Former Polis chief of staff opens restaurant and bar in Lyons

A town frequented by visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park has a new restaurant courtesy of a former senior aide to the governor who wanted to preserve a piece of local history.

The Lyons Locale opened a month ago in a property off Main Street, at 442 High St., Lyons, next to bakery Moxie Bread Co. Moxie takes care of breakfast and lunch, while the Lyons Locale opens at noon on weekends and caters to the cheese-and-wine crowd.

The restaurant business is new to Lisa Kaufmann Wicker, whose previous career included, most notably, a long-serving stint as the chief of staff to Gov. Jared Polis. Wicker and her family moved to Lyons after she and Polis toured the area following the September floods of 2013, the worst of which had swept through the town.

In 2022, after leaving the post at the Capitol, she and her husband, Ryan Wicker, focused their attention on the High Street property. Known as “Lyons’ front porch,” she claimed, the lot was a point of contact for locals during the floods.

“It sat on the market for quite a while, and we were just worried about it being lost as a community asset,” she said.

Moxie relocated to one of its two units in April of 2023. The Wickers, together with mixologist and Lyons resident Amanda Engelhorn, started their venture after Spanish restaurant Farra closed and vacated the second unit this summer.

Engelhorn’s cocktails range from $11 to $14. Wines from South America, Europe and California are available by the glass or bottle. Cheese and meat boards ($15 to $24) are meant to be shared; the menu also has quiches, a turkey sandwich, kale salad and chocolate and cheese.

“There’s not a lot of feminine spaces in Lyons, and this is a chance for us to have somewhere that moms can come and hang out and have a nice glass of wine and bring kids,” said Engelhorn, who also manages the local tasting room at Spirit Hound Distillers.

Lyons Locale opens Thursdays and Fridays at 4 p.m.

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