Arvada (Olde Town), Colorado:
Yak & Yeti (Spice Trade Brewing)
Visited on: Thursday 14th June 2018
Bob Thompson
As its name hints at, this brew-pub-restaurant is an unusual combination of a Nepalese-Tibetan-Indian restaurant and brewery. It is part of a small chain of four Yak & Yeti restaurants in the Denver metropolitan area. Its story begins with Dol Bhattarai who comes from Syangja village in eastern Nepal. He began his career in some of the world class restaurants of Delhi.
He came to Boulder via a top restaurant in Dubai where he was Head Chef. He worked at the Taj restaurant in Boulder for five years before opening his first Yak & Yeti outlet in 2003 at Westminster, north of Denver.
The brewing story starts when he acquired this building in 2008. It is said to be the oldest in Arvada and was previously the Cheshire Cat brew pub, so he inherited a brewery rather than installing one.
He went later to open restaurants in Southeast Denver and in Brighton which is east of the city. In turn these were all supplied by beers brewed at the Arvada pub. A more recent development was the creation of Spice Trade Brewing, as the brewing arm is now known. This has enable them to sell outside of the restaurants and they even have some of their beer retailed in cans these days.
Assisting in this expansion is Head brewer Geoff Tyler who joined the company during the summer of 2016. He has developed some new beers and continued many of the old favourites.
This small brewery of just seven barrels (bbls) capacity has won many awards at the Great American Beer Festival over the years. Several of the beer contain unusual eastern ingredients. Perhaps the most illustrative of these is Chai Milk Stout which contains a mix of Chai spices known only to the owner.
The restaurant is certainly a good looking building. I was with Linda and we entered and turned right into the bar room of the restaurant.
What was good is that the fixtures of its Cheshire Cat days had been retained. There were red leather fitted settles and a carved wood bar counter and back bar. It seemed that it must have a pseudo English pub and was very comfortable.
In other room there was the self service lunchtime buffet. We didn’t use this but did order a Biryani to share between us.
We did it this way because American plates contain vast amounts of food. Well, we only got through half of what was on our plate. So we got a doggie box and took it back to our host’s apartment and had it the next day. Fours meals for the price of one!
There were seven regular beers along with three seasonals and a cider. They were: Om Namah (5.8%), a German pilsner; Jalapeno Lena (5.8%), a pilsner with Jalapeno; Chai (5.2%), a milk stout with added spices; Five Pence (3.8%), an English dark mild; Sun Temple (6.5%), a New England IPA; Himalayan (6.4%), an IPA and American Monk (7.3%), a Belgian IPA.
Then there were the seasonals as followers: Limon di Sorrento (7.4%), a Limonello Saison; Scarlet Giant (5.2%), a gose with key lime and hibiscus and King Montezuma (10.7%), a Russian Imperial stout aged in whiskey barrels.
The cider was Stem Cider’s (Denver) A Salted Cucumber (abv unknown).
This is an excellent pub and restaurant that should not be missed if you are in or around Arvada.
Important Information:
Yak and Yeti, 7803 Ralston Road, Arvada 80002. Tel: 303 431 9000. Web: theyakandyeti.com
Hours: Monday-Saturday 11.00-21.30; Sunday 11.00-21.00
In the future you will be able to ride the G line of the RTD suburban network.
It will take less than 20 minutes.
Trains will start from Union Station. At this time (March 2019) it had not started, until then it’s by bus only.
Bus routes serve the Arvada Park-N-Ride by the station. From there go to the railroad tracks on Vance Street. Cross over these tracks and turn left past the rail station. Turn left into Grandview Avenue.
Go past the station and go right into Old Wadsworth Boulevard.
After a few blocks turn left into Ralston Road.
There turn left, go a few blocks and you will see the pub restaurant on the opposite side of the road.
