The Garden Sprouts Downtown with Local Focus
Colorado Springs’ need of a proper beer garden/tap house — made ever more prevalent by the loss of Brewer’s Republic and Tap Traders — is something The Garden hopes to fill. The Garden opens Wednesday, May 26th at 401 S Nevada, and is worth checking out for their variety and quality of local offerings.
The Garden at 401 S. Nevada Avenue, Colorado Springs
The vision at The Garden is to highlight all things Colorado Springs by featuring local breweries, spirits, and wines (yes, they are making cocktails and pouring wine as well). They have a resident Farm to Fork food truck called Lush helmed by the former chef from the Fine Arts Center though they plan to have other rotating trucks to provide different food options in the future. Green Machine vegan food was on-site during our preview and will be there on an ongoing rotation.
The Garden definitely has a great outdoor space, with numerous community tables and some fire pits laid out near the food trucks which are lined up along the south wall. Shade sails are planned to be installed before the opening, which is a good thing with summer looming. With only young trees dotting the landscape, the patio has full exposure, so the addition of the shade will be a big bonus.
Patio at The Garden
In a soft opening preview on Monday, we checked out some small plates from the food trucks – including pork belly green chili fries that were delicious, as well as some of their signature cocktails - personal favorites being the Strawberry Rhubarb Manhattan, and the Mezcal Last Word. They have a total of 13 taps and plan to fill those (at least initially) with all local beers. Currently, they have offerings from Goat Patch, Cerberus, Atrevida, and Boxing Brothers as well as some other local favorites in cans. They may expand offerings to other Colorado breweries later this summer, or if they have tap space.
Pork belly green chili fries with a mezcal Last Word cocktail
They are using an interesting ordering system called Toast where you can order from your table by scanning a QR code with your phone. The code is associated with the card on your table, so they know where to bring your food and drinks. You do all the ordering, payment, and gratuity on your phone, which is very convenient—especially in a post-pandemic world.
The food and cocktails are excellent, and they plan to have all 13 taps flowing for the grand opening Wednesday — though we admit, we wouldn’t mind seeing a few rotating taps featuring brews from the state at large to give the locals something they may not be able to get elsewhere in town, it’s still great to see them featuring our local brewers on tap.
Hope to see you there at some point!
