes 2 small dining rooms on the ground floor, 4 upstairs, and 2 patio spaces.
“It’s a pain for the servers, but it’s cozy and it’s been this way for 17 years,” Nichols said. “But we’re lucky. If we were renting this space, instead of owning it, we wouldn’t have reopened. The fire would have crushed us, like so many other Denver restaurants that have closed.”
