Top Chef alum Carrie Baird will open a new Denver brunch restaurant

Carrie Baird is all set to get down to breakfast.

“I’ve been daydreaming of my breakfast restaurant considering that I was minimal,” Baird mentioned. “When I graduated culinary school my thesis was breakfast, and this is one thing that is always been in the functions.”

That one thing is Fox and The Hen, which the “Top Chef” alumna is launching in partnership with her employer Juan Padro and Michael Fox, the operator of a local wholesale breakfast burrito company. They program to open up at 2257 W. 32nd Ave. in the Highlands this summer time.

On the menu will be Baird’s signature “fancy toast” with a range of toppings, which won her more than 1 obstacle on “Top Chef,” and her huevos rancheros, which she defeat Bobby Flay with on his Television set display.

This will be Baird’s first brick-and-mortar concept. She is a lover in Culinary Artistic and is the govt chef of the restaurant group’s Americana division, which incorporates Tap and Burger and, now, Fox and The Hen.

Fox owns Dis Burrito, which he started off in 2020. It now sells breakfast burritos to 27 coffee outlets around town. Padro, proprietor of Culinary Resourceful cafe team, is a longtime close friend of Fox’s, and enable Fox get Dis Burrito up and jogging in Morin’s kitchen when it was shut down.

Fox also dreamed of opening a breakfast cafe, and pitched Padro on carrying out it in Cebiche’s location upon learning it had shut. The two determined to group up on it. Padro, who has worked with Baird because 2016, introduced her on afterwards. She will be the government chef.

“I wake up in the morning guffawing mainly because I’m a skinny white dude from Baltimore that started off a breakfast burrito business enterprise that has virtually morphed into my aspiration occur real of opening a breakfast restaurant,” Fox stated.

The trio signed a 20-12 months lease in August for the room, which seats 50 within and 40 on the patio. It is down the avenue from Padro’s Highland Tap and Burger and Bar Dough ideas.

They are gutting the house and investing all around $1 million in the renovation, which includes adding a scorching sauce wall and other playful things. Brian Unger with Frontline Layout and Progress is building the house.