Details unveiled for Hotel Longmont’s rooftop restaurant

LONGMONT — As the five-story, 85-room Hotel Longmont rises toward a potential opening date in November 2025, its developer has unveiled plans for Longmont Supply Co., the “elevated” dining experience on its roof.

“We started working on the restaurant concept about a year ago,” Joe Thrash, a partner in Hattiesburg, Mississippi-based The Thrash Group, told BizWest on Tuesday. “It will be chef-driven along with support from our team of chefs, so most of the menu won’t be complete until right before opening.”

However, he added, “it is elevated (literally) dining, focusing on the bounty of the region: steak, game, fish and local produce, a curated wine list with a cocktail program to match and exclusive rooftop views of the Rockies.”

Thrash unveiled a sample menu, “although it won’t be complete until we locate the chef,” Thrash said. “That chef might be amazing with lamb or some type of dessert, so we never have a menu until everyone has weighed in on the options.”

He described the prospective menu as “very seasonal” and will “change with some regularity. Many of the items will be sourced for local farmers and their provenance will be acknowledged on the menu.”

The sample menu Thrash sent started with appetizers of West and East coast oysters, tuna crudo, beef carpaccio, sweetbreads, roasted poblano and toasted brioche, baby beet salad, salade saison, lobster and brie bisque and bone marrow.

Entrees on the sample menu included gnocchi, butter-poached lobster, day-boat sea scallops, branzino, halibut, Colorado lamb, rack of venison, a roasted duck breast and confit leg, and three steaks: a 24-ounce bone-in ribeye, a 12-ounce bone-in filet mignon and a Japanese wagyu strip.

Sides included house-cut beef tallow fries, confit fingerling potatoes with bacon, truffled polenta, roasted asparagus, heirloom vegetables, and broccoli Rabe with gremolata.

“The drink garnishes will eventually be part of our calling card, as they will be very natural and well thought-out,” Thrash said. “We don’t have a menu for the cocktail and wine program yet, as trends will change in the next year.

“Also, availability and seasonal changes will impact both menus,” he added, “However, I can assure you the beverage program will be a serious focal point of the project. It should rival anything around. Our wine list will be smaller, but well-considered and concise. We have members of our team that have curated and maintained multiple ‘Best of’ awards from Wine Spectator.

“The cocktail program will have a dozen cocktails that our team will design with an eye on the vanguard of the industry,” Thrash said. “Many of these cocktails will change with the seasons. We will of course have a section on the menu for timeless classics made with the utmost care. We have already spent hours picking glassware for cocktails and wine. We feel that every detail of these programs should be elegant and reflect our passion for food and beverage. This project deserves that much attention at every turn.”

He said Longmont Supply Co.’s beer program will be curated with an eye on “the bounty of breweries in the region.

“I believe all of these facets, along with an intense focus on elevated service, will make this a top restaurant in the Denver area,” Thrash said.

The $24.5 million boutique hotel is being built on what had been a city-owned parking lot on the northwest corner of Third Avenue and Kimbark Street. The Longmont City Council voted unanimously in late 2022 to approve an agreement that established the framework for land acquisition and subsidies for the project.

The plan as submitted to the council calls for “approximately 4,000 square feet of commercial space at ground level, including pre-function, meeting space, retail or a combination of both.” It said the approximately 5,000-square-foot rooftop restaurant would include outdoor patio space facing west toward the mountains.

The agreement signed off on by the Longmont Downtown Development Authority and Longmont City Council transferred ownership of the city property to Thrash and established an incentive package worth $4.3 million, or about 17.6% of the overall project cost estimate. That total includes the value of publicly owned parking lot land, $2.3 million in tax increment funding, $1.2 million in lodging-tax reimbursements and $400,000 in downtown improvement program proceeds from the LDDA.