The Leadville Grill and Cantina — Restaurant in Leadville

Before I go into this relatively negative review, I must say, our server Martha was absolutely amazing. She was incredibly kind. Thank you Martha!

We were greeted by a loud/boisterous man running around when we came in. Immediately smelled like old spilled beer. Not a fan. To be fair, the bar is at the main entrance. However, it lingers in the seating area. That was not pleasant. The ambient temperature of the booth area we were seated in was probably 60 degrees.

Once we were guided to our booth, Martha took care of us from there. We ordered Queso as our appetizer to go along side the chips and salsa. The fresh chips and the salsa were good. It's pretty much the only thing my wife ate during this visit. The queso was definitely a gelatinous cheese product that was not very warm. Imagine an unmelted Velveeta type product. Disappointing. I don't know if it was actually cheese. It did have ok flavor for the 4 to 5 minutes that it remained room temperature.

We ordered the Lime Marinated chicken dinner and a deep fried tamale with mild green chili. I will start with the good. The tamale was warm and tasted good. The flavor of the lime Marinated chicken with their special sauce was fantastic. That's it for the good.

The bad:

Only the tamale was above room temperature and the green chili was definitely not mild. Not at all. We were given the spicy/hot green chili. The beans and green rice that accompanied the chicken were actually cold. The chicken was less than luke warm. I had to cut the chicken into a few pieces and present it to my wife for a second opinion to verify it was cooked all the way through, which it was. I only had about 4 or 5 small bites of the chicken, two of which had a strange hard texture. At that point I was done eating the entree and went back to the chips and salsa as to not leave hungry.

I brought my concerns to our server's attention. She spoke with management upon our behalf. She came back to us and stated there could not be any discount for issues with our order but they would give us a free dessert. (For the record, we did not ask for any discounts, we just wanted to inform her the food was cold) I did not want to cause a scene and refuse paying for the nearly cold meal so we accepted the dessert offering and had the tres leches cake. That was actually really good.

We waited a couple days to write this review to let our thoughts collect and make sure we didn't get food poisoning. I can thankfully report that neither of us got sick. Unfortunately, we will not be returning. Huge bummer because there are quite a few things on the menu we wanted to try and would have really enjoyed talking to...

My sister and I took a day trip to Leadville recently and picked this spot to eat. It's located in a tucked away spot off the main road and into the neighborhood, which was a really good sign that this was going to be good food. It had a very small town home cooking vibe. The bathrooms were even just like one you would find in a regular home. I get the feeling the restaurant itself was once a house converted to a restaurant at some point.

Anyway, I asked for a smothered chicken burrito which I didn't see on the menu, and my sister asked if vegetarian fajitas were possible (also not on the menu) and our host/server was very quick to answer that indeed the request could be fulfilled, no problem!

My burrito was absolutely delicious, and the side of rice particularly caught my attention, it was soooo good and I've honestly never had rice that good. My sister's Fajita loaded with mushrooms and peppers etc, according to her, was equally as great!

Our server was also great, she was really personable, and I could tell she had a lot of experience, and she really seemed to care a lot about making our experience the best it could be.

I would definitely recommend this place for anyone visiting Leadville, the service and small town vibe make it worth it alone, but the food is really the icing on...

Friend and I were passing through Leadville and looking for a place for breakfast. Googled The Grill. It said open and I told my friend that they used to have good food. It had been closed for some time. Was greeted by Diane, very personable waitress. She sat us, I got up and went to the restroom. When I returned, my friend had a large chicken fried steak in front of him. The new owner was there, he told us the gravy was his Grandma's recipe. I asked how did my friend already have food in front of him. The owner said he was getting input on whether or not to put this steak on the menu and gave it to us to try. I took a few bites and told him to put it on the menu and ordered one with fried eggs and red chile potatoes. They were done serving breakfast, but made it fot us anyway. Oh my gosh, that was the best chicken fried steak I've ever had. Owner told us it was black Angus. All cut there by hand. I definitely recommend it. It is rare these days to eat out and every thing is done correctly. I've lived my whole life in Minturn and the Grill always had great food when we would eat there, but the building and interior was run down. Not any more, this man really did a great job on this establishment. This restaurant is going to be successful. If you haven't been there, you...