Rosetta Hall: It’s not your mom’s mall food court

BOULDER — What’s been going at Rosetta Hall since it opened six months ago? Maybe it’s better to ask what hasn’t been.

To the diners, dancers and drinkers who for the past six months have been drawn to the European-style food hall, it’s a maelstrom of sensory wonders — and nearly nothing like a suburban shopping mall’s fast-food franchise fare and plastic trays and utensils. Instead, patrons can sample a world’s worth of innovative and exotic flavors, sip a sophisticated old-school cocktail, twirl to the trendiest new grooves or just hang out and maybe slip on a pair of headphones and watch a movie.

Those last two activities shouldn’t be surprising on several counts. The 110-year-old downtown Boulder building’s 6,829 square feet of space used to house the Foundry nightclub and a movie theater, and the designer largely responsible for Rosetta Hall’s look and feel, Tiffany Mitchum, is actor Robert Mitchum’s granddaughter.

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She’s also the stepmother of Rosetta Hall chief executive Donovan Greene, who crafted a business model that may be unique in the world. The chefs he auditioned and recruited to fill the food stalls find themselves in a situation that’s part incubator, part makerspace, part test kitchen, part think tank and part performing-arts showcase.

As in a typical food hall, the chefs are spared the expense of raising the capital to build out a brick-and-mortar restaurant. They just have to bring their own pots and pans, cooking tools and towels. But there’s more.

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If you go

Rosetta Hall

1109 Walnut St., Boulder
720-323-5509
Rosettahall.com

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What do they pay to have a space there? Nothing. Rosetta Hall pays them.

“We really treat them the way we treat a performing artist at the Boulder Theater or the Fox Theater,” said Greene, who co-owns those venues as well. “We give them all the infrastructure, all the accounting, back-of-house support” such as dishwashing and table busing “and then we pay the chefs weekly. We provide all their working capital and all finances roll through us. All the money flows through us, and then we pay them weekly whatever their profits are, on a cash basis” — minus Rosetta’s 22 percent cut of sales.

Greene’s team even will design and build the kitchen to each chef’s specifications. Once they open, they’re preparing their dishes out in the open where customers can watch them perform— sometimes with a theatrical flair.

But just as at the Boulder or Fox theaters, earning that spot on stage wasn’t easy.

“We had about 50 chefs audition for the spots,” Greene said. “There’s no other model like this in the world, where they need no capital to get in. We made the decision on who comes in based purely on the quality of their food, their experience in the industry, their dedication to sourcing sustainably with local ingredients — and they had to be somebody who we want to work with as well.”

So who stars in this cast?

At Confit, Dustin Brandt brings casual French fare, rotating various variations on souffles as well as Parisian-style tartines, gougeres from Burgundy and French onion soup.

At Eridu, Aaron Lande presents a menu based on “ancient grains” and legumes. He deliberately taps Boulder County produce such as millet from Golden Prairie in Nunn because “when we are removed from knowing where anything comes from, the energy has been lost. If you want to make art, you have to know your sources. You have to know who and why and how and where.”

At Jacaranda, Gambia native Modou Jaiteh, who formerly was head cook at the Stone Cup in Lyons, looks for influences from West Africa, New Orleans and the Carolinas and serves one of the food hall’s most popular draws, a unique peanut butter stew called domoda that includes chunks of Boulder lamb.

At La Tigella, Alberto Sabbadini assembles a sandwich called tigella that’s native to Bologna, Italy, as well as a Roman-style pizza with a blend of local grains, northern Italian ravioli, and carryout sheet pans of pizza or lasagna that can feed six.

At Tierra, Joe Lee exemplifies that adventurous, experimental spirit Greene hoped to nourish at Rosetta Hall, crafting contemporary Mexican food with his own spin on mole and even an injection of Korean influence.

At Petite Fleur, Julia Wirichs enriches an assortment of American and European desserts with her eight years of experience working in Paris and Amsterdam. Some of the desserts are gluten free, vegan or low in sugar, and all are handmade from scratch.

At Ginger Pig, Nataschia Hess brings the home-cooked and street-smart Asian dishes she loved as a college student in Beijing and the business savvy she gained by running a mobile eatery that won her a Best Food Truck in Denver award in 2018. She incorporates locally grown Hazel Dell mushrooms and Buckner Family Farms’ lamb into some items.

At Rose’s Classic Americana, Rosetta Hall’s latest entry, Denver-based Bar Dough executive chef Carrie Baird will try a new take on burgers, sandwiches and salads. Longtime friends Baird and Hess formed a new restaurant group called “That’s What She Said” and will co-own both Ginger Pig and Rose’s, a collaboration Greene said he was glad to see because Rose’s will move into a spot vacated on Feb. 24 by Folsom Foods.

“That was not an owner-operator; it was a restaurant group from Denver,” Greene said of Folsom. “As we’ve gotten into this, we prefer everybody to be an owner-operator so when you come in, to eat, everyone who’s there cooking your food is the owner of the stall that they’re in.”

Besides the eight restaurants, there’s Vajra and Cara Rich’s Boxcar Coffee Roasters, “an old-school, Italian-style sit-down coffee bar; and Rosetta’s Bar, set up by beverage director Curtis Worthley to offer classic cocktails in two locations: the main bar, which Greene described as the state’s largest, or up on the 140-seat rooftop deck complete with cabanas, fire pits, a bamboo forest, a happy-hour oyster bar, movie nights and a stunning view.

As with all other restaurants in Colorado, no dine-in service is available during the coronavirus crisis and Rosetta Hall’s hours have been reduced, but pickup or delivery is being offered on Thursday through Sunday evenings.

When normal times return, visitors can try out another innovation Greene said is a first in the nation: a full-service remote ordering system that will let them order food and drink from any of Rosetta Hall’s vendors, no matter where they’re sitting. On three nights a week after dining time ends, the tables are removed, the computer-controlled color-changing lights will do their thing as directed by breakdancer Alex Milewski, and the food hall will become a dance hall, with salsa on Thursdays, hip hop on Fridays and club mixes on Saturdays.

The hall’s other owners include Doug Greene, Donovan’s father, and fellow Boulder Theater and Fox Theater co-owners Ron Levin and Don Strasburg. The group, which also owns Rembrandt Yard and New Hope Media, bought the building in 2015.

As with so many things in a free market, new concepts lure competition. Even before Rosetta Hall opened last October, Avanti Food and Beverage, which opened a food hall in 2015 at 3200 Pecos St. in Denver, announced it had acquired the shuttered Cheesecake Factory space four blocks from Rosetta Hall, on the northeast corner of 14th Street and the Pearl Street Mall. It also will boast its own incubator model and a rooftop deck with a mountain view. The seven food vendors at Avanti’s Denver location operate with counters built from shipping containers but the new Boulder hall will have six food purveyors and two bars and a breakfast station in about 13,000 square feet being designed by Oz Architecture and Scout Interiors.

In February, the names of the first three Avanti vendors were announced, and one owner only had to walk across the mall from his other restaurant, Oak at Fourteenth, to check on his new venture. New Yorkese, a pizza maker, will be the realization of Steve Redzikowski’s plan to present both New York and Naples styles. The other two are Boulder native Jerrod Rosen’s Jewish deli called Rye Society, which was born in Denver, and Rooted Craft American Kitchen, which is luring Nicholas Kayser away from Vesta, the longtime staple on Lower Downtown Denver’s Blake Street.

The project had been slated for opening around Memorial Day, but surely will be delayed because of the business shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m happy to see the competition coming,” said Rosetta Hall’s Donovan Greene. “It’s good for us and great for Boulder.”