Excitement over Trinity Brewing Co. started to bubble among local beer connoisseurs long before the place poured its first pint in August.
Trinity seemed like an ale and lager version of fantasy football: Pick and choose the best parts of the local brew scene and put them together for a dream team. Part 1: Jason Yester, the dreadlocked genius who was brewmaster at Bristol Brewing Co. for five years, churning out one blue ribbon beer after another. Part 2: Todd Walton, former owner of Kinfolks Mountain Outfitters in Manitou, which has a tiny bar in the back serving hard-to-find artisan beers.
Put them together in a ZIP code desperately in need of a good brewpub, add environmentally friendly practices such as giving a discount to customers who ride or walk to the brewery, and top it off with a menu celebrating natural, local and organic food, and you have a restaurant deserving of all its buzz.
Every time I go, the place is packed. The mountain bikes of pedal-to-work dudes from nearby bike-partsmaker Sram crowd the rack as the dudes perch, pint-in-hand, on the patio. Inside, a row of about 30 taps lines a long, illuminated bar made of recycled glass. Vast chalkboards above display food and beer options. A long, hallwaylike file of tables leads to a back room full of comfy couches. The Grateful Dead plays on the iPod. Dreadlocked employees ferry frothy mugs of excellent stout and amber to standing gangs of after-work drinkers and those lucky enough to score a seat. Trays whisk through the crowd carrying sizzling Belgian-style fries, vegan hot wings and steaming bowls of beer-cheese soup.
It’s a lovely scene, and people clearly treasure it, but in the few months it has been open, Trinity has yet to live up to its potential. Service is clunky and uneven.

A few months ago, when local longtime New York-slice slinger Mama Trino’s Pizzeria — one of the region’s better pizza joints — moved to the gentrified SoDo block of South Tejon Street, someone must have decided the place needed to be more hip.
After all, it was opening on one of the coolest blocks in town, a stretch with happening bars and coffee shops, nightclubs and a scooter boutique. To fft in with the young, urban vibe, Mama Trino’s Pizzeria set up in a sleek, industrial-looking shop and shortened its name to Trino’s.
The menu remains unchanged. Anyone who loved Trino’s pizza, sandwiches and pasta at its old South Nevada location will find the same good stuff waiting in the new, hipper atmosphere.
Call it post-industrial, bourgeois chic: Inviting glass garage doors at the front of the shop open onto the sidewalk. Inside, stylish raw brick walls shelter long, wood benches and a scattering of tables on raw concrete floors. The huge garage doors and a New York City subway map on the wall serve as a subtle reminder that this century-old brick building was originally the garage for the city’s streetcars.
Behind the counter stands the brick oven that bakes Trino’s pizzas. Through its open mouth, you can see big gas flames dance as pies glisten in the heat.
Order by the slice ($2.39) or a whole pie ($13.89-$20.69).
Ask for a slice and, in true New York fashion, a wedge of a recently cooked pizza is tossed back in the oven for a few minutes.
What comes out is also true to the Big Apple: a thin, floppy slice.
“Maybe a little too floppy,” a friend said at a recent lunch. Even after he folded one of the big, hot slices lengthwise, the tip sagged, spilling cheese, toppings and sauce all over his plate. This pizza is best kept simple. Get too many toppings and it could fail entirely.
Trino’s takes pains to make a good pie. Sauce and dough are made from scratch every day. Most of the toppings are up to par, but some details of the operation need updating with the name.
I ordered a lunch slice that came with one topping. From a list of goodies ranging from anchovies to grilled chicken, I chose basil. I assumed, since it counted as a topping, it was sweet, fresh, anisey
— basil leaves. The slice arrived, instead, covered in the dried stuff. The toppings list could use some renovation.
The nonpizza menu relies heavily on pizza stock. An antipasto salad ($6.49) capable of feeding four, was bolstered by lettuce with black olives, ham, pepperoni, cheese and other pizza toppings. The good pastas, made when you order, seem to use sauces (white or red) found on the pizzas, too. This works because the pizzas have a good sauce.
Trino’s meatballs, whether with pasta or in a gooey sub ($5.99), are homemade, full of oregano, and more meaty than many sandwich-grade meatballs, which use ffllers such as bread crumbs.
Trino’s SoDo makeover is a hit. The cool new space is welcoming, the service is good, and the place is open until the bars close on weekends, so it makes a perfect past-midnight snack.
Pizza connoisseurs will likely never stop arguing over who makes the best New York slice in town, but Trino’s is a worthwhile stop in that ongoing debate.

The first thing a restaurant has to be is a storyteller. Whether it is through the name an owner picks, the ads that run or the façade that greets the street, a place must quickly, convincingly tell its story. What is it? What does it serve? How much does it cost? There should be intriguing clues at every step. If not, good luck getting people in the door.
That is the first problem with Metropolis, but by no means the last.
From the outside, the place a mystery: A big grayish box (formerly a video store and auction house) with drawn blinds, and a sign with a cityscape below and a rainbow above that reads “Metropolis.”
Is it a Greek place whose owners love “The Wizard of Oz”? A chic urban bistro with a Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” theme? A weird homage to Superman’s hometown specializing in Hawaiian food? We’re left to guess.
Booths line the wall. An ornate bar sits at the back. Small tables gather around a central dance fioor made of campy black, teal and yellow tiles under a big, turning disco ball. When we walked in, the otherwise empty restaurant was filled by bouncy House music.
My editor dined at Metropolis weeks before I did. He said he had a nice prime rib, decent soup and finallyfiigured out what the place was — a gay club.
He put an encouraging note on The Gazette’s dining blog saying “Maybe it’ll take up where (longtime west-side gay club) Hide & Seek left off.”
The owners saw the post and called The Gazette and talked to an editor at the Colorado Springs Independent, insisting that the place was not a gay bar but was “here for everybody.” The Independent wrote a snarky column suggesting The Gazette should get “a functioning gaydar.” But the same time, the Indy was running an announcement that the annual local Gay and Lesbian film festival would have its after party at Metropolis. Confusing.
Even part owner Jeff Chevalier is vague about the vision. “I don’t want it just to be a bar. I want it to be an experience — more upscale,” he said this week.
I’m telling you this not to argue that a place should be either gay or straight. I’m just saying if the owners and every food writer in town are confused about what it is, good luck to anyone else.
The mystery might not hurt if the place had the culinary chops, but the food ranges from OK bar fare to just plain bad.
The menu is already starting to implode under lack of business and chef turnover.
We tried to order mac and cheese from the kids menu but were told there no longer is a kids menu. I saw the breakfast menu on the back but was told breakfast was gone, too.
“I guess I’ll have the grilled ham and cheese,” my wife said.
“That’s gone, too,” the waiter shrugged.
So we waltzed through the remaining menu ordering a Philly cheese steak ($7.75), a guacamole burger ($8.95), French onion soup with salad ($7.75), bacon-wrapped jalapeños ($5.95) and chicken parmesan ($13).
Some things were better than others. None was worth coming back for. The burger with fresh guacamole packed with onions, and the Philly — both on massive French bread halves — were good enough. The French onion soup was no La Baguette, but it wasn’t bad. And the jalapeños were freshly made, not just food service freezer-to-fryer numbers. But from there, things went downhill.
The salad ($6.50), which was supposed to come with mixed greens, instead offered aging iceberg — and so little of it that it felt as if it were made by a lettuceaverse 8-year-old. The chicken sat on a bed of fettuccine, topped with a red sauce dominated by dried oregano.
Chevalier, who worked for years at the Penrose Room, says he plans big changes. He’s going to scrap the whole menu next month and start serving haute cuisine with table-side Caesar salad and Chateaubriand. He also has live music and dinner theater in the works. The first show’s theme is the Titanic. Let’s hope it isn’t a metaphor for the new menu.