The Miller building at the corner of 14th and Larimer in Denver was home to a Prohibition-era speakeasy and the Denver flagship location of Ted’s Montana Grill for 20 years. “It’s just a gorgeous historic building consecrated with generations of food and spirit,” says Jacqueline Bonanno, creative director of Bonanno Concepts.
So, when the company—which operates Denver’s Mizuna and a host of other restaurants including Luca and Osteria Marco—had the opportunity to open its new Japanese-Italian fusion restaurant Rōmyō in the Larimer Square building, it jumped at it.
Rōmyō offers a take on itameshi, a popular fusion cuisine from Japan that blends traditional Italian recipes with Japanese ingredients, techniques, and umami flavors. Its name is a play on Rome and Tokyo, a nod to two cities that embody itameshi flavors.
“Everything about Rōmyō, from menu and menu design to uniforms to the cozily colorful room references how Italian and Japanese cultures influence one another, and all of us, really, as we riff on them into the next generations,” Bonanno says.
Bonanno worked with Fin Art Co, a Denver-based company that specializes in handmade, custom-built modern furniture and fixtures, to transform the space. Two rows of booths from Ted’s Montana Grill were converted to “trains,” one traveling through Rome and the other through Tokyo. Between those trains, an atrium features hand-painted Spanish wallpaper. Wall art is “moody in a very Where the Wild Things Are way,” Bonanno says.
In the bar space, the team removed wood cladding to expose brick walls and used a graphic kiln-fired porcelain tile from Mineral Tile—made in Italy by a Japanese designer—on the floor. “The juxtaposition of century-old brick to contemporary handcrafted tile is unexpected and playful and lovely,” Bonanno says. “I found a Roman ‘kissing lane’ sign that encourages Italian travelers to kiss their goodbyes before boarding a train, and I’m going to back those sentiments up with photographs of intimacy from Tokyo, Rome, and Denver train stations.”
Fin Art Co “is bringing everything to life, from marble finishes on the bar to an enormous giraffe staring onto Larimer Square on a piece of not-really-Gucci luggage to tables stained a soft, ashy green,” she adds.
The restaurant color palette was pulled from the Dictionary of Color Combinations, a series of 1930s books by Japanese artist and color theorist Sanzo Wada, featuring palettes that blend traditional Japanese aesthetics with early modern Western color theory. “They inspired Milan fashion in the ‘70s—think uninhibited combinations like acid green with mustard yellow, pepto pink with poppy red,” Bonanno says.
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