There’s a fresh new restaurant downtown with deep roots and local ties in the Colorado Springs dining scene. Café Madro brings new life to the long-vacant space formerly occupied by the much-loved Nosh. Its leadership team is a reunion of culinary veterans who originally met in the Westside era of Garden of the Gods Gourmet. The resulting Café Madro is a chef-driven blend of creative American comfort food and global flavors made from locally-sourced ingredients whenever possible.
“Our team spent many months researching options, exploring ideas and honing our vision for Café Madro. The word ‘Madro’ captures the essence of our vision perfectly — warm hospitality, scratch kitchen cuisine, to be shared with community in a peaceful, restorative setting,” says Lynn Schlemeyer, owner and founder of Café Madro, “When we settled on our location in downtown at Plaza of the Rockies, we knew we had found the right spot and partner to live out our vision and pursue our culinary dreams.”
A Reunion of Old Friends
Schlemeyer first met Executive Chef Larissa Vendola and Associate Executive Chef Amy Fairbanks in the early 2010s. Schlemeyer owned Garden of the Gods Gourmet from 2011 to 2013. She sold to restaurateur Mitch Yellen but stayed on as part of the team until 2015, then left the restaurant industry and the Springs for a decade.
Schlemeyer returned and reunited with Vendola and Fairbanks in early 2025. They had always loved working together and wanted to find a way to do it again. Schlemeyer says they didn’t know that would end up being a restaurant.
“It was like, my gosh, what could we do together that we feel like we would want to go out and enjoy in this city? What kind of food would I want to go sit down and enjoy?” Fairbanks says.
The ground-floor space at Plaza of the Rockies had sat empty since the Blue Star Group’s Nosh closed in 2017. Schlemeyer says the space and its owners, Norwood Development Group, were a perfect fit.
“With this space and with this project, the doors just kept opening,” Schlemeyer says. “So then it was like, all right, we’re all in.”
Elevated Hospitality
The name Madro (pronounced MAH-dro) brings together the Danish words mad, meaning food, and ro, meaning peace or calm. The environment they have created captures that spirit. High ceilings and large, arched windows provide an airy feel bathed in natural light. Furnishings feature light wood, leather accents, a marble bar, organic wallpaper prints and a soothing sage palette. Many of the windows frame the stately Pioneers Museum next door, and a broad, south-facing patio should offer a vibrant option in warm weather.
With the addition of the experienced Front of the House Manager Laura Cookson, Schlemeyer, Vendola and Fairbanks have created a relaxed, elevated atmosphere where guests can slow down, connect and enjoy time around the table, even if that’s during a limited lunch hour for the downtown lunch crowd. At all hours of the day, the members of the Café Madro team seem to genuinely want to serve guests with thoughtful food and genuine hospitality.
“Hospitality is something that’s always been near and dear to all of our hearts. I think it’s a gift. Some people have it, and they will just provide hospitality through and through,” Fairbanks says. “It’s so fun to create a space for people to celebrate, to create a space for people to just have a moment. So much happens over a meal. It’s unifying. It’s so many things.”
What’s on the Menu?
That same sense of hospitality is reflected in the menus too.
“It stems genuinely from the heart and from food that we like to eat,” Vendola says about creating the menus.”We were trying to think, ‘If we were being served, what would we want?’ With all the flavors and different types of people in mind, it was from the heart, this is what we want to eat. Let’s serve it to people and make them feel like they’re part of our family.”
Fairbanks offers the Hot Colorado Beef sandwich and the Pepper Passion salad as examples.
“If I was going to go to the trouble to make the best sandwich I could make, what would it be? Or the best salad?” she says about the team’s motivation.
Both of those results showcase hints of the chefs’ histories and preferences.
“I’m born and raised in Hawaii, so anytime I can sneak passionfruit into something, I will because it’s one of my favorite fruity flavor profiles,” Fairbanks says.
“Being from Colorado, I love green chiles,” Vendola says.
There’s a Pueblo green chile giardiniera topping copious and supremely tender Prime-graded chuck roast from PBJ Cattle in Divide on the Hot Colorado Beef sandwich. It’s nested on a baguette from local Delicias Bakery that is toasted with provolone. Vendola says it’s their Colorado riff on a Chicago beef sandwich. It’s sure to be a favorite.
Green chile giardiniera shows up on the Mesa Chicken as well. That dish strikes a satisfyingly fresh balance between salad and entree as it stacks quinoa, arugula, artichoke hearts and pecorino ribbons high on top of a thin chicken breast.
The passionfruit vinaigrette really sings on the Pepper Passion salad, bringing just the right sweet and acidic kiss to the butter and romaine lettuces, yellow bell pepper, blueberries and peppered chèvre crusted with macadamia nuts.
Other menu highlights include the “French” Tomato Basil soup. The rustic tomato basil soup features a French onion soup-style finish with roasted garlic toast melted beneath aged provolone and Grana Padano cheeses. The result is both hearty and heartwarming, especially on a crisp, cold day. “It’s almost like a little mini grilled cheese on top of your tomato basil soup,” Vendola says.
All the menu options we sampled reflect a similar blend of familiar yet creative, local and global. The Sweet Corn Shrimp Fritter starter takes an Asian-inspired approach rather than a classic Southern deep-fried treatment. “It’s pan-fried with a lot of light, bright flavors, and then it’s paired with a scallion aioli,” Fairbanks says.
The Soy-Yaki Trout on the dinner menu gives Rocky Mountain trout a Pacific Rim treatment. It is broiled with a soy aioli to a caramelized finish and served with rice and an Okinawan sweet potato and vegetable medley.
The dinner menu reflects a step up in the breadth and prices of its entrees. Schlemeyer says it’s not fine dining but “finer dining” than casual fare.
For Vendola and Fairbanks, it’s important to start with fresh and local ingredients and let them shine on their own.
“We try to kind of feature good local products that make our region unique,” Vendola says. “If you have some really good ingredients, you don’t have to do much to them. You just start there and let them showcase themselves like the beef, like the bread, like the green chiles. We always have a little bit of that approach that doing less is usually more.”
Explore Café Madro
Café Madro soft-opened Nov. 2 for coffee and lunch, and it will expand to full all-day service, including dinner and happy hour on Nov. 9. The coffee bar opens at 8 a.m., serving a full menu of espresso drinks, teas and pastries. Its beans are roasted by the local Colorado Coffee Merchants.
Lunch service begins at 11 a.m. each day. Happy hour runs Monday through Saturday, 3-6 p.m. with featured specials, and dinner service runs Wednesday through Saturday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. beginning Nov. 11. blending into late-afternoon happy hour, then dinner. The restaurant is open until 9 p.m. It is closed all day Sunday. The restaurant will validate two hours of parking in the Plaza of the Rockies parking lot.
Café Madro will serve its first weekend lunch this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with a special offer of a free dessert (choice of carrot cake or ganache brownie with vanilla bean ice cream) with the purchase of an entrée.
Get details and explore menus at cafemadro.com.
