By Mark Antonation, Westword

Pockets of Park Hill have become home to some quality neighborhood eateries, including Tables on Kearney Street,Bistro Barbes on East 28th Avenue and Desmond on Oneida Street. A few coffeehouses and pizza joints lure locals, but the neighborhood’s small shopping centers have yet to experience the kind of bar and restaurant boom that has engulfed Berkeley, Lower Highland and Old South Pearl. That quiet, neighborhood vibe is part of the allure for Idaho restaurateur Kevin Settles, owner and president of three Bardenay distillery pubs in Boise, Eagle and Coeur d’Alene. Settles has selected a space at 2245 Kearney Street, once a movie theater, for the first Bardenay outside of its home state.

The first Bardenay opened in 1999 and became a distillery and restaurant in 2000. “We were the first distillery the federal government gave a license to operate in a public place,” Settles notes. Colorado’s distillery regulations have recently become amenable to the same kind of setup, so Settles felt it was a prime time to expand outside of Idaho. After scouting Denver for some time, he found the space on Kearney Street and thought it would be a great addition to the neighborhood, since “nobody does exactly what we do.”

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