Elegant food affordable at Hunter?s in Longmont

LONGMONT — Noticing a dearth of casual, upscale eateries in Longmont, Vijay Mehra opened Hunter’s Restaurant and Pub at 600 Airport Road in 1998.

“I wondered why we had to drive to Denver or Boulder to get a good meal,” Mehra said.

Filling that niche in Longmont has proved to be a successful venture for Mehra. In 2000, the privately funded restaurant earned $1.5 million in revenue, and Hunter’s earnings are up 16 percent this year, Mehra said.

SPONSORED CONTENT

How dispatchable resources enable the clean energy transition

Platte River must prepare for the retirement of 431 megawatts (MW) of dispatchable, coal-fired generation by the end of the decade and address more frequent extreme weather events that can bring dark calms (periods when there is no sun or wind).

It shouldn’t be surprising that he was able to spot the need for upscale dining in Longmont. Mehra has years of experience in the restaurant business. Since 1978, Mehra and his brother have been founding restaurants, some of them named Hunter’s, in Maryland and Virginia. So far, the brothers have five restaurants between them. Hunter’s in Longmont is their first in Colorado.

Mehra also used to manage Cliff Young’s, a five-star Denver restaurant. “I got fed up driving to Denver (from Longmont),” Mehra said. He noticed a change in Longmont dining around 1995.

“Longmont started to change about then, and the palate was getting much more educated here in town,” he said. “A lot of people were coming here from California and Texas.”

Once Mehra identified the need for his new restaurant, he looked around Longmont for a couple of years for a good space. “When they built that (plaza) on Airport road, that was the perfect place,” Mehra said. Hunter’s shares the plaza with non-competing restaurants, a branch of Premier Federal Credit Union, service businesses and office space.

Featuring contemporary American cuisine with Pan-Asian flair, Hunter’s serves 12-ounce New York Strips, Angus burgers and a number of fish entrees, including a Maryland-style crab cake.

“The fish is from Seattle Fish Co.,” Mehra said. “We serve it within 48-hours of being caught.

“The chef and I have a philosophy of taking fresh produce and doing very little with it to let the natural flavors come out. In some places there’s so much spice that you can’t taste (the food).”

The restaurant offers 60 wines. Including the bar, dining area and patio, it can accommodate 199 people. The restaurant also has two meeting rooms. The Hunt Room seats 45 and the Polo Room seats 10. The restaurant’s popularity as a business-meeting venue has increased its profits, Mehra said, and not all the business luncheons are generated by Longmont-based companies.

“It helps that we’re on the south end of town and close to the Diagonal Highway,” he said.

Mehra estimates that about 40 percent of his customers hail from Boulder.

“We have been well received by companies,” he said. “We (host) a lot of pharmaceutical dinners where they come in and want to talk with doctors. Businesspeople are very happy we are here. They want to go to a restaurant where they can impress their clientele.”

But the restaurant’s upscale image made it a hard sell to local diners at first. The hardest part about starting Hunter’s was convincing the public that the gold-and-green-decorated restaurant, with its classical pianist, cloth table coverings and subdued ambiance was an affordable place to eat.

“We had to convince people that we’re not out of reach,” Mehra said. “It took about six months to convince the public we’re not expensive. It’s casual and elegant yet affordable.”

Entrees start at about $10.

Mehra believes that Hunter’s stands out from other local restaurants because of its consistency.

“Day in and day out, we try to do things better than we did yesterday,” he said. “You’re only as good as the last meal you’ve served. Little things make a difference.”