Part medical center, part refugee housing, part event space, Mango House is a sprawling community center designed to help refugees and new immigrants find the resources they need. It’s also home to some of the incredible Asian, Middle Eastern, and East African food in Colorado.
Mango House was founded in 2014 by a Denver physician. Dr. PJ Parmar realized that healthcare was just a small percentage of the services that new immigrants needed to feel at home. So, he purchased a building that was once a J.C. Penney in the Denver suburb of Aurora, and turned it into a community center.
Dubbed Mango House, the center would aim to provide safe housing, as well as culturally relevant shops and familiar food for different communities. Today, the center offers walk-up primary care, dental care, pharmacy access, and other services. It also provides local communities with a place to gather, work together, and launch innovative new businesses.
Over the years, a number of talented immigrant chefs have started their enterprises at Mango House. Today, it hosts seven different restaurants serving Somalian, Ethiopian, Nepali, and Burmese cuisines, among others. These dishes give longtime Denverites a chance to sample exotic and unexpected flavors. But to the residents of Mango House, they taste just like home.
First time visiting? Try the jhol momo—Nepali dumplings—at Nepali Mountain Kitchen, or the lamb shank at Langano Ethiopian. Be sure to cap off your meal with an Ethiopian espresso and a little something sweet, such as baklava at Jasmine Syrian. Made the old-fashioned way, each slice is a morsel of flaky, nutty, honey-drizzled ecstasy.
