Family has all the ingredients for a dining empire

Janet Forgrieve, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, August 11, 2006

Ana Carrera's affection for her restaurateur husband is obvious the moment she joins him in the sun-drenched courtyard of his latest Denver venture, Buenos Aires Grill.

Arm-in-arm seems most comfortable for the high school sweethearts who met, courted and married in Buenos Aires, and whose 30-year relationship yielded three kids and a growing family dynasty.

"I'm his sidekick," jokes Ana, who handles marketing and does the books while Francis and son Alex build the restaurant chain that started with Buenos Aires Pizzeria.

In 2003, he and then 19-year-old Alex launched the Argentine-flavored pizzeria as a tiny takeout storefront on a largely vacant street in Denver's ballpark neighborhood.

"That building reminded me a lot of buildings in Argentina," Francis said. "It's old and historic. We were driving downtown and I saw the building and fell in love with it."

Customers took to the place and began coming from farther afield, but were disappointed to find only a takeout menu, he said.

When a larger space next-door emptied out four months later, the father-and-son team grabbed it and built the pizzeria's dining room. Today, the restaurant sits next to the original space, now a gelato and takeout counter.

The place packs them in at lunch and dinner, with customers clamoring for the pizza, empanadas and sandwiches that reflect the melting pot that is Buenos Aires.

Francis is a native of the Argentine city, whose foods reflect the culture that blended over the years, as immigrants from Spain, Italy, Germany and other parts of the world made a home there.

His next and more ambitious venture came in June, when the family opened Buenos Aires Grill, a 6,000-square-foot white-tablecloth eatery in the nearby Paris Hotel, in a spot that has seen other eateries come and go.

The upscale grill's dinner entrées range from $11 for chicken dishes to a 22-ounce porterhouse steak for $42. Lunch plates are priced a bit lower.

Both the food and ambience remind Ana of restaurants in the city where she arrived with her family as a 7-year-old, and met her future husband eight years later.

After marrying and starting a family, the pair built and sold a clothing company in Buenos Aires before moving to the United States in 1987.

Francis worked for Pepsico after the move, first in Miami and then in Denver. He left that job in 1992 when he and Ana opened Soft Delivery, a Denver-based distributor of Pepsi products.

Francis revisited his longtime dream of opening a restaurant, a plan that concerned Ana early on.

"We had worked really hard already for so many years," she said. "But he has such enthusiasm and he puts his heart and soul into it, and I do end up getting excited."

Ana and daughter Paula run Soft Delivery, while Francis and Alex run the restaurants - along with help from some good friends.

Francis and chef Cruz Imaz met several years ago on a soccer field before Imaz wound up a 15-year stint running the kitchen at the Cherry Hills Country Club.

For fun, he did some stints as guest chef at the pizzeria. It was so much fun, he said, that he came out of retirement to preside as full-time chef when Buenos Aires Grill opened.

"I just felt at home - like family," Imaz said.

The area boasts a few longtime restaurant families, said Denver restaurant consultant John Imbergamo, but not all that many.

"It's so interesting that so few kids want to take over for their dads or moms," Imbergamo said. "It's very interesting that that just doesn't happen very often. It may be partly because they see the amount of work that's required in the restaurant business, and they go and do something else."

Alex, who trained at Nick-n-Willy's before partnering with his dad, knew what it took and immediately wanted to be part of it, Francis said.

The grill wasn't supposed to happen this soon, Francis said, but when the space became available, it was too good to pass up.

"We didn't want to miss this place - it's so perfect," he said.

Actually, a small Boulder pizza takeout was supposed to come first, and that idea is still on the drawing board, possibly for next year.

"That's it - we do Boulder, then we're done," he said, glancing at Ana out of the corner of his eye as she looks away, feigning exasperation.

forgrievej@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5191.