Imbibe 75 Place to Watch: Forget Me Not Denver

Forget Me Not, a chic cocktail bar that opened last spring in Denver’s Cherry Creek neighborhood, is housed in a freestanding, single-story brick building surrounded by a long white picket fence. The building, which used to be a flower shop (hence the bar’s name), looks like where Tom Sawyer’s aunt might have lived had she been rich and stylish. The fence could be seen as symbolic, because bar director Nicole Lebedevitch and her partners created Forget Me Not to keep Cherry Creek residents in Cherry Creek, an area where the sidewalks roll up early, forcing locals to look elsewhere for their nightcaps.

Lebedevitch, a longtime veteran of the Boston cocktail scene (The Hawthorne), was lured to Denver by business partner Juan Padró to open Forget Me Not, which is her first venture as an owner. Lebedevitch’s “New England flair” shows up with the menu’s lobster roll and oysters, as well as in cocktails such as Ce Soir, a popular sipper made of Cognac, Cynar, and yellow Chartreuse that she created in Boston. The elegant fare is well-framed by a sleek décor she describes as “LA meets South Beach meets Nantucket.”

Has the plan to make neighbors “feel rooted,” as the bar’s website cheekily puts it, worked? “It sure has,” she says. “When you get to see the same faces four days out of the week when you’re only open for five, that’s a very special feeling.”