First look: Root Down at DIA opens Monday (and the soaring space is incredible)

Justin Cucci, perhaps more than any chef-restaurateur in this city, is full of surprises. Who would have thought, for example, that the New York native whose prominent rise to fame in Denver was the result of two citified restaurants in the hip Highland ‘hood, would ever consider opening a restaurant — in this case, Root Down — at Denver International Airport, an airport that until quite recently was smack-dab in the middle of nowhere? Hell, even Cucci is surprised. “When I was asked to open a Root Down at DIA, I thought it was a terrible idea,” he says. But the more he thought about the potential of being on a national stage, the more he was swayed toward the unthinkable. “After contemplating it, I thought it was an amazing idea — that this was the new frontier and that people deserve to get great food in a cool setting at an airport.”

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