Brockmeyer’s Pretzel Cafe Opens in Mid-Century Significant Leading Constructing

What do a pretzel bakery, a Snarf’s sandwich shop, a gas station and two carnicerias — all scattered around west Denver — have in prevalent? They occupy previous Large Major advantage-retailer buildings, crafted in the late 1950s and early 1960s as section of a wave of distinct, Googie-era architecture.

That pretzel bakery is Brockmeyer’s, which Brock Coffman opened in mid-December at 6340 West Mississippi Avenue. He’s owned the developing given that 2016, and was operating Baker Street Pretzels there right before he resolved to improve to a entire-support cafe with Brockmeyer’s.

“It was just a shell when I purchased it,” Coffman states of the composition. “It didn’t even have a working bathroom.”

More than the past 4 a long time, he is set a lot of sweat and elbow grease into the spot. He installed a professional kitchen area and started producing pretzels that Baker Street bought to craft breweries, which they could heat in toaster ovens and serve to shoppers. Then in 2018, when he was just 41, Coffman suffered a coronary heart assault when cycling and decided to make some modifications in his lifestyle. He quit drinking, paid out much more consideration to his overall health, and started scheduling a coffeehouse and bakery he could set in the former Big Top.

Develop

Brockmeyer’s would make its house in a previous Big Major advantage retail outlet, a single of fifteen that once existed all-around metro Denver.

Mark Antonation

“This matter is known as a hexadecagon,” Coffman points out, describing the practically round edifice with a tent-like roof that sweeps down in numerous swish curves from a central axis. “Every single one particular [of the Big Tops] is just a very little unique. It truly is got sixteen sides you will find a reason we generally use 90-diploma angles in design.”

Shoehorning contemporary kitchen area products created for square and rectangular spaces into a developing with so a lot of angles wasn’t easy. And the age of the building, which was built in 1959, didn’t assist issues. But given that there was not considerably still left in the inside, at minimum Coffman did not have to fret about reconfiguring walls or doorways. He also failed to have to worry about remaining inside rigorous layout pointers, considering that the setting up does not have historic-landmark position with the Town of Lakewood. William Sayre of the Denver organization Kellogg & Sayre designed the initially Large Top rated there ended up at the time fifteen of them all over the metro space, nevertheless a lot of have been demolished in the latest yrs.

Expand

This pretzel pocket it loaded with smoked pork shoulder.

Mark Antonation

Now that the do the job is concluded and Brockmeyer’s is officially open, Coffman has returned to producing pretzels, a skill he discovered following a excursion to Europe. “I under no circumstances was formally educated as a baker,” he notes. “I expended a pair of months in Bavaria ingesting liters of beer and feeding on, and when I acquired property, I wondered why I could not obtain a superior German pretzel listed here.”

So he decided to make them himself, and before long learned the mystery: food-grade lye. The ideal gentle pretzels have a distinct, espresso-dim pores and skin that arrives from a dunk in lye drinking water prior to the pretzels are baked. Numerous bakeries do not use lye, Coffman explains, since it’s extremely caustic if not taken care of meticulously, but he thinks other shortcuts (this kind of as making use of baking soda as a substitute of lye) do not minimize the mustard. Lye improves the alkalinity of the pretzel’s area, resulting in it to brown immediately and evenly while adding a chewy texture and distinctive taste. Baking the pretzels on a pizza stone crisps the exterior to just the ideal degree, he adds.

Bavarian-model pretzels are surely Brockmeyer’s signature products, but they are much from the only draw. Coffman conceived of the cafe as a neighborhood gathering location, exactly where regulars could quit by in the morning for espresso beverages, tea and other incredibly hot drinks (do not miss out on the tres leches latte), along with sticky buns and pretzel bagels shmeared with housemade product cheese, which Coffman creates from clean cream, complete milk and a bacterial culture. He also tends to make his personal mustard to go with the pretzels.

Extend

Sticky buns, pretzel-wrapped sausage, pretzels and pretzel pockets inside Brockmeyer’s on West Mississippi Avenue.

Mark Antonation

For lunch, there are pretzel-wrapped jalapeño-cheddar brats (the sausages come from neighborhood grinder Continental) and pulled-pork pretzel pockets, equally of which go great with canned and bottled beers, really hard seltzers and wines from the cafe’s bar. “I am not on the lookout to be a comprehensive sandwich shop, but the plan is to have a beer backyard by summer season,” Coffman suggests. The making is surrounded by a vast expanse of parking great deal that would certainly accommodate that a chain connection fence remaining around from a U-Haul rental middle beforehand on the home now designates the boundary of the cafe’s liquor license.

Brockmeyer’s is only a thirty day period previous, but term has spread on nextdoor.com, and nearby Lakewood residents are responding very well to the new addition in their neighborhood. Though pretzels are a niche product, coffee isn’t really — but there aren’t a lot of other cafes in the place, Coffman factors out. With his distinctive offerings in an offbeat setting, Coffman is certainly putting a new twist on the coffeehouse concept.

Brockmeyer’s is open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and from 8 a.m. to midday on Sundays. Buy on the net at brockmeyers.sq..web page, or call 303-935-8935 for aspects.