Stories from Aspen 🌳

 

Gert and I were in our 20’s when we started our Aspen/Snowmass restaurant.  Not having too terribly much experience in the running of a restaurant from the front to the back of the house, we were making up procedures as we went along.  With our “fake it until you make it” approach, we frequently put us and our staff in unique positions.  The following collection of accounts are hard to believe but they all happened-enjoy.

 

We had made several trips from Austin to Aspen and Aspen to Austin while making the restaurant happen.  As soon as our intentions were made public “friends” came out of the woodwork wanting to be part of the adventure.  A friend of a friend introduced me to Robert Gower who was the stage manager at the Armadillo World Headquarters whose true ambition in life was to be a ski bum.  He saw his opportunity to make that dream come true by jumping on the bandwagon.  I told him that with no restaurant experience under his belt, the best job I could offer him was a busboy job.  That was fine with him.  Meanwhile, he would let me sneak in the back door at the Armadillo as long as I behaved myself and this allowed me to see many shows up really close.  One of my favorite memories at the venue was seeing Dandy Don Meredith huddled in the corner with friends discretely doing lines of cocaine.

 

The World of Tennis (WCT) had just been opened as the high-class part of Lakeway and they hired Jack Silver and Winston Shipman to bartend who quickly became my favorite people, what with all their antics behind the bar.  It was like being served adult beverages by the Two Stooges, no boundaries, nothing was “too much” if it got a laugh.  As part of our business agreement with the ski lodge in Aspen, The Wildwood Inn, we agreed to serve breakfast. I knew it would be very hard to find staff to work the morning shift because it is a dreaded shift in the service industry, but somebody has to do it.  Part of my agreement with Jack and Winston when I hired them to come to work at our restaurant was that they would be part of the morning shift.  They agreed to the bargain, but it gave them an excuse to misbehave by the early light of the dawn.  The ski lodge was a “U” shape with the outdoor pool and our restaurant being in the middle of the “U”.  During the first week we were open, early one morning I heard a loud banging and yelling coming from our deck.  I went outside to see what the racket was about and I found Jack and Winston on the deck banging Gert’s sauce pots together and yelling “hot coffee, you want it, we got it”.   It was 7:00 am and all I saw was the guests in the Inn peeping out of their curtains wondering what the heck the noise was all about. 

 

Years later Jack and Winston were my roommates at the Blue Roof Condos in Snowmass.  Jack snored so loudly that we put him in the third story loft bedroom but his snoring was so loud that it kept me awake three stories below.

 

One morning I woke up to three feet of fresh powdery snow but I had no one to ski with me on the fresh powder.  I could hear Jack snoring from overhead, so clearly, he was deep asleep, but I knew how to get Jack up.  I had a few spoons of cocaine left from the night before so I climbed the stairs to find Jack and I placed a spoon of coke under Jack’s nose while he was snoring.  He inhaled the spoonful at the inhalation part of his snore, choked and then yelled “you son of a bitch”.  After he realized he could not go back to sleep he got up and skied. 

 

On our first day of business as restaurant owners, we catered a party for Dallas Dental for about 125 guests.  We did a beautiful job and all went well.  We loaded up my blazer with the bus tubs full of dirty china, glassware and silver and headed back to the restaurant to drop off the dirties to be washed at the restaurant by the dishwasher.  Gert was driving my blazer and the road to the restaurant was curvy and steep, as mountain roads tend to be.  The tailgate on my blazer was NOT latched and it popped opened as the blazer turned up the hill.  All the china, glassware and silver slid out, tumbling and breaking as it bounced down the road.  I watched it all happen in horror.  We ordered all new china the next day discovering how expensive that accident was.

 

One day Gert was complaining to the dairy delivery guy that the whipped cream was flat and had no propellant. The dairy guy was just as mystified as Gert.  The mystery was solved when Gert found his loyal cook breathing in the gas/propellant emptying the whip cream cannister of all the gas and leaving it dead.  The gas propellant in the cannisters was nitrous oxide (laughing gas).  I always wondered why Chris was always smiling as he was exiting the walk-in.  Problem solved.

 

At the end of our first year we added a bar to the restaurant and built it at the top of the stairs and called it Brushy Creek Tavern naming it after Brushy Creek which ran through Snowmass Valley.  So, you get the lay out, when you walk in to the restaurant there was a staircase leading up to the tavern.  We had wood lattice to partially hide the stairs and it served as an instant wine rack. It was all good until bottles of wine started to disappear.  It had to be the drunk and/or high locals leaving the tavern late at night.  We put our cheapest wine by the door at the end of wine rack, but the bottles kept disappearing. What to do?  Chateau d’Yquem Sauterne, an expensive dessert wine had disappeared and was the same color as pee.  You know where this is going.  I sold a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem and saved the bottle and cork.  I was very careful removing the lead at the top, knowing I would re-use it again.  After the care taken during the opening ritual Gert and I peed in the bottle, recorked it and reapplied the lead top.  It looked like the real thing, so I slid it into a wine rack slot close to the front door.  Gert and I were giddy when the bottle disappeared.  We had great joy imagining the thieves opening the bottle and taking a sip.  They got what they deserved and a smelly wine.

 

There are many amusing stories that happened in Aspen/Snowmass during our stay.  So many that I’ll have to tell more during the next blog, Aspen State Teachers College, a fake college, may take the entire blog. The professors said “if you were here in the 70’s you may not remember it”.

 

Below you will find one of my summer faves.

Grilled Pork tenderloin marinated in a spicy watermelon marinade.  Eat this and you will start to see fireflies and barefoot children.

 

Ingredients

3 cups of cubed seedless watermelon

3 jalapeños (remove the seeds & ribs for milder marinade). Mince the jalapeño

1 tablespoon sea salt

2 cups granulated Cane sugar

¼ cup watermelon liquor (pucker liquor)

2 lbs. pork tenderloin

 

Method

Hold pork tenderloin in the refrigerator. 

Place all other ingredients in a blender and purée until smooth.

Place tenderloin and marinade in an airtight bag.

Put the baggie in the refrigerator to marinate overnight.

On a hot grill, cook until 150 F interior temp.

Slice and serve atop watermelon salsa.

 

Watermelon salsa

Ingredients

2 cups watermelon (1/4 “dice)

1 Granny Smith apple (1/4” dice)

1 medium red onion julienned

2 cloves of garlic, mashed and minced

1 mango peeled and diced ¼

2 jalapeños seeded and de ribbed, minced

1 bunch of cilantro julienned

¼ cup of granulated organic sugar

2 limes juiced and zested

2 tablespoon of rice wine vinegar

S & P to taste

 

Method

Combine all ingredients & chill

 

After grilling the pork, slice ¼” medallions of the pork and serve atop the salsa.