After four months being closed, Andy Gutierrez is back.
His Mexican restaurant Santo Remedio, which used to operate on Tennyson Street in Denver’s Berkeley neighborhood, is taking over the former home of Red Tops Rendezvous in Jefferson Park.
Maintenance issues caused the restaurant to close in the late spring at 3900 Tennyson St. after a year-and-a-half, according to Gutierrez. He hopes to reopen at 2917 W. 25th Ave. within a week.
“This is a new start and I like the place a lot,” Gutierrez said. “I think it’s gonna be a hit. There’s nothing close to what we’re doing around here.”
While the name — Spanish for “holy remedy” — is the same, about 80% of the menu will be different. Gutierrez, who also owns janitorial and HVAC/plumbing companies, said it will feature more traditional Mexican fare rather than the Tex-Mex style food Santo Remedio served in Berkeley.
He expects the tacos to be the star of the show.
“One taco a day is the key of happiness,” the new menu reads.
Alongside the meals, he said the 4,750-square-foot building got a facelift as well. While the buildout on Tennyson rung him around $400,000, the price tag to paint, change lighting and do small improvements at Santo Remedio’s new home was around $65,000
A lot of that is because the two-story structure is a newer building. In 2022, Juan Padro, founder and CEO of the local Culinary Creative Group, teamed up with MAG Builders to develop the real estate for the Detroit-styled pizza joint Red Tops.
That spot opened in July 2023, but closed a year later due to construction on nearby Federal Boulevard and, eventually, right in front of the restaurant. Padro said Red Tops did between $55,000 and $60,000 a week when it first opened, but that went down to $35,000 after hammers started swinging.
“At that point in time, we were willing to eat that to preserve jobs,” Padro said.
But when work started directly in front of Red Tops, that number dipped even further to $16,000 — a far cry from the $36,000 he needed to breakeven.
“We’re not gonna lose 20k a week, so we said it’s better to close it, pay the rent and the bills and insurance on it and be able to use it a bit for R&D and events and some celebrations of life,” he said.
“We toyed with reopening,” Padro continued. “But we just had other stuff going on so we decided to list it.”
Gutierrez is optimistic that, now that the work is over, Santo Remedio will succeed. He signed a seven-year lease for the space but said he plans to buy the building from MAG Builders, Padro and fellow CCG execs Katie O’Shea and Kevin Eddy within 18 months. Gutierrez said he already owns $10 million in real estate, including warehouses and Airbnb homes.
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