B & B Cafe

B & B Cafe has been feeding Castle Rock longer than almost anything else downtown. The building dates to roughly 1918 and has operated as a cafe since the 1930s; the B & B name was registered in 1946 by Laura Barker and her son Howard. The room still carries its history in the original pressed-tin ceiling, the vintage booths, and a marble back bar that was reportedly brought in by railroad from Leadville in the late 1920s.

The lore here is real and worth knowing. There are bullet holes preserved in the ceiling and back bar, tied to the February 1946 killing of Castle Rock Town Marshal Ray Lewis as he tried to subdue a fugitive from Denver. You are eating breakfast inside a piece of town history, not a themed approximation of one. Worth noting for newcomers: this is a separate restaurant from Castle Cafe a couple of blocks away on Wilcox, and locals do not confuse the two.

The food is hearty American diner cooking done at volume. The build-your-own eggs Benedict selection is the signature, the chicken and waffles and the chicken-fried steak are the heavy hitters, and the cinnamon rolls have their own following. Portions run large. This is breakfast and lunch only, with the kitchen closing in the early afternoon.

The honest caveat is the weekend wait. Saturday and Sunday mornings routinely run 40 minutes and sometimes over an hour, so the move is to get on the online waitlist before you leave the house or to arrive before 8 a.m. Bar seating tends to turn over faster than tables if you are flying solo or as a pair. Parking on Wilcox is very limited, but the Town's View public garage sits in the alley just west of the street as the easy overflow. It earns its status as the town's breakfast institution.