Skip to main content

Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery ~ Colorado chain : Boulder


First visit: Jun 2023 (Boulder)

I wisely planned to take a day off after the meetings, knowing full well the final night would be designated for partying, and all of my predictions came true. I'm an old wet blanket anymore, and usually dead asleep by 9 in the evening. But I knew full well I wouldn't be afforded that opportunity, so I just nursed my last glass of red wine for hours until we could get back to the hotel. But at least I didn't have to get up for anything! After a good night's sleep, I grabbed a Starbucks from the lobby and headed back. The original plan was to run a local trail and sweat out some toxins, when I realized I forgot my running shoes. Nice work dummy! Oh well.

For this visit, I stayed at the Marriott Courtyard, which are normally pretty boring. The first morning I couldn't appreciate it, but now that I have a full day to myself, I realized they have a patio and a balcony. You just don't see that too much anymore. So I went outside on this beautiful cool and sunny June morning and viewed the courtyard with huge pine trees, while sipping my coffee. So peaceful and nice. I need more of that.

My main plan for this day was to look for records in Boulder, since I never go there separately. And I did just that with moderate success. For lunch, I decided on Mountain Sun, one of the oldest brewpubs in Colorado - going back to when Boulder Beer and microbreweries were still a new concept. For whatever reason, I'd never been here before. 

I sat down at the booth and was quickly warned they are "cash only" so that they can "pay their workers a decent wage". I'm getting pretty tired of these excuses from restaurants. Figure out your business plan, but don't make me solve them for you. Whatever the case, I always have cash with me because of the record hobby business. No problem. From there, it was all aces. The beer I had was delicious and the cheeseburger was even better. I'll definitely make an effort to visit one of their pubs in the future. Bring a lot of cash though if going with more than just yourself!

As of this writing, Mountain Sun operates 3 locations in Boulder, one in Longmont, and one in Denver.

This ends the Boulder business trip - not too bad on the whole, though it could have been better.

6/22/23 (new entry)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Five Guys Burgers and Fries ~ national chain : Colorado Springs, Colorado

Latest visit: Oct 2023 (Colorado Springs - Interquest) First visit: Jan 2007 (Reston, VA) Locations: 49 states + DC. Only Alaska is missing. There are 30 in Colorado (4 in the Springs). That's +3 from last year. Texas has 68 (our former locale of Southlake is closed, so Hurst would have been the closest). There are 123 in California which is their largest state presence. The original Reston location that I first went to is still going.  In what appears to be a recurring theme, I state each year this will be my last visit to Five Guys. Only to return anyway. This year's excuse is I wanted to try their new location, which very recently opened up close to our house. This is definitely the closest we've ever lived to a Five Guys - even the Reston location was further from my office at the time. And I thought maybe it would make a good choice for a weekday lunch while working from home, thus putting Five Guys back into the rotation. I put that idea to the test here this Saturda...

Denver's Old School Italian Restaurants

I know, I know... I haven't posted anything in 6 months. You were checking back every week, then every month and now I've fallen completely off your radar. Sorry about that. My only lame excuse is that I've been "saving up" for a good one. I've been wanting to write about Denver's Italian restaurants since we returned part-time last year. And you all know how the RJG feels about this style of restaurant . As someone who grew up in Dallas, perhaps I've been more drawn to cities that embrace their history rather than completely demolish it. Only recently has Dallas become more acutely aware of their past. Previously, any buildings not in use have been razed as fast as possible, to make way for the next brand new shopping center - all in the latest architecture naturally. Contrarily you have cities like St. Louis that are 19th and 20th century industrial ghost towns - places frozen in time because for most everyone who could, they just up and left to ...

Taco Villa ~ Texas chain : Amarillo

Latest visit: May 2023 (Amarillo - W. Amarillo Blvd @ Tascosa) First visit: Jul 1981 (Amarillo) We blew through New Mexico and into the panhandle of Texas. As we were beginning to circumvent the Amarillo traffic I noticed Taco Villa. I mentioned to JL how great they are. How about a quick snack? We both were on the same page. It's been 5 years since we left DFW, and that's the last time I had Taco Villa goodness. I ordered 3 crispy tacos. Happy to say everything is as good as I remembered it (except the price of course...). The salsas, the meat, and the piled high cheese. And JL absolutely *loved* them. He mentioned it a few times on the trip. We have a new convert!  Now for some chain news: There are 5 locations in Amarillo; 5 in Odessa; 3 in Midland; 1 each in Andrews, Big Spring, Canyon, and Hobbs, New Mexico for a total of 17. They exited the DFW market not long after we left in 2018 (did we keep them in business?). ---4/19/18 update (Fort Worth) I often would eat at Tac...