The Greenwich, the Larimer Street restaurant that started as an eclectic pizza spot and later reinvented itself as an Italian kitchen, served its last meal Sunday night, closing for good after five years in Denver's RiNo neighborhood. The restaurant, located at 3258 Larimer St., abruptly announced on Instagram that it had closed for good on Oct. 18, ending a run that saw multiple chefs, menu overhauls and at least one change of ownership.
According to Westword, The Greenwich was originally founded in 2021 by longtime Denver restaurateur Delores Tronco as an “eclectic New American” restaurant built around pizza and a regularly changing menu. At the end of 2025, Tronco sold the restaurant to Drew Davis, who took over operations in January. The Denver Post reports Davis ran the restaurant for roughly 10 months before deciding to close it.
Davis accepted responsibility for the decision. “I accept full responsibility,” he said, according to the same Westword report, adding that the restaurant was up against “restaurants across the city are facing and I made mistakes that only compounded these difficulties.” He also said the business had not found its footing under his ownership and expressed sadness for the community, vendors and team connected to the Larimer Street restaurant.
From Pizza Pop-Up to Italian Menu
The restaurant’s changing food and leadership included several distinct chapters. Justin Freeman was the opening chef before leaving roughly two years in for Somebody People, where he is now head chef; he also owns Monarch Pizza inside the Urban Cowboy Motel, per Westword’s reporting. In 2024, the restaurant promoted pastry chef and chef de cuisine Luke Miller to executive chef. Miller and Tronco then steered the menu toward Italian cooking.
The Italian menu included pizza, small plates, salads and vegetable dishes alongside three larger entrees, according to the outlet’s reporting on the change. Westword’s closure report also noted multiple kitchen and ownership changes during the restaurant’s five-year run.
A Broader Squeeze on Denver Restaurants
Davis's acknowledgment that the challenges extended well past his own restaurant lines up with wider data on Denver's dining scene. The city had 1,780 active retail-food licenses as of last year, compared with 2,356 in July 2023 — a reported 24.4% decline, or a loss of 576 businesses, according to The Colorado Sun, which cautioned the two datasets weren't perfectly aligned. The number of full-service restaurants in Denver had climbed to 910 in early 2023 before slipping to 827 by the third quarter of 2024, the same analysis found.
Not every indicator points downward, though. Colorado food- and drink-related sales-tax returns bottomed out at a pandemic low of 13,741 in 2020 before climbing to an estimated 15,865 statewide filers in a more recent year, per the Colorado Sun's figures. Denver itself ended 2023 with 2,593 restaurant-related tax filers, a dozen more than in 2019 — evidence that the local industry has been volatile rather than simply shrinking.
What RiNo’s Retail Data and Past Closures Show
A recent measure of commercial space availability offers one indicator of conditions in RiNo, but not a count of restaurant closures. According to Bisnow, citing a Newmark report, RiNo’s retail availability rate was 9% in the first quarter of 2025, nearly double the citywide average of 5%. The figure describes retail-space availability in RiNo at that time; it does not establish why The Greenwich closed. The neighborhood has also seen other restaurant closures for separately stated reasons. The Denver Post reported that The Populist, a different RiNo restaurant, was scheduled to close after service on Aug. 10, 2019, following a seven-year run. Its owners said they were shifting focus to other endeavors, a distinct explanation from Davis’s acceptance of responsibility for The Greenwich’s closure.
Another Name on a Growing List
The Greenwich's closure adds to a run of high-profile Denver-area shutdowns. The Denver Post's year-end roundup of 2025 closures included Lao Wang' Noodle House, Osaka Ramen, The Hornet, Breakfast King, Brider, Frank the Pizza King, Noisette, Jacques, Middleman, Sunday Vinyl and Q House. Even so, the churn cuts both ways — Westword's count of September openings and closings found more than 20 new restaurants made their Colorado debut that month while only 10 shuttered.
For Tronco, The Greenwich was one chapter in a longer Denver career. She co-founded Work & Class in 2016 and had returned to Denver from New York City because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a period that also saw her restaurant Banty Rooster close because of the pandemic. She later sold The Greenwich to Davis in 2025 with plans to head back to New York. Whatever comes next for 3258 Larimer St., the restaurant's five-year story closed quietly on a Sunday night, with its newest owner taking the blame in public.
