SEE AND BE SEEN AT RACINES
Longtime favorite restaurant
retains its appeal
By COLLEEN SMITH
Photography KIMBERLY DAWN
Choosing a restaurant oftentimes provokes an unappetizing dilemma. You’re thinking late breakfast, but your friend is bent on lunch. One client voices a yen for stir-fry, but the other has a burning desire for burritos. Your mother craves vegetarian lasagna, but your father has a beef with anything but steak.
The solution? Racines Restaurant. Their eclectic menu offers it all and then some. The inclusive menu and the fact that everything’s fresh and made-from-scratch are hallmarks of this sterling eatery in Denver’s Golden Triangle.CA
Racines is a place to see and be seen. It’s a favorite among politicians — former Gov. Roy Romer was stuck on the oatmeal — and media personalities —Channel 7’s Bill Clarke orders the Cobb salad.
The restaurant derives its name from co-owner David Racine, one of three partners who opened the restaurant in 1983. Racines, in fact, is the second of three restaurants owned and operated by the entrepreneurial triumvirate that also includes Lee Goodfriend, whose namesake Goodfriends Restaurant at 3100 East Colfax opened in 1979. The third partner — the late Dixon Staples — is immortalized by Dixon’s Downtown Grill, which opened in 1997 in LoDo.
Now located at 650 Sherman Street, the current Racines is actually the restaurant’s second incarnation. The original, at Lincoln and Speer for 20 years, closed in 2003, after the former landlord exercised a demolition clause in the lease.
In the spring of 2004, the nouveau Racines opened in a newly constructed building — a handsome, low-slung, brick Arts & Crafts sort of structure. “We wanted something reminiscent of the warehouses in the neighborhood during the 1920s,” Goodfriend says.
Semple Brown architects salvaged from the former site a number of front-of-the-house furnishings: the church pews near the front door, the wheeled club chairs and the antique glass pendant lights that dangle in a milky constellation in one of the dining areas. As at the old location, rich red walls display landscapes by a local artist. And Racines still serves food on friendly, eye-popping Fiesta ware.
At Racines, you won’t find white tablecloths, but you will find blue-plate-special cuisine. Racines is about comfort and comfort food in generous portions at reasonable prices.
Chefs Mike Adams and Donald Menifee and their well-seasoned staff toss imaginative salads. Customers go nuts for the Nutty Cheese Salad. An amalgamation of greens, grains, nuts, cheeses, seeds, vegetables and the surprise texture and flavor of bananas, it’s one of the most popular items on the menu.
Another winner is the roasted red pepper and goat cheese salad that engages every taste bud with sweet peppers, salty black olives, the slight bitterness of greens, the tang of the breaded and fried goat cheese. Served with thin slices of bread broiled to crouton crispness, this dish works well as an appetizer for up to four people.
Salads also come with Oriental, Mexican or French influences; and for the purist, there’s The Wedge — iceberg lettuce with apple wood smoked bacon, green onions and blue cheese.
Other hot menu items are the fish and chips, the steak burrito and the prime rib French dip that Goodfriend cites along with ziti and chicken as her personal favorites. Racine raves about the steak and enchiladas and Soledad’s cod — named after a woman who worked for the restaurant and whose husband has been an employee for 20 years.
Such long runs are not uncommon among the Racines staff. Racine says, “Our staff stayed through good times and bad, through the close down of Racines. When we reopened, we had 80 percent of our kitchen staff come back. That’s why we’re successful.”
Well, that and the fact that Goodfriend and Racine are not the sort of restaurateurs who lend their name but not their elbow grease to an establishment. Both transplants from Chicago, the owners met in 1975, while working at Zach’s, a now defunct fern bar.
Goodfriend enjoys working the front desk. Meanwhile, Racine keeps an eye on the restaurant’s parking garage. Each weekday, he parks customers’ cars: “It’s the first and last place people have contact with us. It eliminates confusion,” he says. “And it’s fun. I like the interaction with the people.”
When planning the new restaurant, including the parking garage added a cool million to the cost. With parking spaces at a premium elsewhere in downtown Denver, Racine’s ample and free parking in a clean, well-lit, monitored garage makes the restaurant all the more appealing.
Several more selling points: Racines opens at 7 a.m. on weekdays. The kitchen is open until midnight Tuesdays through Saturdays and until 11 p.m. Sunday and Monday nights, which makes Racines ideal for after theater/ concert/sporting events.
If you imbibe, the bar taps 12 beers and sells a selection of wines by the glass. But margaritas remain Racine’s leading libation. Servers pour the award-winning drinks table-side and leave you with your own cocktail shaker containing a refill.
Racines desserts are worth incurring carbohydrates. All desserts still are baked on the premises. Perhaps most popular are the chewy chocolate brownies, including German chocolate or white chocolate with raspberries.
If you’re not a chocoholic, fork it over for the world-class carrot cake studded with raisins. The frosting, like the icing on the cinnamon rolls, is sweet yet not cloying. The bakery also turns out breakfast breads, including croissants.
The transition years behind them, Racine and Goodfriend take stock in their ability to re-establish an old favorite with new flair. “It’s been very well received,” Racine says. “Immediately our customers said they like it better than the old place.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when he called, “Hello, young lady!” to a customer who happened to be an older woman who was also wheelchair-bound. She smiled up at Racine and Goodfriend, both of whom smiled back. And their sentiment, like the whipped cream on their fresh banana cream pie, was real.
Authenticity, in the end, makes Racines a restaurant of choice, an eatery that’s as much an institution as any in the Mile High City.CA
650 Sherman Street
(303) 595-0418
