Years before chef Quincy Cherrett made lobster-topped risotto, he fell in love with tom kha gai—a Thai coconut curry soup—and white rice.
As a teenager, Cherrett worked at a local Thai restaurant in Jackson Hole. There, he would pour the fragrant Thai soup over rice, only to be pulled away before he could eat. By the time he returned, the rice had absorbed the broth and become rich and creamy. That bowl now anchors the fall menu at his first brick-and-mortar restaurant, Madeline.
“We’ve taken those familiar flavors of tom kha and turned them into a composed risotto, finished with lobster,” Cherrett says. “While still trying to capture the comfort of that bowl of rice and soup I remember.”
Named after Cherrett’s niece, five-month-old Madeline, the restaurant occupies the former Fruition space on East Sixth Avenue in Denver’s Country Club neighborhood. The chef describes the restaurant as an extension of the dinner parties he throws for friends and family, brought to life for the whole neighborhood. It complements an ambitious menu with a warm, welcoming ambiance.
“I want every dish on our menu to feel like a familiar special occasion: warm and welcoming, but still exciting,” he says.
That combination of creativity and hospitality has roots in his Jackson Hole upbringing. The son of a hotelier, Cherrett grew up around high-end hospitality while also absorbing the town’s snowboard and arts culture. Before food became his primary creative outlet, he explored drawing, origami and crocheting. He helped found his high school’s culinary club and started working in restaurants at 16, first at a breakfast burrito counter, then at a Thai restaurant.
In his early 20s, a Thai family Cherrett had worked for and grown close to in Jackson Hole invited him to visit. He joined them in Bangkok, traveled to rice paddies to meet their grandmother and ate his way from Chiang Mai’s night markets into the northern highlands. He then traveled to Japan, where he sought out small restaurants away from the usual tourist stops. The experiences deepened Cherrett’s respect for Thai and Japanese flavors and taught him to preserve what makes them distinctive, even as he interprets them in his own way.
Cherrett’s philosophy shines in the Tom Kha Lobster Risotto and another fall dish, Massaman Duck. “With this dish, I wanted to keep the flavors and key components that make massaman curry recognizable, but reinterpret them in a more refined way,” Cherrett says. “Instead of the traditional dark-meat chicken, we use duck, and rather than serving it with boiled potatoes, we make pommes dauphine stuffed with duck confit.”
The dish preserves the richness and warmth massaman diners expect, but presents those flavors in a way that feels distinctly Madeline.
Other dishes are inspired by his family life. Beet carpaccio, his father’s favorite, plays on the sweetness and saltiness of a nostalgic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Sticky toffee pudding draws on holiday meals and his sister Maureen’s favorite dessert.
“You don’t need to know that my family has halibut every Christmas to feel what that dinner feels like,” Cherrett says. “When you taste it, I want you to get that same sense of comfort, like you’re sitting at a table where someone cooked for you because you matter.”
Madeline follows years spent building toward ownership. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Cherrett worked in respected Front Range kitchens including Colt & Gray, Death & Co. and Izakaya Den. During the pandemic, he launched the food truck 22 Provisions, which grew into an Avanti Food Hall stall and eventually the bistro-style concept Eloise.
Along the way, he learned the importance of relationships with local farmers and purveyors, as well as the realities of running a business. Opening his own restaurant had once seemed like a “pipe dream,” he says. Those experiences made it attainable.
The dining room is as autobiographical as the menu. Vintage hotel keys nod to his father’s career. Artwork from Cherrett’s collection — including pieces by friends and family — hangs throughout the restaurant, while his mother, Colleen, arranges its flowers each week. Even the bathrooms sport personal details: one light and one dark, with playful mirrors, distinctive lighting and more of his personal artwork.
“I really love the bathrooms,” he says. “That was maybe my favorite part of designing the space.”
Ultimately, Cherrett wants Madeline to become the kind of neighborhood restaurant people choose for birthdays, engagements and anniversaries, then revisit because they feel known. Five years from now, he hopes the spot shows that a Denver restaurant can take its food seriously without sacrificing intimacy. More personally, Cherrett hopes neighbors will look back on the occasions they celebrated there and consider Madeline “their place.”
