La Loma: Green Chile Generations

BY JOHN LEHNDORFF

We have grown accustomed to dining disappointment.

We take the plunge and try a new Denver restaurant, and fall in love with the food. A few weeks or months later, we drag friends to the same eatery only to find the menu, the décor, the owners and the staff has changed.

Hip bistros seem to open with a splash and then disappear, ghosting their regulars with only a note on the front door. Some Colorado chefs scramble their menu weekly while chasing Michelin stars.

But from the day it opened in 1973, La Loma Restaurant has been Denver families’ steady, familiar food friend, a place resolutely devoted to remaining the same.

If you last dined at La Loma in, say, 1990, you’ll experience déjà vu when you stop at the restaurant in 2025. The traditional décor, spot-on service and food and drink menus will look very familiar.

According to La Loma’s co-owner Mark Brinkerhoff, not changing has been La Loma’s real secret sauce.

“We’re not reinventing ourselves every few years. We have the same menu items and service so people can have the experience they’ve come to expect and enjoy,” Brinkerhoff says.

Green chile – the sauce that originally launched La Loma, is still made using the original recipe from Savina Mendoza. A large portrait of the matriarch of the eatery’s founding family hangs next to the front door at the flagship location across Tremont Street from the Brown Palace Hotel.

Ask for the green chile recipe and Brinkerhoff will just laugh at you. What he will reveal is that La Loma serves only one kind of green chile.

“We use great roasted Hatch chilies and roasted pork. People have asked but we don’t make a vegetarian green chile,” he says. La Loma’s famous sauce is also not gluten-free.

In 2010, Mark Brinkerhoff joined his father, William Brinkerhoff in running the restaurant, but he can’t recall a time when La Loma wasn’t part of his life.

“My first memory of La Loma is in the early 80s. I was a kid hanging out there. I remember that tortilla-making machine, and taking a nap after lunch in one of those big booths we had in the original location.”

A Little House on a Denver Hill

The Mendoza family opened La Loma in a tiny brick house on 26th Avenue in Denver in 1973.

“My granddad used to go eat there with his family and got to know the Mendoza family,” Brinkerhoff says.

“Grandad” was Sonny Brinkerhoff, a businessman and Colorado golf icon who was elected to the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2006 partly for his support of what is today the Evans Scholars House at the University of Colorado.

“He and my Dad partnered with the family and bought three old homes and combined them into a single restaurant with a Downtown view.”

La Loma became known for its authentic Tex-Mex fare including tortillas made fresh on the premises, a rarity on Denver-area menus in that era.

“We also had big fishbowl Margaritas the size of your head,” Brinkerhoff says.

The Brinkerhoffs eventually bought the business including the recipes and, in 2016, moved to a downtown location long occupied by a power lunch destination, The Trinity Grille. The restaurant features lots of exposed wood and brick with stained glass windows, a big patio, and a welcoming bar open for lunch, dinner and weekend brunch.

The Home of Fine Mexican Dining

La Loma has always occupied a distinctive dining niche offering great service at tables set with cloth napkins. It was more upscale than your favorite neighborhood taqueria and less fancy than upscale Mexican restaurants like Larimer Square’s Tamayo.

“We’re not trying to change any of the food, or become sophisticated with it, but we believe in gracious hospitality and really consistent Tex-Mex dishes. I like our old tagline: ‘Fine Mexican Dining,’” Brinkerhoff says.

Meals always commence with La Loma’s complimentary basket of thin crisp tortilla chips and mild tomato salsa.

“Most of the menu is unchanged since the original except for a couple of dishes like the Mexico City soft tacos,” Brinkerhoff says. Classic platters like sizzling fajitas come with the familiar rice, refried or black beans, and warm corn or flour tortillas.

The popular Anniversary Plate still includes a stuffed sopapilla, chile relleno and a chicken flauta with guacamole and sour cream. It can be ordered “Christmas-style” crisscrossed with both green chile andred chile sauces.

Other selections include chicken tortilla soup, brisket enchiladas and tequila shrimp with warm churros for dessert. One best-selling salad tops greens, grapefruit, avocado, jicama and carrots with mesquite–grilled jumbo shrimp and a citrus vinaigrette.

La Loma’s beverage menu also remains largely unchanged except for a few tweaks like the barrel-aged Margarita. “We squeeze our own juice now, instead of using sweet and sour for everything,” he says.

Despite its location in Colorado, the epicenter of American craft brewing, La Loma’s bar only features a couple of craft beers, according to Brinkerhoff.

“We stick with those Mexican beer classics everybody loves,” he says.

La Loma’s Secret to Denver Dining Longevity

In a city where the new restaurant mortality rate hovers around two years, La Loma Restaurant is a 48-year-old recession and pandemic-proof anomaly. According to Mark Brinkerhoff, La Loma has thrived because of continuity with the same ownership, and multi-generational families of regulars and staff.

“We’ve had the same people work with us for years, including mothers and their daughters. Carmelo, who’s in our kitchen in Castle Rock, he’s been with us since 1981,” he says.

Another critical attribute is that La Loma has endeared itself to families and other large groups of diners.

“You can come in with one person or ask for a table for eight people. We’ve had a party of 20 walk-ins off the street and ask for a table. It’s always OK if we have room,” he says.

(That said, he does recommend reservations.)

Mark Brinkerhoff readily admits he did his best to avoid going into the family business, not unlike the scion of many restaurant-owning families.

“I definitely did, but after going to school in California and pursuing some other endeavors, I was happy to come back and get involved.”

Mark Brinkerhoff credits his father, William, for La Loma’s core strengths.

“My dad got involved early on with his dad in the early 1980s. He carried the torch for that restaurant for many decades, driving the consistency and the experience and the attention to detail,” he says.

“It has really been enjoyable to work with him in this family business.”

A second La Loma Restaurant location opened in Castle Rock in 2020.

“It is a very different environment next to the outlet stores. We get more suburban, stay-at-home parents and shoppers. But, being on the I-25 corridor, it’s become a meeting place for people coming from Colorado Springs and Denver,” Brinkerhoff says.

While the menu and the service may be identical to the flagship Denver location, the ambiance is a callback to La Loma’s Denver hilltop iteration.

“The Castle Rock restaurant has an amazing view. You can see from Mount Evans to Pikes Peak,” he says.

The Brinkerhoff company also operates Sierra restaurant next to Cabela’s in Lone Tree. The company is getting ready to open a new concept, Brinkerhoff (including Bar-Hummingbird) next to La Loma in Castle Rock.

Additional La Loma locations are being considered for the future, according to Brinkerhoff, but they will all have exactly the same menu.

“My favorite dish when I was a kid was a bean burrito with green chile. Now, my kid loves the same little burritos, too. He’s the fourth generation of Brinkerhoffs. We affectionately refer to him as The Chairman.”

 

After sampling La Loma’s green chile again after a twenty-year gap, it’s easy to understand why nobody would think of messing with Grandma Mendoza’s original formula.

I stopped in recently for a reunion with old friends at La Loma Restaurant opposite the Brown Palace Hotel.

The first thing newcomers to green chile need to know is that most examples of this thick sauce (or sometimes stew) served in Colorado are not green. Most are red or tan–colored because they include tomatoes or red chilies. Enjoyed by the spoonful, scooped with pieces of a fresh tortilla, or enjoyed on a chile relleno, La Loma’s sauce deserves the name. This is a verdant green, quite thick sauce loaded with roasted chiles, pork and spices that leaves a warm glow on the buds without being alarmingly hot.

The rest of La Loma’s menu is quite tasty and well-made, but, in the interest of transparency, I would be happy to sit down for a therapeutic bowl of Grandma’s green once every week.

 

La Loma Mexican Restaurant, 1801 Broadway,Denver; 6361 Promenade Pkwy, Castle Rock

lalomamexican.com