L'Atelier

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1739 Pearl St. Boulder, CO 80302

303-442-7233

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2 User reviews Write A Review

Westword
Recommended
Best Fusion Menu
Award Winner 2009

Cuisine(s): European Other, French, Seafood

Hours: Sat 5:30pm-10pm, Fri 11:30am-10pm, Sun 5:30pm-9pm, Mon-Thu 11:30am-9:30pm

Price: $$, $$$, $$$$
Payment Types: MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, cash, check

Features: Patio/Sidewalk Dining, Takeout, Private Party, Kid Friendly

Serving: Dinner, Lunch
Alcohol: Full bar

Reservations: Accepted, Highly Recommended, Required for Large Parties

Parking: Street

Description

Radek Cerny, the man behind such legendary hot spots as Papillon Cafe and Radex, has come back from the brink with L'Atelier. The place is almost ludicrous in its excesses, with giant plates, fawning service and bright, spartan decor, but what saves it from going totally over the edge is the firm hand with which Cerny controls his kitchen. Everything here is about high-concept, high-priced, high-end food. Just don't forget your sense of humor, and don't forget to make reservations.

2009 | Best Fusion Menu

Radek Cerny has never been a "normal" chef. He's always been the kind of guy who pushes borders and boundaries for his own amusement -- for the thrill of hanging himself out there on the edge just to see what will happen. At L'Atelier, his current culinary workshop, he's free to be as weird as he wants to be. And for just $59, you, too, can go to the wall with Cerny. That's the price of his degustation menu -- an eight-course, greatest-hits collection of whatever the kitchen is... More »
2008 | Best Taste of the Future

Chef Radek Cerny has never been an easy guy to pin down. In his earliest days in Colorado, he was just another French-trained classical chef who had a few weird tricks with potatoes and a string of gigs that pointed up those talents. But lately he's been venturing down some pretty strange culinary avenues and coming back with absolutely brilliant dishes, including lobster in potato foam and duck rillettes with potato Napoleon. He can do the classics (lobster meunière), the modern... More »
2007 | Best Fusion Menu

Frozen oils, liquid potatoes, horseradish foam -- chef Radek Cerny's latest run of menus at L'Atelier haven't even been fusion so much as Venusian, heavily influenced by the work of Ferran Adria at El Bulli and running the ragged outer edge between border-jumping French/ Spanish/American/Asian cuisines and the flummery of ultra-modern gas-and-lasers molecular gastronomy. Sure, it's fusion -- but the menu is so much more, encompassing everything from international sashimi and grits to salmon... More »
2006 | BEST BRAINS

Sweetbreads -- the thymus and hypothalamus glands taken from the base of a fresh calf's brain -- are an acquired taste. But there's no better place to acquire that taste than at L'Atelier, where chef Radek Cerny nightly works his freakish magic on some of the least appetizing bits of a whole variety of animals. Here the sweetbreads are seared crisp and served along with Cerny's trademark potatoes -- mashed spuds so intensely packed with butter and cream that he might just as well sculpt them... More »
2005 | Best Big Plates

L'Atelier chef/owner Radek Cerny is known for a lot of things. He was one of our biggest celebrity chefs in the days before the phrase "celebrity chef" became more of an insult than a tribute. His personal style of cuisine -- the layered sauces, the potato tuilles, the strange juxtapositions of worldly ingredients in predominantly French preparations -- was immediately recognizable to anyone who came within a hundred yards of one of his menus. And when things started going badly for him a... More »
2004 | Best Fried Organ Parts

Radek Cerny -- chef, owner and sole motivating force behind the unbelievable L'Atelier -- never does anything small, never does anything simply. His restaurant is a riot of strangeness and color, and his giant plates would be a joke if it weren't for the fantastic stuff that comes on them. Of particular note are his sweetbreads, which arrive in a classic Cerny potato-starch tuile, floored with whipped Yukon Golds, on a plate done up like a Nagel print from the '80's -- triangles of black and... More »
2004 | Best Menu

The measure of a great menu is the way it makes you consider the future. How long can I sit here eating before I'm kicked out How much of this can I try before I burst And how long before I can afford to come back At L'Atelier, the answers to those questions are, in order: not long, not enough, and not soon enough. Everything on chef Radek Cerny's wonderland board of fare is an amazing and singular creation -- sometimes derivative, often strange, always delicious. The appetizer list... More »

Bolder in Boulder

By Jason Sheehan | Thu, December 13, 2007

I recently spent an afternoon at the University of Colorado at Boulder, boring the pants off an entire classroom of aspiring food writers with tales of my misfit adventures. But when their questions inevitably turned to how best to get into the fo... More »
Circus Maximus

By Jason Sheehan | Thu, September 04, 2003

In fourteen syllables, the sign out front -- a small thing, almost understated, the color of wet slate -- manages to capture the kind of arrogance, the brash hubris, that would be celebrated in Los Angeles or Vegas with spotlights and names spelle... More »

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westwordbestof | Denver, CO | 102 Reviews

| Wed, May 6, 2009

Radek Cerny has never been a "normal" chef. He's always been the kind of guy who pushes borders and boundaries for his own amusement � for the thrill of hanging himself out there on the edge just to see what will happen. At L'Atelier, his current culinary workshop, he's free to be as weird as he wants to be. And for just $59, you, too, can go to the wall with Cerny. That's the price of his degustation menu � an eight-course, greatest-hits collection of whatever the kitchen is playing with at the moment. There are tartares on the degustation menu, little blips of French and Italian and Japanese and American technique, as well as escargot with potato foam. (Cerny has long been fascinated with doing unusual thing to and with potatoes). This is a man who's never seen a rule he didn't want to break or a border that didn't deserve crossing � and the results can be delicious.
Like (0) Dislike (0)

DJuco | Denver, CO | 1 Reviews

| Sat, April 18, 2009

Best food & service in Boulder! I eat at L'Atelier a few times a year and I have never had a bad experience.

Main Menu

Starters

$7.50

Living Bibb Tomato

$6.50

Soup Of The Moment

$10.00

Escargot With Potato Foam

$14.00

Hand Cut Tuna Tartare
with orange

$12.00

Bibb Lettuce
real buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes

$12.00

Moules Rustica
with thai basil, galangal and pinot gris

$14.00

Scottish Smoked Salmon
with horseradish foam

$12.00

Lobster Ravioli
with beurre blanc

$12.00

Charbroiled Shrimp Louis

Seconds

$22.00

Duck And Duck

$20.00

Lobster Ravioli
with beurre blanc

$22.00

Chicken Thermidor
with artichoke and goat cheese

$22.00

Veal Scaloppini
with herbs, marsala and asparagus

$26.00

Rack Of Lamb
with honey mustard rosemary crust

$26.00

Kobe Ribeye
with hot mayonnaise

$20.00

Pork Saltimbocca
with sage

$26.00

Filet Mignon Dijonnaise

$29.00

Maine Lobster Meuniere

$22.00

Big Eye Tuna Asiatique

$29.00

Veal Chop
with mushroom ragout

Looking for another city?

L'Atelier

1739 Pearl St. Boulder, CO 80302

303-442-7233

Description

2009 | Best Fusion Menu

2008 | Best Taste of the Future

2007 | Best Fusion Menu

2006 | BEST BRAINS

2005 | Best Big Plates

2004 | Best Fried Organ Parts

2004 | Best Menu

Bolder in Boulder

By Jason Sheehan | Thu, December 13, 2007

Circus Maximus

By Jason Sheehan | Thu, September 04, 2003

westwordbestof | Denver, CO | 102 Reviews

DJuco | Denver, CO | 1 Reviews

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