Oveja Negra is part-coffee shop, part-cocktail bar and a new concept that owners Faisal and Keila Ansari hope will create a unique gathering space in Steamboat Springs.

“We’re not a coffee shop and we’re not a cocktail bar — we want to be a mountain social house, if you will,” Faisal Ansari said Monday from inside the reimagined space at 700 Yampa St. “We want people to come here just to hang out before dinner or after dinner, and before the mountain or after the mountain. We just want to give people something a little bit more elegant.”

The idea for Oveja Negra is to stand out in the downtown dining scene by offering a top-notch selection of coffees in the morning and high-quality, signature cocktails in the evening.

The menu at Oveja Negra will offers customers a variety of options including a banana miso latte, tres leches latte and an iced blueberry matcha latte.

In the evening the cocktail bar will be anchored by a selection of 10 signature cocktails including Clear as Night, a milk-clarified gin drink made with a centrifuge; Peaches in Palisade, a martini that blends vodka, Italicus, dry vermouth with the taste of Palisade peaches; and The Road to Clark, a spritz featuring Mythology vodka, yuzu, lychee, Thai basil and Sichuan peppercorn.

“All the classics are available,” Ansari said. “We are going start with 10 signature cocktails from martini to a forced carbonated beverage and maybe expand that in the future.”

In the morning, Oveja Negra will offer basic baked goods like croissants and breakfast sandwiches including a labneh egg sandwich. Ansari said the lunch menu will include steak and chicken sandwiches, and for dinner there will be high-end hotdogs and sliders. Oveja Negra does not have a full kitchen, but Ansari said his staff will use the commissary kitchen just across the street and that he hopes to expand menu options this winter.

“We were really excited to have that,” Ansari said of the kitchen at The Commons and plans to create the food there and bring it across the street to serve to customers.

“Our winter menu will be a little bit more in depth and we will offer a few more plates that are a little bit more filling,” Ansari said. “Right now, it’s more baked goods and sandwiches and small shareables. We’ll have some hummus, baba ghanoush and a ceviche plate. One of my favorites is a Tortilla Española. If you go to Spain, you see it in every coffee shop. It’s just a Spanish quiche with three ingredients — eggs, potatoes and onions.”

Ansari said that thanks to his family’s background and travels, Oveja Negra will feature an international flair.

“I’ve been to more than 50 countries, and everywhere you go, you kind of bring something back with you,” Asari said. “That, in addition to my family being super multi-ethnic — my mom is Colombian and Lebanese and my dad is from Pakistan, and Keila’s family is from Mexico — I grew up eating a lot of different foods.”

Oveja Negra will open at 7 a.m. daily and the Ansaris expect operations to run until 10-11 p.m. on weekdays with weekend hours extending until midnight or 1 a.m.

The business is new, but Faisal Ansari is no stranger to the Yampa Valley, splitting his time between Routt County and Florida over the last several years.

“I’ve been living in Clark for six years,” Ansari said. “I’m from Florida, but I got a place out here during COVID, and I love snowboarding.”