North Broadway's 4 P.M. Handoff: Cinq à Sept, the Uptown Cafés and the November Art Walk

The French bistro that opened in July in the old Bellota space at 4580 Broadway is run by the same restaurant group that ran Bellota. The new place opens at 4 p.m. daily, and its happy hour starts about when the coffee shops on that block close. That timing means the Uptown Broadway block now keeps the lights on from a 7 a.m. espresso to a 10 p.m. close on Fridays and Saturdays.

That matters most a week from tomorrow. The next NoBo Art District First Friday is Friday, November 6, from 6 to 9 p.m. Those hours fall inside the dinner service of a restaurant a few blocks south of the art walk's main studios.

Same Owner, a Different Hour

Bellota served its last day in Boulder on Saturday, January 31, 2026. Westword reported the closing after a four-year run for the upscale Mexican restaurant, and noted that its ownership group had "other notable projects in the works."

One of those projects was in the same room. Half-Eaten Cookie Hospitality Group, the team behind Oak at Fourteenth, Corrida and C Burger, opened Cinq à Sept at 4580 Broadway in July with chef Sam McCandless running the kitchen. Boulder Reporting Lab traced the address back through Bellota, The North End at 4580 and, before that, Restaurant 4580. Founder Bryan Dayton told the outlet the group wanted a restaurant that would appeal to North Boulder residents while also pulling in diners from the rest of the city.

Since then the group has added a major name downtown. 5280 reported on October 6 that Half Eaten Cookie Hospitality was acquiring the Kitchen American Bistro restaurants in Boulder and Denver, with the deal finalized the week before. The Kitchen opened on the Pearl Street Mall in 2004. The Denver Post reported that financial terms were not disclosed and that Dayton expects business as usual, with no major immediate changes to staff or menus. So the group that bet on a French bistro on North Broadway now also runs one of Pearl Street's best-known dining rooms. The NoBo room is the group's most recently opened restaurant in Boulder.

How the Block Hands Off

The name is the design brief. Cinq à sept means "five to seven," a French phrase for the early-evening hours of drinks and conversation. Here is how that slot lines up with its neighbors, using hours each business publishes:

On weekdays, Moxie closes its doors at the same hour Cinq à Sept opens across the street. On weekends both cafés close at 3 p.m., which leaves an hour before the bistro opens. Bookcliff fills that hour Thursday through Sunday: four wines for $16, with light food and nonalcoholic drinks on offer. Amante describes its Uptown store as part of the Uptown Broadway development, next to several restaurants and a bicycle shop, and as a place to stop for espresso before or after a ride. The same building now has a second business running on a fixed clock, and the two schedules cover different halves of the day.

Hours change with seasons and staffing, so check each business's own page before planning a day around a specific time.

What to Order Between Four and Five

Happy hour sticks to basics: bread and cheese, fresh oysters, jambon de Bayonne and cold drinks. The menu is deliberately short, sized to a small room and kitchen. Dayton told Boulder Reporting Lab its size is similar to Oak at Fourteenth's. For a first visit, he pointed to the bread and the Prince Edward Island oysters, then this:

"Then the zucchini, that's next-level. That would definitely be on my table. The simple salad that we have from Esoterra is delicious and amazing."

That quote comes from Boulder Reporting Lab's October profile. In the same interview Dayton added the chicken and the sole, which comes with brown butter and capers. Both the zucchini and the salad trace back to Esoterra Farms, which supplies the restaurant's greens, carrots, squash and zucchini. Buckner Family Ranch supplies the beef and lamb. Some dishes stay on the menu year-round while others rotate with the seasons, so the late-fall menu should lean toward what those farms are still harvesting.

The early-evening name hasn't kept the room to a single hour. Dayton said guests are coming throughout the evening, not only for happy hour. After 16 years running a business in Boulder, he said he sees plenty of familiar faces at Cinq à Sept and plenty he doesn't recognize. That mix of regulars and newcomers lines up with Dayton's stated goal of drawing North Boulder residents and diners from elsewhere in the city.

November 6, Mapped Along Broadway

The Boulder County Arts Alliance listing puts the November 6 art walk at NoBo Center for the Arts, 4929 Broadway #E, from 6 to 9 p.m., free. Cinq à Sept serves until 10 that night, so dinner fits either before or after the walk. Here are the stops in address order, heading north from the bistro's block:

1. Mighty Fudge Studio Galleria, 4520 Broadway. The Daily Camera's September gallery guide listed it as a First Friday stop with rotating artists.
2. East Window, 4550 Broadway, Suite C-3B2. Two exhibitions run through December 23: "Shangri-la" and "Edges of the Ephemeral."
3. Cinq à Sept, 4580 Broadway. Dinner, before or after.
4. NoBo Center for the Arts, 4929 Broadway #E. The art walk's listed home base.
5. Crowd Collective, 4939 Broadway #58. The Crowd Collective is an artists' studio and gallery. On November 6 it brings back its annual Small Originals group show, with every resident artist's studio open and art, music and food on offer.

The citywide First Friday program that launched this summer staggers the two art walks, with downtown running 4 to 7 p.m. and NoBo running 6 to 9 p.m. The SKIP bus runs along Broadway between them. Boulder Reporting Lab covered the partnership in August. For someone already in North Boulder, the useful part of the schedule is the 6 p.m. NoBo start, which gives time for a happy-hour glass before the studios open.

The Weeks After

Between now and the end of the year, the art calendar keeps pulling people back to this stretch of Broadway on dates other than November 6:

• Friday, November 13. East Window holds the opening of Yumi Janairo Roth's "Effigy 1462," which runs through December 18.
• Friday, December 4, 6 to 9 p.m. The last scheduled NoBo First Friday of 2026. Crowd Collective lists First Friday hours through December.
• Wednesday, December 23. Last day for "Shangri-la" and "Edges of the Ephemeral" at East Window.

All three dates fall on evenings when Cinq à Sept is open a few doors from East Window, and two of them are Fridays, when its kitchen runs until 10. Bookcliff's tasting room stays on its Thursday-through-Sunday schedule year-round, so the late-afternoon stop doesn't go away when the weather turns. On a Thursday through Sunday, that means a tasting on Lee Hill Road until 7 p.m. and a table at 4580 Broadway until 9 or 10.

When you live in North Boulder, small changes like a new 4 p.m. opening change your days, and they also shape what buyers notice on a Friday evening drive up Broadway. If you're thinking about how life around the Uptown Broadway block might figure into your own next move, Kimberly Fels would be glad to talk it through over coffee at Amante or a glass at five. Request a Concierge Consultation, and we'll start with what you love about this stretch of Broadway.