3250 E 2nd Avenue
Recent permit filings submitted to the city confirm the names and cuisines of the two restaurant concepts coming to 2nd & Adams in Cherry Creek North. The Italian concept will be called Picchi, while the Israeli and Mediterranean concept will be called Varda.
Both are part of Boka Restaurant Group's first Denver project, prepared by OZ Architecture, with New York-based AvroKO listed as the restaurant designer. The filings include a full health plan review application, two complete menus, and a 55-sheet architectural set with separate rendered interiors for each concept. When the partnership was announced in June 2025, Magnetic Capital said further details on the concepts and design partners would be officially announced in Summer 2025. That announcement never came. Coverage from every Denver media outlet all note the concepts remained unnamed. Boka's own website still does not list either restaurant.
We contacted a Boka representative who declined to share additional details, but did not dispute our findings or the public filings and communicated that further updates would come in the near future.
Based on the documents, Varda fronts 2nd Avenue. The 133-seat restaurant is the larger of the two concepts and runs all day, with lunch service from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and dinner service from 5 to 11 p.m. seven days a week. Weekend brunch is built into the projection of 731 meals per day at peak. The name is Hebrew for rose. The menu draws heavily from Israeli and Levantine traditions: dozen oysters with finger lime, Moroccan pastels, herbed falafel, a full salatim section with eggplant steak and smashed cucumbers, hummus three ways, sabich, salmon tartare, a whole roasted lamb and cauliflower sinya for the table at $37, and k'nafeh for dessert. The menu architecture and dish vocabulary closely match Boka's existing Israeli concepts in collaboration with chef Michael Solomonov's CookNSolo team, including Laser Wolf Brooklyn, K'far Brooklyn, and Jaffa Cocktail & Raw Bar. Solomonov is one of Boka's seven named chef partners. Whether he is directly involved in Varda has not been confirmed.
Picchi fronts Adams Street. The 84-seat dinner-only Italian restaurant operates from 5 to 11 p.m. with peak service projected at 225 meals per day. The name is Italian for peaks, a fitting nod for a Mile High City debut, pairing with the rose imagery of its sister concept. The menu reads as modern Northern Italian anchored by handmade pasta: caramelle stuffed with potato in brown butter, bigoli with shelling beans and guanciale, cavatelli with chicken liver and vin santo, pappardelle with braised oxtail ragu, and a truffled gnuddi with chestnut and winter truffle. Starters include scallop crudo with sea urchin, saffron-gorgonzola arancini, and gnocco fritto with mortadella and fig. The structure mirrors Alla Vita, Boka's Chicago Italian restaurant from chef Lee Wolen, which Boka describes as casual, family-style Italian focused on simple preparations.
Together the two restaurants occupy roughly 10,000 square feet, with 3,000 square feet dedicated to dining. The architectural set shows two separate kitchens with shared back-of-house infrastructure, not the shared cooking line earlier reporting suggested. AvroKO is the New York hospitality design firm behind projects including The NoMad and Saxon + Parole. Renderings show Picchi as a modern trattoria with terracotta tile, paper globe pendants, and an open kitchen, while Varda leans Mediterranean with terracotta arches, an interior olive tree, mosaic floors, and lantern pendants. A separate 5,600-square-foot rooftop bar and restaurant is planned for the building, anchored by what Magnetic Capital has described publicly as a Michelin-star operator.
The broader 2nd & Adams project is a 100,000-square-foot mixed-use building from Magnetic Capital, designed by OZ Architecture and built by Mortenson Construction. The development is split roughly 80,000 square feet of office and 20,000 square feet of retail, structured around what the development team calls a hospitality-infused office operating model with heavy emphasis on food and beverage and the broader activation of common areas. Bow River Capital, the Denver-based private alternative asset manager, signed a 30,000-square-foot lease in January 2024 to anchor the office component, relocating its headquarters to the building. PureWest Energy, the independent Rockies-focused natural gas producer currently based at 1400 16th Street in LoDo, will occupy Suite 250 on the second floor. Avant Natural Resources, the Denver-based investment platform focused on Permian Basin oil and gas assets, has also signed on as a tenant after relocating from Wynkoop Street. Both PureWest and Avant join Bow River in a developing cluster of Denver-based energy and alternative asset tenants pulling out of LoDo and into Cherry Creek.
Brian Lockwood is the Boka chef partner of record on the filings. A Boulder native, Lockwood came up through The French Laundry, Frasca, and NoMad New York. He served as chef de cuisine at Eleven Madison Park when the restaurant earned three Michelin stars and was named the %231 restaurant in the world on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. He most recently served as the consulting chef on the Emmy-winning series The Bear before joining Boka. His Cherry Creek project is his Denver debut.
As 3250 E. 2nd Avenue nears completion, the project appears to have one of the most stacked tenant rosters in the neighborhood.