No matter where they lived, Quincy Cherrett and Maureen Scott stuck close together.
Following their father, a high-ranking executive with Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, they moved from city to city, checking into suites in Dallas, Austin and Jackson, Wyo., before coming of age and landing, one not long after the other, in Denver.
Their latest move is a professional one, yet all the more personal because of it. The brother-sister team opened Madeline, a contemporary American restaurant, earlier this year in a historic district of Denver, 1313 E. 6th Ave.. Cherrett is co-owner and chef, and named the new restaurant after Scott’s newborn daughter.
The building’s last tenant was Fruition Restaurant, a crown jewel of Denver’s dining scene that lasted nearly two decades on the avenue. The siblings, along with Madeline’s general manager, Bryan Trott, said they have found a neighborhood that’s warm, welcoming and slightly confused about who they are. Some diners have even referred to Madeline as a “remodel” or “extension” of Fruition, they said.
It is neither. Though Fruition closed more than a year ago (and was remodeled beforehand, Cherrett said), that restaurant cast a long shadow that has taken a while to recede, Madeline’s team has found.
“There’s a lot of pressure… just for what it used to be,” Cherrett said. “I would say I’m comfortable with it.”
So are Trott and Scott, who count on Cherrett’s leadership and talents in the kitchen to make Madeline a name in its own right.
“Every chef’s dream is to have that small, local restaurant where you can kind of experiment, have fun and express yourself,” the 37-year-old chef said. That’s the kind of “small elegance,” as he called it, that chef Alex Seidel channeled years ago with Fruition, earning him accolades from customers and the restaurant industry along the way.
What better place to envision that dream?
‘You need to grow up’
Cherrett spent much of his time in Jackson with friends, skateboarding, snowboarding, hanging at bars, taking it easy, he said.
His sister saw an artistic and creative person in him. They’d host house parties in high school when their parents were out of town, she recalled. The beer? PBR. The snacks? A pork tenderloin meal prepared by Cherrett.
“It was still a high-school party, but it had this crazy food element to it,” Scott, 34, said.
She encouraged him to leave Jackson and join her in Denver, where she worked in packaged-goods branding and is now a therapist.
“My sister literally called me and was like, ‘What are you doing with your life? You need to grow up,’” Cherrett said.
His first gig in town was at the now-shuttered Colt & Gray, a “nose-to-tail, farm-to-table restaurant,” he said. He learned to butcher whole lambs and pigs. “We would even do pig brains,” he said.
He’d later work at Sushi Den and Izakaya Den, premier destinations for Japanese cuisine. He struck out on his own at Avanti Food & Beverage in the Highland neighborhood, running a sandwich stand called 22 Provisions during the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last year, he flipped that shop into a stand serving high-class American cuisine. He named it Eloise after his sister’s favorite children’s book. (Like them, the titular character lived in a hotel.)
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Eloise was short-lived, though — another restaurant now bears the same name on Tennyson Street — but its dishes inform part of the menu at Madeline. The steak frites with chimichurri is translated from there. Pastas also made the move; currently, they are spring lamb agnolotti and pasta pomodoro with house-made bucatini.
The other major inspiration for Madeline’s dishes is Asian cuisine. Cherrett picked up techniques working at a Thai restaurant in Wyoming, going so far as to backpack across Thailand and stay with the owner’s family in Bangkok, he said.
A scallop plate is prepared with a puree of white miso and celery root, and pears pickled in jasmine tea. Scott’s favorite dish on the menu is the halibut her brother makes with green curry.
Cherrett tapped his sister’s past experience in project management to get Madeline off the ground. She considered it an honor to move into the former Fruition Restaurant, where she once shared a meal with the parents of her then-boyfriend, now husband. It’s pressure, but “not a bad kind of pressure,” she said.
“It just doesn’t make me nervous because this is something our family has always dreamt of for him,” Scott said. “There was never a question that he couldn’t do it.”
Getting to know the neighborhood
Day by day, month by month, Cherrett and his team are getting to know their neighbors. Some longtime residents who remember Fruition’s heyday have even popped by before service to say hello. He and Trott field anybody’s initial misconceptions about Madeline and what remains of Fruition.
It doesn’t help that a tall sign listing the names of businesses on the block still said “Fruition Restaurant” as of late June. The city gave its proposal added scrutiny because of the district’s historic status, but recently allowed Madeline permission to change the name, Cherrett said. They also finally affixed a door sign above the restaurant’s front entrance.
“Everybody tells you, ‘We used to dine at Fruition all the time,’” Trott said. “And when one of those people says this was a fantastic meal, that is very reassuring.”
The pressure doesn’t faze Trott as much as it did at past jobs, including at the white-hot Alma Fonda Fina under Kasie and Johnny Curiel. Back then, he would feel the weight of bad reviews or hasty customers. They were reason enough to leave the industry for a brief period — until he got the call from Cherrett.
“I learned the hard way that a guest not understanding what we’re doing… that’s an opinion and it’s not a personal affront on me or us,” Trott, 36, said. “I can do my best to curate an experience, but if I missed, or it wasn’t for them, that’s OK. It doesn’t make me or what we’re doing here any lesser.”
No strangers to nomadic life, Scott and Cherrett have adorned the restaurant with symbols of home, including artwork made by Cherrett’s friends.
A fixture completely original to Madeline rests between the restrooms. It’s a wooden board with keys dangling from hooks, designed by architect Kevin Nguyen to commemorate their old suite life.
This time, they’re checking in on their own terms.
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