In our series, Place at the Table, we look at diasporic enclaves around the world through their cuisines—and the people who, in trying to recreate a taste of home, have forged exciting food scenes that invite others in.
Step into the always-buzzy Hop Alley in Five Points, Denver, and you’ll be hit with the hubbub of lively table conversation and sizzling woks in the kitchen. Most tables have a plate of la zi ji, a signature dish in which chicken thighs are battered and fried to an almost shattering crispiness, and arrive covered in dried, crushed Chinese chilis, Sichuan pepper, and Ichimi Togarashi. Gai lan is another favorite—a snappy vegetable stir-fry flavored with oyster sauce and shallots, and accented by woodfired smoke and schmalz. Then there’s the shrimp toast, a whipped mixture of shrimp and chicken atop pan de mie, that’s zigged with a garlic-ginger tiger vinaigrette, then zagged with mustard gastrique.
The menu at Hop Alley, a Michelin Bib Gourmand awardee, is reflective of a cuisine that calls back to certain Chinese classics, but embellishes them with unexpected ingredients and techniques. It also speaks to a greater trend in Denver at the moment, as new Chinese restaurants pop up and flourish—and a rediscovery of the community’s heritage that reaches deep into the city’s past.
Hop Alley chef-owner Tommy Lee embellishes Chinese classics with global techniques at his Denver restaurant.
Jimena Peck/Hop Alley
The sound of sizzling woks and lively conversation surround tables heaving with spicy dishes at Hop Alley.
Jimena Peck/Hop Alley
Completion of the Transcontinental Railroad to the north and gold and silver mining in Colorado drew Chinese people to the city of Denver in the late 1800s, but redlining forced those laborers into what’s now known as LoDo, or Lower Downtown. The district was degradingly known as Hop Alley, or the alley in which customers, who were often white, could get “hopped up” on opium, place bets, visit brothels, get their laundry done, and enjoy Chinese food. When looking for a name for his restaurant, Lee uncovered this long-buried history. “Hop Alley is the perfect name because it means something to Denver, even if at one point it was derogatory,” says Lee, whose cooking was influenced by frequent visits to Hong Kong, where his parents emigrated from, and his dad’s knack for making Cantonese food at home. “As a Chinese American, to reclaim it as something positive is a good approach. My hope is that with this restaurant, I can educate Denver about this history.”
Today, there are no traces of that former Chinatown. Anti-Chinese sentiments led to a race riot on October 1, 1880 in which 28-year-old Look Young was lynched. The riot was used as evidence to “prove” the Chinese were violent, ultimately leading to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, preventing further immigration of Chinese people to America. Later on, the city demolished Chinatown in waves during the 1940s and 1960s, declaring the district “unsafe and unsanitary,” a result of racist stereotypes, and displaced many who called it home. The Chinese American community became dispersed throughout other parts of Denver, and like other parts of the US, began to see an increase only after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Unfortunately, gentrification in the 1990s—some of which was caused by the building of Coors Stadium—completely erased any trace of the old Chinatown.
