The winds of change have reshaped Cosmo Bar and Dining, which reopened last week as Eolus Bar and Dining after the restaurant’s purchase by a pair of former employees.
Executive Chef Chris Crowl and dining room manager James Allred bought the business Nov. 4 from Chad Scothorn of Telluride, who started the 919 Main Ave. restaurant and a sister restaurant, Cosmopolitan in Telluride. Crowl and Allred raised money from local investors to complete the purchase.
Eolus opened Thursday to a packed house.
“People are so excited to be able to come back in, and so excited to be there with us,” Crowl said Tuesday.
Diners will find many of their old favorites on the menu.
“I’m keeping some classic dishes that I’ve been cooking for the past seven years, but we’ve changed some, and we’ll be changing more,” he said.
The vast majority of Cosmo’s staff members weathered the ownership change and is staying on at Eolus.
“I have reassembled my entire kitchen crew, and the majority of the front-of-the-house staff is back as well,” Crowl said.
“Our restaurant family is back in action.”
Cosmo opened in 2007 with Crowl serving as the founding executive chef; Allred joined as dining room manager in 2010.
Crowl and Allred’s move to buy the restaurant came after the pair battled Scothorn over the restaurant’s direction, culminating in the Durango pair’s firing in May. The restaurant’s staff members walked out in support of Crowl and Allred, but the chef and dining room manager remained out of work until buying the restaurant from Scothorn.
“I wish them luck,” Scothorn said when reached last week. “They own the restaurant, and I don’t.”
The building at 919 Main Ave. is owned by OWB, a limited-liability company made up of Durango investors.
“We’re happy to have James and Chris in there,” said John Wells, who is part of the LLC and owns the real-estate brokerage The Wells Group. “They did a great job before, They’re local. They’re hard workers.”
Eolus Bar and Dining is named for Mount Eolus, the tallest of the three 14,000-foot peaks that towers over Chicago Basin in the Weminuche Wilderness Area north of Durango.
According to the book Colorado Place Names, the peak was first mentioned in the Hayden Survey of 1874 as Mount Aeolus – the Greek god of the winds. The current spelling was used by the 1878 Wheeler survey.
cslothower@durangoherald.com
