Frank Bonanno's Rome-Meets-Tokyo Bet Fills Larimer Square's Longest Vacancy

That corner storefront at 1401 Larimer had been dark for over three years. Ted's Montana Grill ran there for two decades, then closed in 2023, and after that the front just sat there. Empty. On one of the best-looking blocks in Denver.

Frank Bonanno wanted it for about 15 years. So when it finally came open, he signed a 10-year lease and did not let go.

What is going in there now is a restaurant called Rōmyō. And here is the first thing you need to get right, because everybody stumbles on it. It is pronounced "Romeo." The name is a mashup of Rome and Tokyo, which tells you basically everything about the food before you even sit down.

So what is "Itameshi"?

It is Japanese-Italian fusion. Bonanno calls it Itameshi, and honestly the menu is where this gets fun.

We are talking lobster ramen. Fresh porcini fusilli lunghi with an uni garlic emulsion (say that three times fast). Miso-roasted salmon sitting on polenta. The full-service bar pours sake right next to Italian wines, which if you ask me is the whole concept in one glass.

This did not come out of nowhere, either. Bonanno spent something like six weeks going deep on Japanese cuisine, and he has been running Italian-Japanese pop-up dinners for years over at his other spots, Luca and Mizuna. So the man has been circling this idea for a long time. Rōmyō is just the version that finally got its own address.

A genuine family operation

This is a husband-and-wife thing at the top. Frank is the chef and proprietor. His wife Jacqueline is the creative director, and she designed the space itself.

But it goes deeper than the two of them. One of their sons is a potter, and he is making the restaurant's serving ware from scratch. So the plate your uni pasta shows up on was made by the owner's kid. Another son is filming the whole build-out for season three of a series called "Full and Buzzed."

I mean, that is a family betting on one room together. You do not fake that.

Larimer Square, and why Bonanno keeps coming back

Here is the part people miss about this whole story. Bonanno is not new to this street. He ran Osteria Marco on Larimer Square for close to 20 years, so he knows exactly what he is walking into.

He calls Larimer Square one of the city's "pockets of goodness" and one of the best streets in the country. Coming from a guy who has spent two decades on it, that is not marketing talk. That is a landlord's dream tenant telling you the block still works.

And that matters more than it sounds. Larimer Square is the oldest commercial block in Denver, the Miller Building included, and a three-year vacancy on a street like that is the kind of thing that makes people nervous about downtown. One dark storefront turns into two, two turns into a narrative. Bonanno filling the biggest empty box on the block with a James Beard-winning name attached is the opposite signal. It is money saying the street is worth a 10-year commitment.

The actual room

The unit is roughly 4,000 square feet. The dining room seats 80, and then there is a patio out on the pedestrian street that adds about 40 more seats, with views toward the foothills. So on a good Denver evening you are eating uni garlic pasta outdoors on Larimer, foothills in the distance, sake in the glass. That is a specific kind of night, and it is a splurgy one. Nobody is calling this a cheap Tuesday. This is the reservation you make when you want downtown to feel like an event again.

The timing is not an accident

Rōmyō opened in mid-July 2026, and the timing lines up with something. This is the 25th anniversary of Mizuna, the flagship Bonanno opened back in 2001. So a quarter century in, the guy is not coasting. He is starting over on a brand-new concept on a street he already conquered once.

That is either confidence or a little bit of crazy. Probably both, which is usually the good combination in a restaurant.

How to actually go

Rōmyō is open seven nights a week, with lunch added on weekends. Reservations are at romyodenver.com, and for a splurge spot in a room this size, I would not walk up and wing it on a Friday. Book it.

Hayley and I have a running rule about restaurants like this. You go once for the novelty, and the second visit tells you if it is real. The lobster ramen gets you in the door. Whether Rōmyō becomes the reason you park downtown on a random Wednesday is the part we will all find out over the next year.

But a dead corner on the best block in the city just came back to life with a family, a potter son, and a plate of porcini fusilli behind it. For downtown Denver right now, that is worth your attention.