The Kitchen, the Boulder bistro Kimbal Musk opened in 2004 and later expanded to Denver, has a new owner. Boulder restaurateur Bryan Dayton's Half Eaten Cookie Hospitality has acquired The Kitchen's locations in both cities, ending Musk's two-decade ownership of the restaurants that helped put Colorado farm-to-table dining on the map.
According to The Denver Post, Dayton held private acquisition conversations for months before the deal closed, and he did not disclose the financial details of the purchase when speaking with the Daily Camera. Dayton's Half Eaten Cookie Hospitality already owns Oak at Fourteenth and Corrida in Boulder, along with C Bar and C Burger, and the group's portfolio now adds The Kitchen's original Pearl Street bistro as well as its Wazee Street outpost in Denver's LoDo neighborhood.
Musk opened the Pearl Street location in 2004 with British chef Hugo Matheson as a community-minded bistro focused on local sourcing and sustainability, as Denver Westword has described. The Denver expansion followed in March 2012, when The Kitchen moved into LoDo's historic 1906 Sugar Building, once the headquarters of the Great Western Sugar Company, according to the same outlet's earlier reporting on the Wazee Street opening.
A Brand Built Alongside Learning Gardens and a Burger Spinoff
The Kitchen Restaurant Group also launched a fast-casual sister concept, Next Door American Eatery, in 2011; the concept later rebranded as ND streetBAR, with locations in Indiana and Colorado. Musk's food ventures extended beyond restaurants, too: in 2011 he and Matheson co-founded Big Green, originally called The Kitchen Community, a nonprofit that builds outdoor Learning Garden classrooms in public schools nationwide, according to documentation from iHeartMedia.
Dayton, for his part, built his own reputation long before this deal. He spent five years as Frasca Food and Wine's bar manager under Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey. In September 2011 he won GQ Magazine and Bombay Sapphire's national Most Inspired Bartender competition with a cocktail built around Colorado pears, sage, fennel, and juniper, landing him on the cover of GQ's Men of the Year issue, as Denver Westword reported at the time.
His flagship restaurant, Oak at Fourteenth, survived its own early crisis: a fire four months after opening forced an eight-month closure before it reopened that December. Dayton has since owned Acorn and Brider in Denver as well, and his Half Eaten Cookie Hospitality has kept expanding in Boulder. Corrida, which Dayton and executive chef Samuel McCandless started, now supplies beef to Half Eaten Cookie Hospitality's restaurants and also sells beef directly to individuals, and Corrida's rancher relationships are expected to extend into The Kitchen going forward.
Dayton's Plans for The Kitchen's Menus and Staff
Dayton plans to keep The Kitchen's spaces, staff, and menus largely unchanged, though he said some tweaks are coming. He described The Kitchen as an iconic brand with a strong foundation, according to the Denver Post, crediting the restaurant with helping lay the groundwork for farm-to-table practices in the local hospitality scene and for advocating agriculture and ranching practices that align with his own ranching partnerships.
Dayton also addressed the elephant in the room: Musk's public profile. Per the Denver Post's reporting, Dayton said people will have opinions about Kimbal Musk's name and The Kitchen's reputation, while also praising what Musk and Matheson built at the restaurant. Musk, who is Elon Musk's brother and lived in Boulder while running the business, was mentioned at least 140 times in emails exchanged between Jeffrey Epstein and associates, per the Denver Post's reporting on documents the Department of Justice released as part of its Epstein files review.
Cinq à Sept, a Parisian-inspired French bistro in north Boulder, is a partnership between Dayton and executive chef Samuel McCandless, as Denver Westword reported in August. With The Kitchen's two locations now folded into the fold, Dayton's group has consolidated a sizable share of Boulder's most recognizable dining brands under one local roof.
