Zengo, Richard Sandoval Restaurants find a home in Denver

"From working with the restaurants in Denver, a lot of folks that I work with have related to me that they think the culinary scene has really grown up a lot and is growing exponentially compared to 10 or 15 years ago," says Noah Loudenback, Operations Director for Richard Sandoval Restaurants. "So I think it’s a market where there is a lot of interest -- not just in cuisines but also in jobs in the food industry."

Colorado is the eponymous Richard Sandoval's largest market, and Denver became the restaurateur's international headquarters in 2013. He now has a total of seven restaurants throughout the state, including Zengo in the Central Platte Valley.

According to Loudenback, Denver was Sandoval’s first market outside of New York. "Denver really grasped the Richard Sandoval concepts very well," he contends. "The first location of Zengo was in Denver." Today the company also has Zengo restaurants in Washington, D.C., New York and Santa Monica.

In Denver, he adds, "Zengo’s 10-year anniversary is coming up this week, March 5, which is going to be cooking." The restaurant is co-located with a new tequila bar, La Biblioteca.

Denver also is home to another Sandoval restaurant, Tamayo, which has been around for nine years, and the company also has La Sandia in North Stapleton and four other restaurants throughout Colorado in resort towns.

The concentration of eateries in Colorado is just one reason why the restaurateur chose to relocate his headquarters west from New York last year. "The proximity in terms of being a central location to the rest of the country was attractive when we chose to move to Denver," Loudenback says. Today the company employs 15 people at its offices in RiNo and many more at the seven restaurants in Colorado.

The restaurants continue to innovate as well. Though Zengo has four locations for instance, no two menus are the same.

"Most of the creative culinary side is going to be at the restaurants," Loudenback says. "We like to have a least a few dishes that are unique to each location. We don't like it to be entirely cookie-cutter...especially when we have these concepts where we have a full-time executive chef on site. We've always felt like it’s a big part of our strength to having somebody of that level of ability to have a little more creativity."

Contact Confluence Denver Innovation & Jobs News Editor Chris Meehan with tips and leads for future stories at chris@confluence-denver.com.