RiNo, Cherry Creek and Boulder
Mezze to share, whole fish and lamb from a 14-foot hearth, and a room that glows until late.
Chef Nadia Haddad learned to cook beside a charcoal grill in Lebanon, then spent nine years in kitchens in Marseille and Athens. She opened Olive & Ember in a RiNo brick warehouse in 2016 with one idea: cook the food of the eastern Mediterranean the way it is cooked at home, over wood, on plates meant for the middle of the table.
Read our storyYou do not control a wood fire. You have a conversation with it.
There are no gas burners on our line. Everything is a decision about where on the fire a thing belongs.
Oven vault 750F
Flatbread goes in for ninety seconds and comes out blistered. At the end of service the vault is restoked to bake knafeh to order.
Open flame 900F
Used for a forty-second finishing sear and nothing else. Nothing on this menu cooks through at that height.
Coal bed 650F
The working heat, and where most of the menu lives. Cabbage, kofta, ribeye, anything that wants a crust before it wants time.
Ember shelf 400F
Set back two feet from the bed. Whole branzino and quail cook through here without the skin tightening and splitting.
Warming rail 180F
Where the lamb shoulder spends its last two hours, and where bread waits for no more than four minutes before it goes out.
Six in the morning 1 cord a week
Colorado scrub oak and cherry, split by hand and seasoned nine months to under eighteen percent moisture. Wet wood makes acrid smoke.
Seven courses in a fixed order, because a wood fire is hottest when you sit down and settles as the night goes on. Bread at 750F, lamb finishing on a rail at 180F.
Read every courseBread
One flatbread per two guests, pulled from the vault at the moment you sit, with last year's oil and a dish of flaked salt.
Bread first is not a courtesy, it is calibration. The vault is at its hottest, the bread takes 90 seconds, and it tells the table what the oak smells like before anything else competes.
Cold mezze
Three small bowls and a spoon each. The hummus chickpeas were cooked in the coals overnight; the almonds were pickled in June.
The palate is clean and the room is still loud. Cold, acidic and salty gets appetites moving, and it is the only course you eat with your hands after the bread.
From the coals
A quarter head of cabbage cooked cut-side down until the outer leaves are black, then dressed while it is still steaming.
The first hot course is deliberately a vegetable. It introduces smoke as a flavour before there is any meat to hide behind, and the brown butter starts building weight for what follows.
From the water
One fish for every two guests, filleted at the table, with the cheeks offered to whoever asks first.
Fish sits fourth because the fire has dropped to the point where it will cook through without drying, and because it is the last course light enough to precede lamb.
Not the other way round. When a window closes the dish comes off the board, and we do not buy it in from out of state to keep the line alive.
Ela Family Farms, Hotchkiss and Rocky Mountain Ranch, Craig 212 miles and 198 miles
Grilled asparagus with green garlic toum, and the first spring lamb of the year
The asparagus window is about five weeks and it closes fast. When it goes, the dish goes; we do not buy it in from out of state to keep a menu line alive.
Esoterra Culinary Garden, Cedaredge 246 miles
Pickled green almonds for the tasting menu, and the herb-heavy spring fattoush
Green almonds are picked before the shell hardens and last about ten days on the tree. We buy the whole picking and pickle it in one afternoon to use all year.
Berry Patch Farms, Brighton 24 miles
Cold cucumber and yoghurt mezze, grilled apricot with labneh
Twenty-four miles means a morning pick arrives for evening service. July is the only month our produce delivery beats our bread out of the oven.
Talbott Farms, Palisade and Musso Farms, Pueblo 243 miles and 112 miles
Peaches grilled over the coals, and the Pueblo chile in the muhammara
The busiest six weeks of our year. We take roughly 900 pounds of Palisade peaches and 400 pounds of Pueblo chiles, roast the chiles in one weekend, and freeze what we cannot use fresh.
We split the oak by hand at six in the morning so that at seven in the evening the smoke tastes of nothing but wood.
Not by country and not by colour. Smoke is a tannin-shaped flavour, so the list is grouped by acid, grip and body, and each family names the dishes it is poured against.
Acid 8 or 9 out of 10, body 3, oak none
Tahini, yoghurt and olive oil coat the palate. Acid is the only thing that lifts that coating back off, so every mezze course starts here. No oak, because barrel sweetness fights the lemon and sumac we finish those plates with.
Poured at 46F, in a small tulip so the aromatics stay put
$16 glass $62 bottle
Volcanic salinity and hard citrus acid. The reference bottle for anything with tahini in it.
$15 glass $58 bottle
An indigenous Lebanese white grown at 3,000 feet. Green almond and quince, and it drinks like it was bred for our mezze board.
Acid 6, body 6, grip 4 out of 10 from skin tannin
Smoke is a tannin-shaped flavour. A white with a few days on its skins carries just enough grip to meet wood smoke head on without the weight of a red. This is the family we reach for when a vegetable has been cooked directly on the logs.
Poured at 54F, in a burgundy bowl. Too cold and the grip turns hard
$18 glass $74 bottle
Eleven days on skins. Dried apricot and a chalky pull that matches blistered eggplant skin exactly.
$17 glass $68 bottle
Clay-vessel amber wine, six months on skins. Walnut and quince, which is why it goes to the muhammara table.
Acid 7, body 4, tannin 2, residual sugar under 2 g/L
Rosé earns its place on a wood-fire list only when it is dry and grown for the purpose. These are pressed from red grapes with real structure, served properly cold, and they bridge the gap between the mezze course and the first thing off the coals.
Poured at 45F and left in ice at the table
$17 glass $70 bottle
Mourvèdre gives it a savoury, almost meaty spine, which is the only rosé structure that stands up to char.
$14 glass $54 bottle
Grown a mile from where Chef Nadia's family kept a table. Red plum, dry finish, built for lahmacun.
Tannin 3, acid 7, body 4 out of 10
The mistake on a live-fire menu is reaching straight for a big red. Fish and poultry off the coals pick up smoke but stay lean, and a tannic wine strips them. A cool, low-tannin red keeps the fruit and lets the char read as seasoning.
Poured at 55F. Every bottle in this family goes through the cellar fridge first
$16 glass $66 bottle
Tomato leaf and dried herb with fine, sandy tannin. The single most useful red on our list for fish.
$15 glass $58 bottle
Almost weightless, pure red cherry. Pour it against ember chicken and the garlic toum stays the loudest thing on the plate.
Tannin 8, acid 6, body 8 out of 10
Tannin binds to protein and fat. Give it a rare lamb shoulder with a crust off the coal bed and it softens into something plush. Give it a vegetable and it turns bitter and metallic, which is why nothing in this family is poured before a main arrives.
Poured at 62F, decanted 30 minutes for anything older than 2019
$24 glass $104 bottle
The bottle this restaurant was designed around. Seven years in bottle before release, and it meets oak smoke as an equal.
$15 glass $60 bottle
Velvet tannin and sweet spice. The friendliest way into this family if the table is split.
Residual sugar 90 to 190 g/L, acid 7, served in 2 oz pours
A dessert wine has to out-sweeten the plate or it tastes sour. Knafeh runs about as sweet as a wine at 120 g/L, so everything here is measured against that and poured in two ounces, not five.
Poured at 50F in a 2 oz measure
$18 glass $96 bottle
Sun-dried grapes, 190 g/L of sugar, and acid that keeps it from cloying. The only pour that beats knafeh at its own game.
$12 glass $52 bottle
Fortified, raisin and cocoa. Serve alongside the date and tahini semifreddo, never with citrus.
Allergies, walk-ins, parking and private rooms. Anything else, call us on (720) 555-0162.
All questionsTables are released 30 days in advance at 10 am Mountain Time. Friday and Saturday evenings usually fill two to three weeks out.
Yes. We hold the bar, the hearth counter, the patio in season and about a quarter of the dining room for walk-ins every service.
Yes. Add allergies to your reservation and tell your server. Our kitchen handles nuts, sesame, gluten, dairy and shellfish, so we cannot promise zero cross-contact.
Each location has validated or nearby paid parking. RiNo validates the 30th and Larimer lot after 5 pm, Cherry Creek validates the Clayton Lane garage, and Boulder is next to the 15th and Pearl garage.
The lamb shoulder for two is the best thing I have eaten in Denver this year. Smoky, tender, and the herb salad cut right through it.
Larimer Street Merchants' Association, Restaurant of the Year (sample award, 2025)
Read all 2,146 reviews
Someone picks up at the host stand from 10 am. Tell them the night and the headcount and they will find you something, including tonight.
Call the RiNo host stand(720) 555-0162Tables open 30 days ahead. Walk-ins always welcome at the bar and the hearth counter.
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