All aboard! The ChopHouse coming to Denver International Airport

At Denver International Airport, the Greetings From Colorado store at Concourse A sells T-shirts from Haiti (including models that list the wrong date for Denver's founding) and souvenirs from anywhere but Colorado. But right around the corner, travelers will soon be able to get a real taste of this state:

A sign promises that a branch of the Denver ChopHouse will soon open here. The original Denver ChopHouse & Brewery, at 1735 19th Street, has been serving up steaks, pizzas, salads and seven handcrafted beers for more than a dozen years, working out of a historic railroad building in LoDo.


There are also ChopHouses in Boulder, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., but they're all part of the Louisville, Colorado-based Rock Bottom Restaurants, founded by Frank Day, the restaurateur who got his start when he opened the first Old Chicago in Boulder in 1976. Today the group owns more than a hundred restaurants -- including the Rock Bottom restaurants (one Rock Bottom is already open at Concourse C, where it brews beers on site), the Walnut Brewery, a slew of Old Chicagos and the four ChopHouses -- with another one at DIA soon to debut.

Now, if these DIA brewpubs would just sell travelers growlers of beer -- by the time they reach the concourses, they've already gone through security, so there would be no ban on acquiring liquids-- then people across the country might get a real taste of Colorado.