The Denver Phantom Diner Visits Chili's Restaurant

The Denver Phantom Diner visits Denver area restaurants anonymously with a dining companion. Neither of us has any financial interest in any of the restaurants that we try, and the Denver Phantom Diner writes about.

We visited the Lakewood Chili's at 88 Wadsworth Blvd., on July 2nd, 2006 at around 6:30 PM. The experience was additionally interesting because it's the day after Colorado's recently-passed smoking ban went into effect for bars. Now I'm a libertarian and didn't feel that such things should be legislated on private property. It should have been up to the owners to determine how their property is used. But, that being said, I'm also a non-smoker and mild asthmatic who used to have horrible problems in the workplace until most employers stopped allowing smoking, and in restaurants, until so many restaurants stopped allowing it. After that, we just avoided the ones that continued to allow it and didn't ventilate their establishments very well.

The reason this is interesting with regard to Chili's, here and now, is that they also have a sports bar right in the middle of the place. Truthfully, this never used to bother us much in that particular restaurant. They must have had it ventilated out above the bar, so the smoke stayed out of the restaurant areas. But it was particularly interesting today because so many bar owners have been crying that this ban would put them out of business. Well it sure wasn't hurting the business at Chili's. The place was packed.