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If you’ve been to the original, almost four-year-old mashup location of Habit Doughnut Dispensary and Carbon Cafe & Bar on Platte Street, then you’re already familiar with founder Lisa Ruskaup’s “badly behaved” doughnuts and edgy cafe/bar. As of this week, she’s brought both concepts to one new location in an old building in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood.
As at the LoHi locale, sweets seekers will find a variety of brioche doughnuts in fanciful flavors—“the Real Mint Shady,” for example, is glazed in mint chocolate ganache and sprinkled with mint cookie crumble. All can be injected with your booze of choice, or wellness-ified with a $2 “bump” of CBD oil.
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But the airy space offers far more than bougie doughnuts. Like the hours—the new Habit Carbon opens daily at 7 a.m. and stays open until midnight on weekdays and 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday—the menu can only be described as extensive. The daytime list touts everything from espresso drinks to a warm quinoa toss to burgers to hash made with smashed “Wu Tang” tater tots. Come 3 p.m., the offerings shift to happy hour snacks, burgers, and sandwiches, and entrées such as taco plates, chicken and waffles, and pesto-dressed penne pasta with brie cream. Drinks—from a blonde stout made by neighboring Woods Boss Brewing Company to cocktails and wine—are served all day.
We’ll certainly return for the smoked salmon toast: silky slices of cold-smoked fish, dill cream cheese, sweet pickled red onions, and capers atop a seven-grain sourdough which, like all of Habit Carbon’s breads, is baked in house. Pair your toast with a latte made from locally roasted Novo Coffee beans, peruse Ruskaup’s collection of Rolling Stone back issues, and you have the makings of a good day, indeed.
If you go: Habit Carbon Five Points has two entrances: If you enter from 22nd Street, you’ll get a fast-casual, counter-service feel and full view of the doughnuts and baked goods. If you come in from California Street, you’ll have direct entry to the bar and dining area. Full-service dining starts at 9 a.m. daily. 2200 California St., 720-287-1305
