Welcome to #TBT, or Throwback Thursdays, where we revisit some of the Denver metro area’s tried and true restaurants that have become institutions. Over time, these places have weathered the shifts in our city’s restaurant landscape. For example, Columbine Steak House & Lounge, an institution that’s been favored by locals for decades. As flashy newcomers enter and exit, these restaurants, bars, and cafes remain, though sometimes get overlooked by the fickle short-term attention span of a social media-driven obsession with the new and the now.
It’s a balmy spring evening in Denver, and sunlight is streaming through the windows overlooking the bar at Columbine Steak House and Lounge, bright enough to make you wince. The bartender, Lisa, apologizes as she whips up a Pineapple Upside-Down Cake for another customer (vanilla vodka, pineapple juice, grenadine) about the warped blinds that won’t close. But the jukebox beneath them still works, playing an upbeat country tune, and so does the ATM machine on the far wall, which is key, because this joint is proudly cash-only, as it has been since it opened in 1961.
Granted, the lounge itself didn’t exist in 1961. Back then, owner Anthony Apergis leased this half of Columbine’s two-room space to Triangle Billiards, which sold pool tables, while he served up hand-cut steaks at the counter in the adjoining half for $1.25 a pop. Today, they’ll run you closer to $30. But you’ll order them at the same counter and eat them at the same marble tables his very first customers did.
Unless, that is, you prefer to unwind over an alcoholic beverage, in which case you’ll grab a barstool or a booth in said lounge, which finally opened in 1968. Lisa wasn’t in the picture yet, but close enough—she’s been working here for 29 years, one of many employees whom “we consider family,” in the words of Anthony’s daughter, Irene Apergis, who now operates Columbine with her brother, Socrates. Which brings us to the origin story of this classic “working man’s restaurant,” as Socrates calls it.
A Bit of History
One of eight children—two boys, six girls—in the Apergis family, Anthony grew up in Greece before his uncle, also named Socrates, and aunt Liberty brought him from the old country to Denver to live with them in 1951. Like so many immigrants before and after him, he got straight to work. He was a dishwasher and a cab driver; he briefly held a job at The Brown Palace…