Most of this year's changes along South Broadway came from new operators moving into old food-and-drink spaces. A dumpling house now fills a former restaurant, a cantina holds the bar Gennaro's opened in 1951, and a bakery is moving into a bakery. A new restaurant license has been filed for the room Imperial Chinese held for almost 30 years. If your sense of the strip is a year old, the buildings are still where you remember them. The names on them changed.
There's a second pattern under the first. The businesses that left had some of the longest runs on the corridor. The ones moving in are mostly small operators, and several already had a following somewhere else in the metro.
Five addresses, north to south
This is the 2026 version of the walk, from 421 S. Broadway down to the Englewood side of Yale.
| Address | Before | Now | Status as of late October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 421 S. Broadway | Imperial Chinese, here almost 30 years | License filed under the trade name Oriente | Pending |
| 1886 S. Broadway | Azucar Bakery | Eternal Flavors Bakery, moving from Bear Valley | Aimed to reopen by mid-October; reopening not yet announced |
| 2160 S. Broadway | Bacon Social House | King Dumpling II | Open since June 29 |
| 2598 S. Broadway | Gennaro's Bar & Lounge, opened 1951 | Santana's Cantina | Open since summer |
| 2807 S. Broadway, Englewood | None of the above | Good Girl Cafe and Bookstore | Open since Sept. 13 |
Three of the five have opened. One set a mid-October target but hasn't announced its reopening. One is still a filing. The rest of this post takes them in order, from the most settled to the least.
2598 S. Broadway: the longest run ends, and the room stays a bar
Gennaro's has the deepest roots of anything that changed this year. Westword's March 2025 report traces it back to Joe Gennaro, who opened Gennaro's Bar and Lounge on South Broadway in 1951. His son Leonard ran it for decades, and in 2008 he sold it to Jon Cook, who, the outlet noted, owns many other properties up and down the strip. After a temporary closure in January 2024, a group of friends brought it back with a new menu that May. The revival was short-lived, and Westword reported the doors locked again in March 2025.
That's roughly 74 years at one address, and the room didn't stay empty long. Westword's July 2026 roundup lists Santana's Cantina at 2598 S. Broadway among the month's openings. The Italian lounge is gone. The bar stool at that corner of Broadway still exists. The handoff that took the longest to happen ended up keeping the space closest to what it was.
2160 S. Broadway: a suburban favorite takes a city storefront
King Dumpling II opened June 29 in the former Bacon Social House space. Westword's first look says the original King Dumpling opened in Louisville about two years earlier. Owner Yuki Jiang told the outlet she spent more than a year looking for a Denver location. Jiang and Linda Mai run the South Broadway location.
That year-long search fits this year's pattern. A growing operator wanted a foothold on this strip and waited for an existing restaurant room to open up. The menu centers on potstickers, wontons and baos made fresh every day, with wrapper dough hand-rolled in-house. Westword pointed to the black truffle soup dumplings, dyed with squid ink, and the spicy wontons. It also said the Szechuan Dandan Noodles were the better noodle order than the pork fried noodles.
For planning purposes, King Dumpling II is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Those hours make it one of the easier weeknight dinner options on this stretch.
1886 S. Broadway: a bakery replaces a bakery
Azucar Bakery appears on Westword's list of July 2026 closures. Its space went to a bakery with a long local history of its own. Westword reported on Oct. 2 that Eternal Flavors Bakery closed its Bear Valley shop on Sept. 27 to move into the former Azucar space and hoped to reopen by mid-October.
Eternal Flavors isn't new to the trade. A 2022 WhatNow profile reported that founder Melchor Ocampo spent nearly three decades as head baker at The Market. It called the bakery's "Spring Fling" its most popular cake: a zucchini cake with cream-cheese frosting and fresh fruit inside and on top.
Of the five changes, this is the clearest example of the strip keeping its uses. The address had a bakery in June and is set to have a bakery again this fall, run by people who already had customers across town. Mid-October was the bakery's own target, and its most recent public posts pointed to that window. Before you walk over for a cake, check the bakery's social accounts to make sure the doors are open.
421 S. Broadway: the oldest Chinese restaurant on the strip, and a filing
The northernmost change is still the least settled. In April, Westword reported that Imperial Chinese had closed abruptly. The restaurant opened at 1 Broadway in 1985 and later moved south to 421 S. Broadway, where it spent almost 30 years.
Six months later, Westword's Oct. 2 update found Colorado Secretary of State records listing the location under a business called Sunny Eats LLC. The company had also filed for a liquor and food license under the trade name Oriente. The outlet noted it was unclear whether Oriente would be the restaurant's public name or only a business name. So for now, this address shows only the first step of a handoff. The paperwork points to another restaurant in a room that has held one for decades, but no opening date or concept has been announced.
One small footnote connects both ends of Imperial's history. Westword's August 2026 roundup lists Go Fish Sushi as reopening at 1 Broadway, the same address where Imperial got its start.
2807 S. Broadway: the walk now crosses into Englewood
The newest opening on the walk sits just past the Denver line. Good Girl Cafe and Bookstore opened Sept. 13 at 2807 S. Broadway, according to Shelf Awareness, which headlined its story as a debut after a delay. Westword's June preview had expected a July opening. The concept pairs a romance-only bookstore with a cafe that serves drinks inspired by romance tropes. Founder and owner Meg Garcia-Jahrman is named on the shop's About page.
The shop lists its address as Englewood. That matters if you think of "South Broadway" as stopping at Yale. Westword's September roundup logged movement farther down the Englewood stretch too, with Western Sky Bar & Taproom at 4361 S. Broadway on the month's closure list. The same turnover is happening on both sides of the city line.
Per the shop's current site, Good Girl is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday. It's closed Mondays. The June preview had listed 7 a.m. starts, so morning regulars should go by the posted 9 a.m. opening.
What the handoffs add up to on an ordinary week
Put the five addresses together and you get a practical picture of the strip heading into November:
- Open for dinner: King Dumpling II at 2160 and Santana's Cantina at 2598, both in rooms that served food or drinks before.
- Open for a daytime stop: Good Girl Cafe and Bookstore at 2807, on the Englewood side, closed Mondays.
- Check before you go: Eternal Flavors at 1886, which was aiming to reopen in mid-October.
- Still a filing: Oriente at 421, the former Imperial Chinese.
The next update on this stretch will come from 421 S. Broadway, once Sunny Eats LLC announces what Oriente will be and when it opens.
If you live near South Broadway and these changes have you curious about what your own address is worth, REBL Home Team keeps track of this corridor block by block, the same way this walk does. See your home's value now, and we'll tell you how the activity around your street figures into it.
