“Imagine this, right? There’s a fork in the road where down one road is like — how would I explain this,” Ranjit Brar muses for a moment. “Dead trees. You see rocks, or a road that’s potholes. It’s just horrible.” 

The other road in the scenario looks beautiful, Brar says, but seemed “so far-fetched” that for years, he didn’t choose it. 

Instead, he found himself selling drugs, stealing cars, committing identity theft, anything — just to buy more heroin or pay for a place to sleep at night. He’d catch charges, post bail, skip town to the next county. 

“It’s easier to stay in something that feels more secure, even though it’s a miserable life,” Brar says. Today, he sits at a conference table, with his work ID and key fob hanging off a lanyard around his neck, his goatee neatly trimmed. A tattoo on his throat peeps over the top of his T-shirt.

One fork in the road came 12 years ago, when Brar found himself 32 years old and addicted to painkillers after a shooting at his home in Florida left him severely injured. He told a Daytona Beach news outlet in an interview at the time about his pain and the various medications he was taking to ease it. 

Eventually, his doctors cut him off the pills, and he found his way to heroin. Before he knew it, his family was in shambles. 

Feeling “empty inside,” Brar left behind his children and relationship and hit the road back to the Bay Area. “San Francisco, it’s the best place if you want to change your life around,” Brar says. “And it’s the worst place if you want to destroy your life.” 

Brar had spent his early years here, and his adoptive father still lived in the area. 

“I came back to California … to reconcile [with] my father, try to see if I could salvage the relationship,” Brar says. “Any connection to family at this point, that’s what I wanted.” 

When that family connection fell through, Brar continued to find comfort in drugs. As he bounced around the Bay Area, committing petty crime, all roads seemed to lead back to San Francisco, his home base and the city where he was born. 

“I’d come here, Tenderloins. I knew how to survive in the streets, how to sell drugs, the homies are here,” Brar says. “For about ten years, I struggled with trying to get clean. And I couldn’t do it on myself.” 

Brar’s “rock-bottom,” he says, was the day he was arrested and realized he had no one to reach out to. 

The loneliness was jarring. It reminded him of trying to connect with his father, or being shipped off to boarding school in India as a child — an experience he has now learned to see differently. 

“Even though it was a lonely time in my life, everything is something to learn from,” he says. He learned Hindi and Punjabi, and got to travel and see the Himalayas with his grandmother. 

In a similar way, Brar today finds a different kind of solace in the Tenderloin. 

He attended rehab in custody and after he was released, and began volunteering with St. Anthony’s. Brar now works there as a full time volunteer coordinator. He has an apartment nearby and another he shares with his girlfriend. 

As we walk out the door, we run into one of his best friends, with whom he does everything from attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings to going on vacation together. He clarifies that this person is “not a homie, a friend.” 

Brar connects with other people in the throes of addiction and lets them call him if they need support. 

And beyond the neighborhood, his children are grown up and successful, one surfing in Australia, another working as an electrician in Florida, and a third attending college in New York. 

Brar, though, still finds his comfort in San Francisco. Reflecting, he says that rehabilitating in the same place where he used drugs has only made his recovery stronger. “It keeps me grounded.”

Denver is a city that loves to brunch and now, one of Austin’s top daytime spots has opened a location in the West Highland neighborhood. Paperboy’s third outpost is its first outside of its home state of Texas. The concept, which founder Rynan Harms started in a food trailer, has taken over the former home of Rooted Craft American Kitchen (and FNG before that).

“We love this neighborhood because it’s still close to downtown but has its own unique and relaxed vibe,” says Robert Brown, Harms’ longtime business partner, who has lived in Denver for nearly a decade. “People know their neighbors, they show up to community events, they’re invested in this place in a way that feels increasingly rare. That sense of connection is something Paperboy has always tried to foster, and we’re honored to be a part of it here in Denver.”

The menu includes staples such as the chicken and biscuit drizzled with spicy honey; Texas Hash with roasted pork, sweet potato, onion, kale, poached egg and pecan mole; and the Paperboy Pancake, described as “a cake-forward cornmeal pancake that still manages to be impossibly fluffy.”

Also now open is FiNO, the restaurant inside the revamped All Inn Hotel on East Colfax. We enjoyed our first meal there; if you’re planning to visit, don’t miss the signature martini, the Medi Nachos and the caper-studded charred cabbage.

On East Sixth Avenue, the powerhouse duo behind the city’s best new barbecue restaurant, Riot BBQ, has debuted Chicken Riot in the former Truffle Cheese Shop space. Meanwhile, the former Whiskey Biscuit in Englewood is now the Barn, a neighborhood eatery from a pair of longtime hospitality pros, including former Brider chef Chase Devitt.

Taqueria Los Gallitos has expanded once again, adding an eighth location in the former Taco John’s near the shuttered Denver Merchandise Mart.

And just in time for the Rockies home opener on Friday, April 3, McGregor Square has opened its revamped food hall. The former Milepost Zero moniker is out. Now, the space is dubbed McGregor Square Food & Drink and includes six food stalls from local eateries: Anthony’s Pizza & Pasta, C Burger, G-Que BBQ, High Point Creamery, TaCo! and Tora Ramen.

There’s just one closure to report this week: Ballyhoo Table & Stage, which actually shuttered last month after an eviction notice was posted.

In other openings and closings news:

Here’s the complete list of restaurants and bars that opened and closed this week*:

Openings

The Barn South Broadway, 3299 South Broadway, Englewood
Chicken Riot, 2906 East Sixth Avenue
FiNO, 3015 East Colfax Avenue
McGregor Square Food & Drink, 1601 19th Street
Paperboy, 3940 West 32nd Avenue
Taqueria Los Gallitos, 5810 Logan Street

Closures

Ballyhoo Table & Stage, 3300 Tejon Street

*Or earlier and not previously reported.

Know of something we missed? Email cafe@westword.com.

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