Six blocks from the Broadway and Iris intersection, two restaurants opened this year in spaces that already knew their new owners. That is not a coincidence worth skipping past. It is the actual story of what changed on this stretch of North Boulder in 2026, and it explains why the corridor feels different this fall than it did a year ago.
Start with the address on Iris Avenue. For most of the last two decades, 2731 Iris Ave was Murphy's, a family-oriented bar and grill where a teenager named Erin Perkins landed a job in 2002 after moving to Boulder from central New York with her childhood best friend. She met her future husband, Adam, working there. Regulars became employees. Employees became regulars. Murphy's closed in 2020, a casualty of the pandemic, and its replacement, The Local, lasted until 2024 before it closed too. That left the space empty and the neighborhood without the kind of bar and grill it had leaned on for years.
In March, Erin and Adam Perkins reopened it themselves, calling the new restaurant The Lowdown. They already run Murphy's Tap House in Louisville, a spin-off of the original spot, so this was not a couple testing a new concept in an unfamiliar building. It was a couple walking back into the room where they built their adult lives and deciding to build the next chapter there too. Erin has described the goal plainly: a place where families can come back multiple times a week and everyone finds something on the menu. The bar pours from 14 taps of craft beer. The vibe is deliberately unpretentious, closer to a neighborhood living room than a destination restaurant.
Six blocks south on Broadway, a different kind of return played out in a different register. At 4580 Broadway, restaurateur Bryan Dayton and chef Samuel McCandless opened Cinq à Sept on July 7, taking over a space that had most recently housed Bellota, a modern Mexican concept, itself once known as Restaurant 4580. Dayton has been running restaurants in Boulder for more than two decades. His portfolio includes Oak at Fourteenth, the Spanish steakhouse Corrida, and C Burger. Cinq à Sept is his first French bistro, and he has said outright that Boulder had gone without one since Mateo and L'Atelier closed. McCandless, for his part, traces his interest in French technique back thirty years to an early kitchen job in Billings, Montana, working under a French-trained chef. Opening Cinq à Sept in North Boulder let him build the simple, twice-a-week bistro he says he has wanted for years.
The name translates to "five to seven," the French phrase for the hours between work and dinner when people gather for a drink before deciding whether the night continues. The restaurant leans into that idea with a happy hour every day from 4 to 5 p.m., a lounge for pre-dinner cocktails, and a patio that regulars already prefer for its quieter conversation compared to the busier dining room. The menu runs through steak frites, a raw bar, and a petrale sole meunière that reviewers have singled out, alongside an all-French wine list that intentionally avoids feeling overly serious. Dayton has noted that the restaurant is going through pastis, the anise aperitif, faster than any of his other locations. Friday and Saturday lunch service starts in September, which means the spot is still adding hours as it settles into the neighborhood.
Put the two openings side by side and the pattern gets easier to see.
| The Lowdown | Cinq à Sept | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 2731 Iris Ave | 4580 Broadway |
| Opened | March 2026 | July 7, 2026 |
| Previous tenant | The Local (formerly Murphy's) | Bellota (formerly Restaurant 4580) |
| Owners | Erin and Adam Perkins | Bryan Dayton and chef Samuel McCandless |
| Register | Family bar and grill, 14 beers on tap | French bistro, happy hour and date night |
| Hours | Family-friendly, multiple visits a week | Mon-Thu, Sun 4-9 p.m.; Fri-Sat 4-10 p.m. |
Neither restaurant is trying to be the other. That is the point. North Boulder didn't get a single new "restaurant scene" this year so much as it got two specific answers to two specific gaps, delivered by people who already had a stake in the neighborhood before they signed a lease. Axios Boulder picked up on the broader shift, describing North Boulder as quietly becoming the city's destination for intimate neighborhood restaurants that pair upscale dining with a relaxed feel. Cinq à Sept is the example they led with, and the description holds for the corridor as a whole once you factor in what The Lowdown is doing at the other end of it.
What else sits inside that same walk
Cinq à Sept isn't alone on its block. A few doors down on North Broadway, Moxie Feed + Seed bakes the same heirloom-grain bread that earned Moxie Bread Co. recognition from the James Beard Foundation, along with roasted tomato and garlic croissants and cinnamon sugar cruffins that have become a fixture for the neighborhood's morning routine. It's the kind of stop that turns a dinner reservation into a full evening or a Saturday errand into an excuse to sit outside with coffee.
Iris Avenue has its own history of turnover. Before The Lowdown's building was Murphy's and then The Local, the block a few doors down went through Arugula, Laudisio, A La Carte, and a short-lived spot called Lunetta before Mojo Taqueria moved in and stayed. That's not a knock on the street. It's a sign that Iris Avenue has always been a place where restaurants get tried, and this year two of the tries landed with owners who had a longer runway than most.
Wonderland Lake ties the whole corridor together physically. The trailhead sits at 4201 North Broadway, an easy walk or a short SKIP bus ride from either restaurant, and the loop around the lake covers about two miles of flat, dog-friendly path with Flatirons views the entire way. It's the kind of low-effort outing that works before a reservation at Cinq à Sept or after a family dinner at The Lowdown, which means both new restaurants sit inside walking distance of the same piece of open space that's defined this part of the neighborhood for years.
Reading the corridor now
None of this required a new development or a rezoning fight. It required two sets of owners deciding to bet on buildings they already understood, in a neighborhood they'd already lived in for years. That's a different kind of restaurant news than a chain expansion or a pop-up with no roots here, and it's worth knowing if you live within walking distance of Broadway and Iris and have been wondering what's actually changed since spring.
The short version: a family bar and grill came back to the exact address it left, and a French bistro filled a gap that's been open in Boulder for years, six blocks apart, both run by people who already knew the neighborhood before they opened the doors.
If you're weighing what a home near this corridor is actually worth, given how quickly its restaurant scene keeps evolving, Sara Vaughn can walk you through what North Boulder's changes mean for your specific block. Schedule a personalized market consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
