Cherry Creek's Rainforest Cafe Abandons Denver

DENVER-If you don’t believe it’s a restaurant jungle out there, consider this: Houston-based Landry’s Seafood Restaurants Inc. has given the ax to the Rainforest Café in the upscale Cherry Creek shopping center.

Rainforest Café, with much hoopla, had opened in Bloomfield Hills, MI-based Taubman Co.’s upscale mall less than three years ago. The $6.5-million, 24,000-sf eatery had been one of Denver’s most popular when it first opened. Patrons often had a two-hour wait to be seated in order to eat food amid animated animal statues, live bird shows and a large archway aquarium. In recent months, it has still drawn moderate crowds. But restaurant reviewers have not been kind to it, saying it is expensive and serves mediocre food.

Since buying the debt-laden chain almost two months ago, Landry’s also has closed Rain Forest Cafes in Toronto and New Jersey in order to focus on areas with a lot of tourists, such as Disney World in Orlando, FL. The first Rainforest Café had opened in 1994 inside of the massive Mall of Americas near Minneapolis.

Cherry Creek officials say they may lease the space to another restaurant, or they make break it up to handle several tenants. Rainforest has donated its furniture and fixtures, including the fish to Colorado’s Ocean Journey and the birds to the Denver Zoo.