Blog
Denver, my kind of restaurant town
By Chef Troy Guard
How to describe the Denver restaurant and food scene? Forgive the stab at culinary wit, but I like to call it high altitude/low attitude dining: something that hit me the very first time I stepped off a plane at Denver International, in November 2002, and experienced the heady crystal air with ears frozen and heart aflutter at the prospect of cooking for still another crowd.
It was true then and is still true today: Denver is a cowpoke town; where seldom is heard a discouraging word, but where there is also a chicken for every pot, a space for every car, and cattle – here you find the beef, not to mention bison and lamb, coming out of our collective yin yang to the tune of some 1.3 million head owned by over 13,000 independent ranchers. More than enough to feed the 2.5 million people currently living in metropolitan Denver (21st largest in the country).
Denver has never stopped being a boomtown – if it wasn’t cows, gold, silver or some kind of fuel, it’s been some kind of high tech industry – because, to a large extent, it’s always been a desirable place to live. For me, personally? Besides the pristine water (life tastes so good when it doesn’t have to come from the bottle) and snowcapped mountains (winter sports!), I think Denver’s greatest asset has always been its people.
It’s the people who have made me feel welcomed as a chef, from my first gasp of thin mountain air nine years, after spending the previous twelve years chained to stoves in Maui (granted, a nicer than average place to be enslaved by food), Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore and New York. My own cross-continental ramblings had prepared me well: the reason local restaurant mogul Richard Sandoval first invited me to Colorado was to head up a cross-cultural Latin/Asian concept called ZENGO.
At first, admittedly, there were fears, because I wasn’t sure if full blown fusion cooking would get a thumbs up or thumbs down from the locals, largely accustomed to steak knives, not chopsticks. But I quickly discovered that even the average Denver restaurant guest is as sophisticated as any big city’s, but with a bonus: they are far less tyrannical in their judgements than the tough cookies I had previously encountered in major “restaurant towns” (re San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and even Tokyo, where it can also be challenging).
Simply put, people in Denver know and appreciate their food and wine, but with an outlook that tends to be positive rather than negative; preferring to find something to cheer and celebrate, rather than bitch and moan, about. Go, Broncos!
Is it any wonder that I have remained in Denver ever since? I love the Rocky Mountain air, but I love the almost innocent air of people who seem to appreciate you for what you do, not what you don’t. And now I have a beautiful two year old daughter, fittingly named Grace, who teaches me an even purer innocence – reminding me, everyday, of what a privilege it is to live, and cook, in this big, shining city on this 5,280 ft. hill. October 2011
Troy Guard will continue his ramblings on the Denver restaurant scene in future posts. Guard is the chef/owner of TAG Restaurant, TAG | RAW BAR and Madison Street in Denver, CO. He cut his first culinary teeth under Roy Yamaguchi in the Roy’s family of restaurants, and has helmed kitchens at Tao in New York and Doc Cheng’s in Singapore. He describes his cuisine as Continental Social Food; a combination of Hawaiian roots, Pan-Asian experiences and an evolving feel for Colorado grown ingredients.
