REFLECTS

with wooden doors — complete with brass doorknobs and room numbers — that were rescued from Denver’s Spears Chiropractic Hospital before it was demolished in the 1990s.

“Friendly service, good quality. Hopefully none of that’s changed,” McCa rey said of her restaurant.

Angie’s specialty is its homemade spaghetti. Many restaurants, and home cooks for that matter, make their pasta dishes with dried noodles. But the spaghetti, linguine and fettuccine noodles at Angie’s are made fresh in-house, which means the long pastas have a tender, almost velvety, texture after they’re cooked. e bread, the sauces, the dressings, almost everything, is homemade, McCa rey said. Her husband and the kitchen crew handroll about 450 meatballs a week, each larger than a golf ball and made with a mixture of ground pork and ground beef.

On the Mexican side, most of the dishes — including old-school favorites like beef burritos and chicken chimichangas — are served with either mild or hot housemade green chile. McCa rey’s personally likes the crispy chili relleno, with its cheesy center and egg roll-like skin, best.

All the restaurant’s recipes come from her father-in-law, Mike McCaffrey Sr., who opened the rst Angie’s in Denver in 1965. ere have been 13 di erent locations since then. Today the Castle Rock eatery and a location in Je erson County west of

Littleton remain and both are still owned and operated by the McCaffrey family.

“I’m glad that the town is growing,” McCa rey said of Castle Rock’s evolution over the past quarter of a century that Angie’s has been in business. “I think towns that don’t grow will shrivel up and die. You also have to rely on the institutions that have been there, that have built that town from the beginning.”

She noted that more people are living downtown now than when the restaurant rst opened. She has customers that walk from their homes these days, when once upon a time people only ever drove. Plenty of commercial development has come to the area as well.

“ ere’s a lot more restaurants which has made us appreciate our business a lot more because, you know, people have a choice,” McCa rey said. “And we’re happy that they’ve chosen us.”

McCa rey is not only pleased that Angie’s Restaurant has been successful for so long but also that, over the decades, she and her husband have been able to connect with customers and become part of the Castle Rock community.

“We have been able to establish a business where a lot of people know who Mike and April are and who Angie’s is,” McCa rey said. “ at makes me proud.”

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