New Mexican food : that ’s a well - known affair . So are Tex - Mex and Cal - Mex . Arizona - Mex is a thing if you call it Sonoran - style . But Colo - Mex culinary art ? Not a affair . Not agree to the omnipotent Google ; or to theOxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America , whose ledger entry for Mexican - American food does n’t give Colorado so much as a sentence ; or to the University of Denver ’s exalt Husted Cookery Collection , where you ’ll find decade ’ Charles Frederick Worth of locally print cookery book , but only one explicitly consecrate to Mexican solid food . Copyrighted in 1981 , its statute title is , get this , Blonde Chicana Bride ’s Mexican Cookbook .
And yet , Spanish speakers have been here for hundred . Mexicans founded our first permanent settlement just prior to statehood . ego - identified Hispanics represent 21 % of our population today . give that context , you ’d remember Colo - Mex cuisine would also be , you have a go at it , athing . So why ’s it so hard to nail ? I decide to find out .
Of course racism was involved
One potential answer is that , as of the Gold Rush era , Anglos only began to dominate in Colorado far more than they did in neighboring states to the south , and their prejudices squelched the hyphenate regional cuisine that could have flourished . food for thought historian and James Beard Award recipientAdrian Miller– who secern me that one of the earlier area cookbooks he ’s hail across in his inquiry , from 1901 , was written in Spanish – lend me a bunch of textile that illustrate what I entail . Think about this excerpt from a white frontiersman ’s journal , print in a 1931 issue ofThe Colorado Magazineunder the title “ Diary of a Freighting Trip From Kit Carson to Trinidad in 1870 ” :
Looked around in the morning and what pot of wagon , oxen and Mexicans . Not one word of English can they speak … These Mexicans are diminished , slender , dark , dirty , ragged , and more often than not ugly looking beings … boom at 11 o’clock on coffee , cake and tonic essence , cooked in a recondite sauteing cooking pan ; each find some coffee in a canister cap and all hands sat round the fry pan and plunge their bread in the pan among the windfall , or rather water and red Piper nigrum , and pick the pieces of center out with their not overclean hands .
Charming , is n’t it ? No wonderRobert Autobee– another nutrient historiographer I spoke with , whose family arrived here from Mexico in 1833 – had trouble tracing the former history of Mexican - have restaurants in Denver for a paper titled “ NoPlatoLike Home : Denver ’s Slow - Burning Romance With Mexican Cuisine . ”
Lois Ellen Frank
That chronicle set out with chile parlour , which bristle on Larimer St at the turn of the century . According to Autobee , who quote a 1902 newspaper publisher clause , the chile parlors ' metier was not the porc green chile we ’ve come to love , but “ a variety of soup , made from beef , bean and chile peppers ” – Tex - Mex - stylechili with an “ i ” . Miller ’s documents show it popping up in mountain towns like Telluride , too , where enchiladas , “ raging tamales , ” and more were being served . But here ’s the matter … they were all melt down by people with names like Dunn and Fitzgerald and Walz . Autobee points to an ad by one Svensk Lunch that proudly proclaim itself “ The White People ’s Restaurant . ” As far as English speaker were concerned , Mexican - head for the hills restaurants were “ hide in evident muckle , ” he says . “ They had no phones , they were n’t heel in city directory . Advertising was n’t in these mass ’s lives . ” This proved to be a smart move , since , by the thirties , the state governance was actively stress to bear them . In other Book , in “ an earned run average when many Mexican families would speedily replace tortillas with white dinero if someone knocked on the door at suppertime , ” per Autobee , Anglos were start the show .
And all this did n’t quite change until the ’ 50s and ’ 60s – which signify that , as Mexican restaurateurs here in Denver were finally starting to serve a larger cross section of the universe , they were undermined by the sudden popularity of concatenation that were redefiningcomidamexicanaas a flash , generic , corporate good . Most of them were founded , of class , by gringo – eventually including Colorado ’s well - know homegrown franchises , Chipotle and Qdoba .
And then we started to get a little more original
We have , first and first , ourgreen chile . At its most typical – as epitomized byThe Original Chubby’s(aka Chubby ’s Burger Drive In ) – it is thick as wallpaper paste and hot - shit orange tree , sometimes even borderline tomato - saucy . Chubby ’s is also far-famed for hone the Mexican hamburger : a squawk patty layer with refried beans , wrapped in a tortilla , and smothered in , you guessed it , green chile . Then there are the crispy chilli rellenos find oneself at a number of similarly long - running , crossover local establishments likeLa FiestaandPatzcuaro’s– which are not made with egg batter , but rather , wonton skin . Dishes like these have long been championed byWestwordfounder Patricia Calhoun and her columnists ( including Gustavo Arellano of " postulate a Mexican " fame ) as uniquely ours , as have the late - fry wetback with American cheese fromMexico City Loungeand El Toro ( although I ’ve amount across variants at eatery in places as far - flung as Doylestown , PA , and St Paul , MN ) .
Other local curiosities admit the concept of “ half - and - half ” chile as instituted bySantiago’s– which is n’t half - red , as in New Mexico , but equal parts mild and spicy . And the jalapeño cream cheese burger , which , it was n’t created here , has definitely become associated with instauration likeThe Cherry Cricket and My Brother ’s Bar . And how could we forget the open - facedPueblo Slopper ? It ’s arguably the ultimate Colo - Mex specialty in that it combines two of our most favored foods : beef , and homegrown Republic of Chile Piper nigrum . You could even point to the " canolis " take by Denver crimson sauce stapleLechuga ’s , which are marinara - souse pocket of pizza dough stuffed with sausage balloon , high mallow , and , yes , fleeceable chiles , that come off like a calzone - burrito crossbreed . Autobee says his own parent have been eating them for decades .
But – and there is always a but – do a few specialty do at a finite act of restaurant equal a regional cuisine , or are they anomalies ? Could you fill a cookery book with original Colo - Mex recipes , or would you run out of ideas after a few pages ? After all , even the unripened chile around here , ubiquitous as it may be , is served Santa Fe - trend just as much as it ’s service Denver - style .
The Fort | Meredith Hartung
How to make Colo-Mex cuisine a thing
It ’s worth noting that similar questions are perpetually being asked about Colorado cuisine in general . For case , I ’ve always wondered if the difficulty lies in the fact that Colorado is , in its own way , a border nation , located at the ethnic - geographic hamlet of the Southwest , the Great Plains , and the Rocky Mountain neighborhood .
With this in mind , I asked Holly Arnold Kinney , owner of Morrison landmarkThe Fort , for her intellection . Since 1963 , the replica of the 19th - century trading center Bent ’s Fort , build up by her father Samuel , has been serving intellectual nourishment derive from his period research . southwest to the kernel , the menu mix the same Native American , Mexican , and Anglo influence that tell apart New Mexican cuisine , but with a much grievous emphasis ( shared with the legendaryBuckhorn Exchange ) on the likes of Charles Lamb and prime beef cattle , game such as elk and quail , and bison in every way , shape , and form – from roasted marrow , to braise knife , to even raw liver .
“ All of these things were being served at Bent ’s Fort , ” Kinney says , where “ Mexican bargainer were some of the adult buffalo hunter . ” Like their forebears who make out here in the 1700s , they also raise sheep and goat as well as cattle , while raise craw like melons and pumpkins alongside wheat , clavus , and beans of all variety , just as the Pueblo , Hopi , and other natives did .
Chubby’s | Ruth Tobias/Thrillist
Why we Coloradans do n’t see these component much in traditional Mexican eating place today is undefendable to speculation . But Kinney theorise that , as the landscape shifted toward aggregative production of beef , maize , and wheat , the rest was relegated to metier agriculture , which was less available and more expensive . ( That ’s certainly true of the only late brace bison population . ) And to this day , thanks to Taco Bell and its like , most Americans still baulk at pass more than a few pesos on their combo plates .
Still , you could argue that our checker past points to a positive way forward for Colo - Mex cuisine , as do dishes like the buffalo burritos atSam ’s No . 3 , ground in the ’ 20s by a Grecian family ; or the lamb tacos uncommitted at contemporary taquerias likePincheandLos Chingone ; or the beautiful cabrito ( roast goat ) and adobo lamb sausage balloon Dana Rodriguez currently offers atWork & Class . Maybe it ’s hard to determine because it be in so many misunderstood manifestations . And peradventure if we start film a small more superbia in , and credit for , the diversity we do have , we ’ll do a better chore of advertise it . Sign up herefor our daily Denver e-mail and be the first to get all the food / drink / fun in townspeople .
" The Pueblo Slopper " isRuth Tobias ' superhero name . But you’re able to also call her@Denveater .
The Fort | Meredith Hartung
Grays Coors Tavern | Ruth Tobias/Thrillist
