Throughout the Roaring Fork Valley, there are more than 40 cafes, restaurants and bars that tout their relationships with nearby farms and ranches. There’s even a map of them — the Roaring Fork and Farm map — listing “local food champions” from Aspen to Glenwood Springs.
In this final story of a three-part series, reporter Kaya Williams speaks with several of the chefs about the past, present and future of the farm-to-table movement.
Let’s do a quick straw poll, with some farmers and chefs who work together in our region: In a valley chock full of farm-to-table restaurants, who’s setting the bar? Who’s getting recognized as the best of the best?
“Barclay Dodge, at Bosq.” “Chef Barclay, at Bosq.” “Bosq, in Aspen.” “Barclay at the (restaurant) Bosq. Absolutely.”
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Dodge is the only chef in Aspen with a Michelin starred restaurant, and he’s now a two-time semifinalist for the James Beard Awards, known as the Oscars of the food world.
I stopped by his kitchen last winter, the first time he was named a semifinalist for a James Beard Award, to watch this woodsy chef with a gentle demeanor slice Colorado striped bass, and point out some hunks of spruce that he went out and foraged himself.
He’s earned more accolades since — the Michelin star arrived just last fall — and given how much everyone praises Dodge’s work, I figured I should give him a call about this whole farm-to-table thing I’ve been working on.
“I'm a chef, so I'm a flavor seeker,” he tells me over the phone in early January. “And the best flavor comes from small farms that are putting lots of care and love and attention into their soil, into their sustainability, into their product, into their people, into the community.”
A few weeks after our conversation, the James Beard Foundation announces this year’s Restaurant and Chef Award semifinalists: This time around, Dodge is one of 20 cooks in the running for the “Outstanding Chef” award, which recognizes both culinary excellence and a chef’s positive impact on the community.
Dodge says he’s mainly motivated by the way local ingredients taste — a heck of a lot better than the ones he could get from far-off industrial food suppliers — but he also values the story behind the food. The restaurant trains waitstaff to speak intelligently and enthusiastically about the dishes they’re serving, and credits a lot of the farms on the menu.
For Dodge, serving locally-grown ingredients isn’t just a passing trend, but a way of life.
“I started working really closely with the farms in the early 2000s, in my first restaurant here in Aspen,” Dodge says. “And the awareness is always strengthening … You know, it's just — it's mainstream now, so get out there and get it.”
Dodge thinks there’s a couple of factors that have strengthened that awareness — food TV being one of them.
The accolades from the Michelin Guide and James Beard Foundation might help as well, he says.
So I check in with those two arbiters of taste.
If you search the Michelin website, for the tag “farm-to-table,” you get more than 700 results, from three-star restaurants to “Michelin recommended” establishments and more affordable joints with the “Bib Gourmand” designation.
And if you look up the other semifinalists for the James Beard Foundation’s “Outstanding Chef” award, nearly half the list comes from restaurants that prominently feature a farm-to-table philosophy on their websites.
Amanda Faison, who’s on the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards committee, told me in an email that local and seasonal ingredients are a factor in the voting body’s decisions, just like it would be for a consumer, choosing where they’ll go out to eat.
She says the foundation has seen a “huge uptick in chefs using menus and ingredients to highlight environmental sustainability.”
“This includes seeking out locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, nose-to-tail cooking to avoid food waste, establishing relationships with farmers who practice regenerative agriculture, and more,” Faison wrote.
It’s the same thing over at the Michelin Guide, where the anonymous chief inspector writes that they’ve also seen a rise in what they call “sustainable gastronomy.”
They wrote in an email that local sourcing isn’t a requirement for a Michelin star, but “high quality product” is a key factor.
The officials from Michelin and the James Beard Foundation say their awards can serve as a motivator for more chefs to get on board with local sourcing — that there’s a “ripple effect,” as Faison puts it, when their organizations honor farm-to-table restaurants. Plus, Faison wrote, it can be validating for the chefs who are already doing the work, and who have been doing it for years.
“Over the last couple of decades, ‘farm-to-table’ has moved from a niche concept into the mainstream thanks, in part, to James Beard Award-winning and nominated chefs—like Barclay Dodge at Bosq and Mawa McQueen at Mawa’s Kitchen (in Aspen), to name a couple,” Faison wrote. “Consumers are more interested than ever in knowing where their food comes from and supporting practices that are more sustainable, economically and environmentally.”
Tiffany Pineda-Scarlett, who co-founded the “Farmer and Chef” catering company here in the valley, agrees that big-name recognition can impact diners, too —maybe even more than the chefs, she says.
“I don't know if the kind of chef who cares about sourcing locally is going to be motivated to do that … in efforts of winning an award,” she says.
“Like, you should be doing it for your community, at the very least for your local economy to thrive, and for the quality of your ingredients also,” she adds. “But I think from a consumer perspective or standpoint, it could definitely help kind of drive, you know, what a successful restaurant means.”
Pineda-Scarlett is technically the “farmer” in “Farmer and Chef” — she cut her teeth at Sustainable Settings and Two Roots Farm — but she also has a lot of experience as a cook. She runs this business with her husband, Chef Joey Scarlett, and together, they operate the cafe at the Aspen Art Museum, where you can get a full farm-to-table lunch for less than $30.
The menu lists salad with greens from Flipside Farm in Hotchkiss, avocado toast with eggs from Dooley Creek Farm in Carbondale. Online, you can even click through links to learn more about the farms.
Joey Scarlett says part of their model is “educating the consumer” as interest in local agriculture continues to grow.
“I think people are starting to respect food a little bit more, and start(ing) to understand a little bit more where their food comes from,” Scarlett says.
They’re also learning to “ask the right questions,” he adds.
Even though there are a lot of restaurants who are authentically committed to the mission of local sourcing, Tiffany and Joey worry that some places are just in it for the cachet.
“I think a lot of businesses are hopping on the bandwagon,” Pineda-Scarlett says. “It is kind of sexy, and you can justify charging higher prices and people don't question it as much, … and I think that that discredits a lot of businesses that are working very hard to source from so many different purveyors and growers.”
Like a lot of chefs in the farm-to-table movement, Tiffany and Joey want diners to ask about the bigger picture — to consider not only where each ingredient came from, but why it’s important to support local agriculture.
On the other side of town, at Aspen Meadows Resort, chef Rachel Saxton shares that mission, and recognizes that her restaurant’s proximity to the Aspen Institute could help her reach some major big-picture thinkers.
“Especially with the Institute, you know, bringing all (these) ideas and … always being innovative, like, why not have food that sparks conversation?” she tells me as we chat in the restaurant at the resort.
Saxton says she’s always cooked with local ingredients. She used to work at Bosq, with Chef Barclay Dodge. Before that, Saxton did stints at The Little Nell in Aspen and Eleven Madison Park in New York, both of which also create food from nearby sources.
And here at Aspen Meadows, she’s been known to forage around the resort’s property.
With a recent revamp at her restaurant (formerly called “Plato’s,” now “West End Social”) more people are able to enjoy those flavors, too.
Where there used to be two menus — a fancy farm-to-table one, and a casual bar one — “now, having one menu throughout, it all focuses on using local products and sustainable products,” Saxton says.
“Everybody gets that opportunity.”
Saxton says this philosophy is just part of who she is. The 30-something chef with a fine-dining resume also has family members who are fourth-generation farmers: She spent her childhood visiting the farm, planting corn and making cider from apples in her grandpa’s orchard. Her parents gardened, too; even more food came from fishing, or foraging for mushrooms.
“It was always just part of … my childhood and things I loved,” Saxton says. “And I fell in love with food that way.”
The backstory may sound unusual for a child of the ‘90s, but it’s an experience that used to be nearly universal. This whole idea of eating local and connecting with your nearby farmers? A lot of the folks I’ve talked to said it’s not a novel concept at all.
Many believe the current movement for farm-to table food is a reminder that this is the way we all used to eat, all the time.
“It was only a blip in the radar where we haven't been doing it this way,” says Travis McFlynn, a volunteer at Sustainable Settings near Carbondale.
“It is fascinating that we could have gotten kind of out of that loop, only to rediscover it,” he adds. “ Like, it's an ‘aha moment’ to like, know who we actually are and where we came from.”
I met McFlynn pretty early in this reporting process, while he was milking cows at the farm in the soft morning light. And, like most of the farmers and chefs I’ve spoken to, he believes people can taste the difference — even if they don’t know the nuances of regenerative agriculture and small-scale farming.
“I think that if you reach inside yourself, you know that certain things taste amazing,” McFlynn says. “And oftentimes, the reason why is because it comes from a place like this.”
In other words, it’s the flavor that brings us back to our roots.
This story is the final installment in a three-part series, titled “Dig In: Colorado’s Farm-to-Table Ecosystem.” Part one considers the diner’s experience of one locally-sourced tasting menu in Aspen; part two focuses on the people who help the people who help produce Colorado’s agricultural bounty. This series was edited by Johanna Zorn through the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps.
Reporter Kaya Williams would like to acknowledge several additional chefs, farmers and beverage producers who contributed to the development of this series: Kent Slaymaker of Slaymaker Cellars, Shamai Buckel of Buckel Family Wine, and Lance Hanson of Jack Rabbit Hill Farms, shared perspectives on winemaking in Colorado that helped inform a story on local farmers. Chef Keith Theodore, of The Little Nell, shared perspectives on farm-to-table dining culture that helped inform this story on local restaurants. There are dozens of other farmers and chefs throughout the region who are helping shape the culture of farm-to-table dining, and who also deserve recognition for their work. If you’d like to pitch a story about food in the Roaring Fork Valley, email kaya.williams@aspenpublicradio.org or news@aspenpublicradio.org.
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