Colorado Grille & Tap House — Restaurant in Del Norte

6/25/21

A Year of Covid With Colorado Grille and Taphouse

Living in the San Luis Valley, you don’t always have a plethora of culinary choices. Restaurants are few and far between here. The success rate is yet to be determined, but you can always assume it is 50/50 in the business. During Covid, it was even less of a variety of delicious choices. With local restaurants closing their doors or simply having limited hours, my family and I feared a year without safe and good take-out restaurants. With raving reviews and a previous stop, we decided to take a chance at a restaurant fifteen minutes from us. This was a great decision to give a chance to the Colorado Grille and Taphouse in Del Norte, Colorado.

The Colorado Grille has been an up-and-coming eatery for a couple of years now. The Grille is partnered with the fantastic hole-in-the-wall bakery, The Mystic Biscuit. The Grille features a plethora of classic American options; Steaks, Chicken Fried Steak, Wings, Specialty Burgers, Smothered Fries, and Fish and Chips. Their specials cover more cuisine, however, and are unexpectedly spontaneous. Ranging from Steak and Enchiladas, Honey Sriracha Chicken Skewers, a huge Chili Relleno Burger, and fresh King Crab legs. For a sparsely populated Alpine Desert Valley, the Colorado Grille provides a much-needed bounty of options for all dietary needs.

The staff is friendly, attentive, fast, and succinct like a well-oiled machine working in the fields to the South. No chit-chat, no standing around, and no looking lost at the front of house, the Colorado Grille simply and respectfully provides the best service in the San Luis Valley. Their “no need for reservations“ is a fast all-inclusive way to destress the dining experience, no matter how big the party. The longest I’ve ever waited to be seated is ten minutes and the longest wait for food is fifteen. The cook and staff work in a finite and well-organized way for fast but satisfactory turnover. The standard wait for a Takeout for three is fifteen Minutes and the food is always hot, fresh, and packaged with care. It’s a quality I’ve simply never seen in the San Luis Valley Restaurant scene, and I have lived here for sixteen hungry years.

The Steak Fiesta Salad is a wonderfully healthy option packed full of meat, crunchy microgreens grown locally, and a plethora of house-made dressings. The cilantro-lime vinaigrette is my choice on that salad, but the green chili ranch adds a titillating light kick. Appetizers are immense and all deliver on epic proportions. I order their crunchy mess-free hot wings once a week with a side of tender-crisp and fluffy french fries and flounder in the grease-free and seemingly light food. A benchmark of quality for any American restaurant is the often forgotten and looked down on “Cole Slaw”. Their Cole Slaw is a mouthwatering spoonful of crisp and creamy authenticity. I highly recommend it with their take on the classic Irish-American Reuben, which you can’t get anywhere else here.

If you want consistent, comforting, hot, and fresh food there is ultimately no other place than the Colorado Grille. Without this Restaurant during Covid, my family would have a void of reprieve from piecing together meals with a shotty Clicklist Grocery Pick up. The Grille helped bring comfort and maybe even a little joy during the worst of times. This place is a mandatory stop-in or take-out for locals and visitors. It is even worth a drive from elsewhere just to check out some unique American...

I normally on!y leave positive reviews in this forum however my experience last night at this establishment was so disappointing i felt i needed to share. I used the online booking system which enables the customer to order and pay before arrival. The website states all.orders packaged to go but can be eaten in if requested. Thought this was a bit strange but went with it anyway. Arrived at the restaurant and as per the website instructions i to!d the server we had pre ordered online. Instead of showing us to a seat he brought us to the takeaway area. I said we had wanted to eat in, he looked confused and said he would get the manager. We were left standing between the restaurant and the takeaway until the manager arrived with our entire meal in a bag already, all in plastic containers' I told him we had wanted to eat in and told him that option was given in the preorder i had made. He said that was only for takeaways and he would get 'them' to look at making it clearer. We were shown to a small metal table in the takeaway area. The manager to!d us he would go get us some silverware - he never returned with it. By this time my meal was getting cold and looking un appetising due to having been left sitting sweating in a plastic container. i had to ask another waiter for something to eat it with. He produced 2 pre packaged plastic knives and forks, my partners meal was steak and i told the waiter it was not possible to eat steak with plastic cutlery. He eventually came back with a metal knife and fork. The manager returned sometime later to check if things were ok. I reiterated they were not as i do not like eating out of plastic containers unless i have to (such as travelling on a plane) - this was meant to be an evening out after a long drive on our holiday. The manager reassured us he would get the website looked at but to be honest it didn't make me feel any better, the offer of a crockery plate, a metal knife and fork and a seat in the actual restaurant would have been nice but was not forthcoming and by this time i was so annoyed i just wanted to leave. Upon reflection i can see there would be no benefit to the manager to offer any remedy as he already had our money (plus gratuity) as we had paid online - having satisfied customers obviously counts for nothing. As I began this review by saying I normally only post positive feedback and put negative experiences down to experience however i felt so annoyed at how we were treated i felt compelled to say something. We will be returning to Northern Ireland next week after a fantastic months holiday in the USA, thankfully this experience was not typical...

Being turned off after reading some reviews and all the rebuttals by the owner justifing anything negative, we decided to stop in anyway. It was approximately 2 pm, and we hadn't eaten anything, so we were really hungry. Hostess told us about 5 minutes. It was 8, no biggie, but there were at least 3 open tables that I could see that were ready. They sat us down and told us they would be right with us. The people who walked in minutes after us were seated right behind us right after we were seated. Their waiter took their order, and they had their drinks within 5 minutes and before ours even showed up. She showed up shortly after and took our drink order. She seemed irked that we only got water. We ordered our food and it was out in a reasonable time. I ordered the chile burger and my wife the New Mexican burger with sweet potato fries. I asked if I could get the fries smothered as well, and she said it would be $3 more. I politely declined. For us being as hungry as we were, it was good, not the greatest , as everything seems when you are. The chile burger was pretty plain. There wasn't any lettuce, tomatoes, or onions. The chile was decent. It's not a Mexican restaurant, so it's understandable, but it is the valley. The fries were good and hot. My wife's New Mexican burger was ok. It had greens instead of lettuce, which didn't really compliment it at all. The sweet potato fries were good IMO but just ok to her. Even though the service wasn't the greatest (and definitely not the worst), we still left +20% tip. We didn't get a smile until she handed us the check. I know it's 2025, but if we had got drinks, it would have been $50. Sorry, but I'm not paying that. To the restaurant owner, you don't have to leave a reply to every negative review calling out the people. Saying stuff like, "Come here for a shift, and I'll show you what it takes to run a restaurant." Really? Maybe you should go to Linda Jalisca and see what serving the people is. Over there, if there's an open table, they sit you down. Maybe that's just a different culture, not sure. And also, "as for the restaurant business, maybe try your hand at it before handing out 3 stars like they are candy." So you're saying because it's hard to run a restaurant, and that you have one, you should automatically get 5 stars? Sorry, not the way it works. You have to realize that not everyone is going to think your food is the best or going to be happy walking out. And blaming a bad review here or there is the reason restaurants are closing down. If so, then improve on what people are not happy with, and that seems to be...