Rome Meets Tokyo in a Train Car on Larimer Square

Udon carbonara. Cacio e pepe ramen. Wagyu bolognese tossed with buckwheat mafaldine.

If that reads like a menu someone dreamed up at 2 a.m., you are not wrong about the energy. But it is real, it is open, and you can walk in and order it tonight at the corner of 14th and Larimer.

The place is called Rōmyō. Say it out loud and you get "Romeo," which is the whole joke. It is Rome plus Tokyo, smashed together, and that mash-up is the entire point. This is Denver's first restaurant built around itameshi, the Japanese word for the fusion of Japanese and Italian cooking. It translates, roughly, to "Italian meal." And it opened September 10, 2026 in the historic Miller Building on Larimer Square.

Fifteen years of wanting this corner

Here is the part people miss about Larimer Square. It is the oldest commercial block in the city, and restaurant space on it does not just open up. So when Ted's Montana Grill closed this corner in 2023 and the roughly 4,000-square-foot unit sat empty, that was a rare crack in the door.

Frank Bonanno walked through it. The man has more than 25 years in the Denver dining scene, and he says he had wanted this exact space "for about 15 years." He signed a 10-year lease. When a restaurateur waits a decade and a half for a corner and then commits to ten more years on it, that tells you something about both the block and the bet.

Frank runs Bonanno Concepts with his wife Jacqueline, and if you have eaten downtown at all you have probably eaten their food. Osteria Marco is right there on the same block. The portfolio runs deep, and Rōmyō borrows from all of it. The broths come out of Bones. The technique traces back to Mizuna. The pastas and pizzas lean on Luca up in Cap Hill. The Asian comfort food nods to Dumplin'. It is less a brand-new idea and more everything they have built, folded into one room.

This started as a party

The concept did not come out of a conference room. It came out of a pop-up.

For the past four years, Bonanno Concepts has thrown an annual "culinary playdate" at Luca, their Italian spot in Cap Hill. The itameshi nights became the most-requested thing they did. People kept asking for it back. So they stopped treating it like a once-a-year stunt and gave it a permanent address.

That matters because it means the menu got four years of test runs before anyone paid rent on it.

The train car thing

Walk in and the design hits you before the food does. The whole place is built around trains.

The booths are made to look like train cars, window "view" and all, so you are basically dining in a compartment headed somewhere. The bar is called the "terminal bar," modeled on an old-school train station, and you sit there and watch the open kitchen work like you are waiting on a platform. Even the detail work carries the Rome-meets-Tokyo idea. The bar tile is a porcelain made by Italian ceramicists working with a Japanese ceramic factory in Osaka. Two countries, one tile. The concept is baked into the grout, basically.

The dining room seats 80, and there is patio seating out on the pedestrian street. From the patio you get a look toward the Colorado foothills, which is a very Denver thing to have while you eat Wagyu bolognese.

What you actually order

Executive Chef Johnny Rodriguez runs the kitchen, with Tyler Bray as general manager. And the thing I like here is that every single dish is both cuisines at once. This is not an Italian menu with a sushi roll tacked on at the end.

Some of what is on it:

- Whipped tofu with togarashi-dusted gnocco fritto,