Rebel Restaurant Will Close on Wynkoop Street

After nearly three years on Wynkoop Street, Rebel Restaurant is closing its doors. One of Eater’s 38 “essential” Denver restaurants, Rebel has maintained its namesake status over the years as an outsider in the local food scene, serving whole hog heads in the setting of a former biker bar. Now owners Dan Lasiy and Bo Porytko say they are looking to sublease their space and deciding on a closing date.

“We are not sure when we are closing but we are,” Lasiy wrote in an email.

Part of the restaurant’s outsider appeal, its location at the edge of RiNo, is now at the center of road construction and redevelopment in the neighborhood. Lasiy and Porytko wrote on Rebel’s Facebook page at the end of April that they were still open but facing exponential difficulties operating.

“[W]e would like to once again thank the city of Denver for making it exponentially more difficult for us to do business with their restrictive construction while simultaneously hiking our taxes by astronomical amounts to pay for the very thing that is a bane on our financial success,” read their post.

Rebel opened in the summer of 2015 to critical acclaim. As recently as March, it received three out of four stars in a Denver Post review and, this past winter, it landed on Eater’s map of Denver’s 38 essential restaurants. Lasiy and Porytko said they will have more specifics on the closing as well as their future plans in the coming weeks.

• All Previous Eater Coverage of Rebel [EDEN]
• Recent Denver Restaurant Closures [EDEN]