Just because you are serving gringo Tex Mex does not mean it has to be bland.

Crystal Park Cantina, which opened this spring in the 1920s Santa Fe-style tourist shop that for almost 50 years was home to Mission Bell Inn, is a case in point. You won’t find the typical fajitas and cheesy combo plates here. Instead, there are such surprises as a tender, juicy steak in a sweet ancho chili glaze and vegetarian burritos with a rich, piquant tomatillo Alfredo salsa. Don’t call it Tex Mex. Call it Manitou Mex.

Former Denver Bronco wide receiver and current Manitou High School football coach Justin Armour, once of the owners, explained, “We are gringos, but my mom (who does the cooking) has lived in Mexico for a few years. She stole some recipes, so we do pretty well.”

On a recent rainy Wednesday evening, the place was packed with locals crunching chips with homemade salsa between sips of from-scratch margaritas with fresh lime juice and only a hint of sugar. The new owners updated the south-of-the-border clutter, exposed the old 1920s ceiling beams, added a hip, custom bar and hung the freshly painted walls with local art. The result is a place that is both cool and comfortable, stylish without being stuffy.

Dinner starts with a signal that this is not your standard Tex Mex. Along with tortilla chips, servers bring an unusual dip made from olives, chilies, mayonnaise and canned tuna — a traditional Mexican snack not often seen north of the border.

The same is true of the appetizer list. Yes, there is a good, chunky, fresh guacamole. There is a gooey, hot queso fundido. But there is also a delicious plate of hot wings ($6) — the crisp, perfectly cooked chicken slaked in a sweet honey-ancho chili drizzle chocked with chunks of garlic and laced with the complex, alluring flavor of ground pecans. I would come here just for the wings, especially when washed down with a pint of Orale lager from Denver’s Del Norte Brewing Co.

Main meals are generally just as good.

A plate of fish tacos ($12) comes with three corn tortillas stuffed with fresh-tasting, crispy tilapia under a cool nest of shredded cabbage with fresh salsa and a squirt of crema fresca. They were a hit.

A pork and avocado burrito ($13) came stuffed with mild, slow-roasted chunks of pork and big slices of ripe avocado. The whole thing was drowned in thick, spicy green chili swimming with big strands of pulled pork. Chili purists should note that this is Colorado-style chili, not the true New Mexican stuff where the fresh, roasted flesh of green chilies takes center stage.

Vegetarian enchiladas ($12) came stuffed with queso fresco, spinach and potatoes, and covered in a rich Alfredo sauce spiced with acidic, almost lemony tomatillos. It is different. It is a risk. And it works.

So does the steak. A tender cut of hormone-free beef ($20) came splashed in a sweet and spicy compound butter with sautéed squash, peppers and onions on the side. The glaze gave it just a kiss of heat for the right boost of flavor on a juicy piece of meat.

I’m not a fan of every departure from the norm the Cantina takes. While epazote — an herb common in Mexican cooking but almost unseen here — in the sides of beans add a savory spike, the yellow rice, mixed with what tastes like turmeric, butter and cheese, seems bland and out of context with the rest of the menu. A 2-year-old dining companion loved it. The rest of the table did not.

I’m also a little disappointed with a lack of good red chili. The restaurant’s “rancho red” sauce is spicy and not bad, but the dominant flavor is sweet tomatoes, not bitter, earthy dried chilies. It needs work.

Dessert too, is uneven. The Cantina is making its own (a good start!) but the tres leches cupcake with jalapeño cream cheese frosting ($6) had none of the gooey, milky moistness a good tres leches needs. And even if it did, $6 is a lot to pay. Better was the frozen key lime pie — puckeringly fresh and limey with none of the over-sweet, overstabilized pudding you might expect from restaurant desserts.

I’m OK with a kitchen that takes risks and sometimes falls short, because in this case, the risks hit their mark more often than not.

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