Ace Gillett's Lounge

Ace Gillett's is a really cozy underground space that you can stay in for hours. Their food is delicious, though not terribly cheap for the amount you'll get. The drinks are unique, imaginative, and there's usually a featured drink (alongside house wine, etc.) for happy hour, and that featured drink is always delicious. They also tend to have a heavy hand when they pour the liquor, so watch out! The truffle fries are unbelievable!  I hope to return sometime soon for a full meal, as for now I've only tried a variety of tapas--all tasty!

This sultry lithe little underground bar, with its sexy yet approachable and friendly she-staff and lanquid live jazz serves some of the best food in Colorado, mostly tapa style, but always a entrée offering as well.

This is like 1940 shaking hands with 2010 hip and current with a living homage to the speakeasy lifestyle. Everything about our visit here was stellar. It is a small joint so get here early (7pm at the latest) and claim your chair for the music that starts at 8 on Thursday through Sunday.

Indulge in their decadent, fresh and accordingly expensive cocktails!

I would give Ace Gillett's five stars for atmosphere and music. Unfortunately the service, corked wine, and over anxious doorman knocked it down a few stars for me. Let's start with the Good-Great space and beautiful bar, all dark woods and cool back-lit barback. The aesthetics of this place are great, except that the entire place is carpeted. To me, this was just weird, but I feel like they added the carpet for the acoustics of the place so it wouldn't be unbearably loud. The band was really great-a jazz quartet that had the whole place rocking.

The Bad-Service was terrible. Having served many a table, I can totally understand that it was a busy Saturday night but the place was crawling with cocktail servers clad in questionably tight dresses, the place was well staffed. Our server was frantic the entire night, she definitely thought she was in the weeds. It took her 10 minutes to run my check, and we were seated literally steps away from the POS machine. Additionally, she would only come around to offer us more drinks once our glasses were completely empty and we were never offered water. I eventually asked for some and never got it. I looked around and we were not the only table suffering. The doorman really bothered me as well. I give Ace Gillett's full credit for  trying to be the premier (read only) speakeasy in Fort Collins. However, this doorman really rubbed me the wrong way. We had a large party reservation and we were all arriving at different times, we weren't having a meal, just after dinner drinks. I arrived, told the doorman my party's name, and was told that "We are so busy right now I don't know where your party is" In my head I was thinking "didn't you seat them?" I was told to "go look for them but make sure to come back to me and tell me where they are sitting so I can be sure you actually have a reservation". I was like "Excuse me?" but I just did as I was told. About an hour later, we are still waiting for a friend to join us. I went to use the restroom and found her seated on a bench next to the doorman. Apparently she had told him our party's name, and was told that the bar was "at capacity" and was not let in. She had been waiting for 30 minutes outside and couldn't get a hold of us as her phone had no service. At this point I was really over this doorman. I went over to his little stand where he was holding court with a few servers, one of which was ours, who should have been refilling my very empty wine glass, and told him the situation and that I was really disappointed that he didn't even attempt to find us and tell us our guest was waiting. He didn't even remember me showing him exactly where we were sitting and was still a jerk about letting my friend in.

The Ugly-Our server had obviously not been fully educated in wine at all as she served us not one, but two glasses of very corked wine. I asked her if she could please replace the wine with a new bottle and she came back with the exact same glass of wine (my lipstick prints were still on it). By this point I just gave up and enjoyed the music sans beverage. I liked the atmosphere enough of Ace Gillett's to give it another shot but only one more. Perhaps it was just an off night for everyone.