SoHi Cafe was a coffee shop first. Then, owner Vincent Collins started smoking meats and serving barbecue out of the tiny shop in the Westwood neighborhood on West Alameda between Sheridan and Federal. But wait, there’s more: last month, Collins partnered with Erik Medina to add a taqueria to the mix.
Collins has lived in Denver since 2010 and in Westwood — which he says was once called SoHi — for three and a half years. He’s proud of his support from folks nearby, and the business has grown organically over the past several years. Now, Collins is hoping that it’s about to grow by leaps and bounds since adding Medina’s Mexican cooking to the menu.
Inside the small restaurant space, there are tiny bar tables and diner-like seats, with a big TV against one wall and a couple of guitars on display. Collins is a man of many skills. He’s a musician, studio producer, techie trainer and graphic designer in a previous life. He was a high school state track champion in Spokane, Washington, served in the military after high school, and ran a high-end glass and jewelry shop.
Now he’s a chef, or more specifically, a barbecue pitmaster.
Like Collins’ crazy-quilt career, SoHi Cafe is an unpredictable foodie evolution. The building, which sits on a raised mound of land overlooking Alameda, had been a coffee shop in the past, but had been empty for some time. “I went to the city. I said, ‘Hey, just let me open the coffee shop again. I do a podcast and I’m sponsored by Ozo coffee,’” Collins recalls.
“And so it was like, open up the coffee shop. Well, we do a little street fair thing following the podcast. And then one of the guys came up and was like, ‘Hey, man, you’ve got everything to do barbecue.’ I was like, yeah, really, because everything’s got to be cooked outside, as long as you’ve got a warmer, you can start doing barbecues. It was game on,” Collins recalls.
He sold barbecue out of his makeshift eatery for a year and a half, hosting a variety of food trucks as well before meeting Medina.
“He goes, ‘Man, I handled a food truck for years, and this is way better than a food truck. I’ll get some equipment, and let’s do a taqueria mixed in with your barbecue,’” Collins recalls of meeting Medina, who also lives in the neighborhood.
The taqueria is a family operation, with Medina’s wife, Celia, helping and also watching over the Elotes La Granja street corn pop-up placed in the parking lot on Friday through Sunday. The elote is made with Olathe sweet corn while it’s in season. The eatery also serves a delicious menudo soup on the weekend, and offers tamales that the couple purchases from a local supplier.
The regular menu features various meats in street tacos, burritos, quesadillas, quesabirria tacos and various burgers. The taqueria, which is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, also offers $5 breakfast burritos.
Collins’ Viper Pit BBQ smokehouse list includes ribs, brisket, burnt ends, hot wings, hot links and a damn tasty smoked mac and cheese.
When he began testing barbecue, he tried different flavor combinations for the rub and sauce and admits to using ChatGPT to create some AI recipe tweaks. “So I make two different sauces, and then I combine them. And one’s a heavy Ozo coffee sauce, and one’s a heavy Carolina style, so that’s why it has some of that coffee flavor in it.”
He also smokes small batches of barbecue to minimize waste, but if he has ribs or brisket or other meat leftover, he’ll sell it at a discount. He appreciates people who call in orders in advance and gives discounts for that as well.
Collins is a genial entrepreneur, and his partnership with the Medinas is relaxed and open. It all feels like a family operation, and he’s hoping the team can build a regular clientele from the neighborhood and across the metro area that will feel like family, too.