Cheesman Park Restaurants Not to Miss: From Espresso to Barola

In June 2026, Denver ranked No. 5 in USA Today’s 10 Best Walkable Cities to Visit.

Destination Colorado / Cheesman Park Restaurants, Denver

The Carriage House brings back one of Cheesman Park Restaurants best patios, and the neighborhood around it gives you every reason to plan a culinary experience in Denver.

Denver’s most photographed patios sat quiet for about a year. The Secret Garden Bar & Cafe, wedged against the north edge of Cheesman Park, closed abruptly in the fall of 2025 during a dispute between staff and ownership. Regulars grieved it publicly, at length, on the internet.
On August 6, 2026, the doors were reopened under a new team and a new name: The Carriage House. With it, Cheesman Park Restaurants has one more reason to create a moveable feast in Denver.

Long before the cafe arrived, the building was filled with a different kind of life. The Carriage House occupies the annex of the Tears–McFarlane House, a Georgian-style mansion at 13th Avenue and Williams Street. completed at the turn of the last century. Railroad attorney Daniel W. Tears commissioned it, and he and his wife lived there more than 40 years as they became well-known in Denver society.

Frederick McFarlane bought the house in 1937; his second wife, the actress and dancer Lillian Cushing, taught lessons in a basement studio. Senator Gary Hart kept a residence and offices there in the 1960s. Inside, a tall mirror salvaged from the old Windsor Hotel still stands in the first-floor hallway, and a stained-glass window in fall colors, installed by Tears in 1898, dominates the stair landing. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in January 1976 and named a Denver landmark four years earlier. It’s now home to Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods and cafe sits in the annex, not the mansion, with a patio that opens onto the park lawn, one of its many appeals

In 2025 Michelin recognized more than 30 Denver restaurants in the third year of their Michelin Guide Colorado.

Denver entrepreneur John Goscha, who lives in the neighborhood, and hospitality veteran Jake Riederer, whose résumé includes Work & Class, Super Mega Bien, and Congress Park Market are the duo behind The Carriage House. The name refers to outbuildings Denver homes once kept for horse carriages.

The menu was developed with Melissa Yanc, the Healdsburg baker behind Quail & Condor and Troubadour Bread & Bistro and a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery. Yanc runs her bakeries in Sonoma County, so she is a collaborator, but her Colorado connection is real. She opened her first bakery in Denver at 23, met her husband and business partner while working in the city, and in December 2025 opened Threefold, a bakery in Breckenridge, with chef Matthew Vawter.

The menu is built for eating outside. Three focaccia toastettes topped with combinations like whipped ricotta and pepper jam, or garlic-pistachio butter with balsamic reduction. There is a French onion grilled cheese served with onion consommé for dipping, a North African tuna pan bagnat, salads, and pastries from Black Box Bakery. Coffee comes from Denver roaster Novo, poured straight or in flavored lattes built on black sesame, butterfly pea flower, and pistachio-cardamom. There are five wines by the glass, draft and bottled beer, and a spritz.

Picnic in the Park

A small retail corner stocks picnic provisions, and because Cheesman Park permits alcohol, you can buy a bottle or six-pack on your way out and drink it on the grass.  

A second phase is slated for September, adding a full cocktail bar, a remodeled indoor room with oversized French doors facing the park, heartier food, and an expanded happy hour. The interior has been redone with white marble counters, checkerboard floors, vintage mirrors, and wainscoting drawn from European café design. The owners have said profits will go to local community causes.

The culinary scene gets more attention every year.

Several Cheesman Park restaurants sit along Capitol Hill, Congress Park, and the East Colfax corridor, which allows you to plan a walkable afternoon that ends with dinner, all located roughly inside of a mile.

Barolo Grill

As the name suggests, this is the Italian choice. The kitchen prepares dishes inspired by Piedmont and Tuscany: a soufflé-like spinach and parmesan sformato, tortellini filled with roasted squash and taleggio, and a braised duck with Kalamata olives that has been on the menu since the beginning. The cellar holds more than 2,000 selections on wine and holds a Wine Spectator Grand Award. The restaurant  says that makes it Denver’s first and only recipient.

Ryan Fletter is the wine director, who started as a server in 1994 and bought the restaurant in 2015. He and sommelier Erin Lindstone took the Michelin Guide Colorado Sommelier Award in 2023, and Fletter was a 2026 James Beard Award finalist for Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service. 

He takes the staff to Italy every year, which is why they can talk about a bottle without reading from a card. Order the four-course degustazione with pairings and let them delight you. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Denver has a chef-driven food scene that compliments every season of life in the mountains.

Denver offers a lot when you make the choice to unplug for the day and really dive into the culinary scene. This one area rewards anyone who takes the time to start from one corner and then audaciously create a movable feast from one location to the next, with no real agenda except to enjoy each stop.

Start with a pour-over brew on Sixth Avenue, spend the middle of the day on the lawn with a bottle of wine or other beverage from the cafe’s cooler and some light snacks. Then, finish where the wine list runs deeper than the menu. The whole area covers about a mile and there is no need to rush. Done properly, it will take you until dark.

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