Casa Juani doesn’t open its doors on West Pearl Street until next month, but there’s already a backlog of people hoping to get inside. With the restaurant slated to be up and running by mid-February, co-chef and co-owner Kelly Jeun said that hasn’t deterred hungry optimists from congregating at the digital threshold.
“Already, we’ve gotten so many messages through our website,” Jeun said. “People want to make reservations. I’m like, I wish I could give you a reservation, but I don’t have the exact date yet. We’re thinking around the 16th.”
Casa Juani, the first solo restaurant project from chefs Eduardo Valle Lobo and Jeun, is not open yet because, like most new restaurants in 2026, the concept of time has become mostly theoretical. The menu is still being finalized, the dining room is still under construction and sourced-from-Spain wine glasses have not yet been placed on tables. But word has traveled quickly, helped by the chefs’ résumés, a prime location at 901 Pearl St. and a recent nod from Bon Appétit, which named Casa Juani one of the seven most anticipated restaurant openings in the country this winter.
The restaurant takes its name and much of its philosophy from Valle Lobo’s mother, Juani, who cooked daily for her family of six and who, at 98 years old, still lives in Madrid.
“She was always cooking homemade food,” Valle Lobo said. “This is kind of for us, having a story behind the name.”
The chefs describe Casa Juani as a return to tradition, a love letter to soulful Spanish cooking, and a place where tapas and stews are plunked jubilantly next to one another on the table.
“Eduardo’s mom is like the root of everything here,” Jeun said. “Even today, Eduardo will be like, ‘This is how my mom did it.’ She’s the North Star.”
Valle Lobo and Jeun met while cooking at the now-shuttered Del Posto in New York. (He was executive sous chef during the restaurant’s era of the rare four-star review from the New York Times; she had come from Eleven Madison Park.) The two then served as co-executive chefs at Boulder’s Michelin-starred Frasca Food & Wine before eventually stepping away to pursue this project of their own.
That project will materialize in the form of 5,340 square feet of seafood, wine and Madrid-style comfort on the west end of Pearl.
The couple moved to Boulder eight years ago for Frasca, after time in Italy and California.
“Coming from big cities, at first it was like, ‘oh wow,’” Jeun said. “It had that small-town feel, kind of like when we lived in Italy. But the quality of life… the outdoors, the weather, and, honestly, the people here really appreciate good food and good wine. We weren’t expecting that.”
“We had no assumptions or previous ideas of Boulder,” she said. “But people here? They’re into it. It’s la dolce vita.”
The pair spent two years looking for a space before landing the current location, formerly My Neighbor Felix.
“It’s a little bigger than we wanted,” Jeun said. “But we have a lot of opportunity.”
The food at Casa Juani will draw heavily from Spanish coastal traditions and home kitchens alike. The menu will feature seafood-forward tapas and raw bar-style dishes built around imported ingredients from the Atlantic, Cantabrian and Mediterranean seas. It will include rotating rice dishes like arroz seco, inspired by family meals in Madrid. And there will be stews and braises made with time, olive oil, and an inherited respect for repurposing.
Jeun described Juani’s cooking as resourceful and soulful, often starting with humble ingredients and treating them with care.
“She would blanch green beans, and then instead of throwing away the blanching water, she would make a soup with it,” Jeun said. “That green bean water becomes your vegetable stock. That’s your base.”
In her eyes, it’s not about bells and whistles.
“You can make something that looks beautiful,” she said, “but if it doesn’t taste good, then what’s the point? Flavor comes first.”
For Valle Lobo, Spanish cuisine remains frustratingly underrepresented in the U.S.
“There are so many Italian restaurants, French restaurants, Mexican restaurants,” he said. “But Spanish cuisine, it’s undervalued.”
Each region of Spain brings something different to the table, he added — different seas, ingredients, traditions.
“In Spain, you have the Cantabrian Sea in the north, close to France, then the Atlantic, then the Mediterranean,” he said. “There’s so much culture, so many recipes.”
In the center of Casa Juani’s dining room, guests will find a marisquería: an L-shaped seafood bar where chefs will prepare raw and lightly cooked dishes at eye level. Ocean creatures like turbot, razor clams, surf clams and sea cucumbers, displayed on ice and handled with reverence.
“It’s kind of like the markets in Spain,” Jeun said. “People love seeing what’s available.”
Beyond the marisquería, the room includes a live-edge chef’s table where a tasting menu will eventually take center stage. A custom-built wine room greets guests near the front entrance, while a dry-aging room adds another layer of specificity to the back-of-house. The design, by local architecture firm Arch 11, leans heavily into white oak finishes and Mediterranean minimalism underscored by bold splashes of Spanish tile in tangy blue and burnt orange. Seating ranges from corner booths to high-top banquettes and custom benches facing the marisquería.
“We’re cultivating every detail,” Jeun said. “We’re sourcing things, like plates from Spain. The glassware, the silverware, the napkins, the wine program, the bar program…everything the guest touches, we want it to evoke an emotion, even if it’s just, ‘Oh, this feels nice.’”
She acknowledged the startup budget, but said they’ve tried to be thoughtful with every choice.
“We could’ve just picked a bunch of plain white plates and called it a day. But we really want to consider every little thing.”
But for all the architectural attention, cutlery curation and menu precision, the heart of Casa Juani, they said, is hospitality.
“The restaurant is four walls,” Jeun said. “But it’s really the people inside the building. It’s the guests, and it’s the team.”
Jeun and Valle Lobo describe their goal as “fun dining,” something that feels high-level but not uptight, where you might eat a composed seafood dish with a spoon and then swipe the sauce with your finger.
“We take what we do seriously, how we operate, cleanliness, how we treat people, but we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously,” Jeun said. “We want people to relax, let their hair down, share food, eat with their hands sometimes.”
“We want Casa Juani to feel authentic. Soulful,” Valle Lobo added. “And sometimes, a little avant-garde. But always fun.”
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