from the kitchen

The art of the matter

By Amiee White Beazley / Photography By Catherine Aeppel | June 18, 2018

Biking or hiking to the Arts Center is a great way to work up an appetite. photo courtesy of Anderson Ranch

At one Snowmass café, food is more than mere fuel

Feeding creative minds has always been a part of the Anderson Ranch Arts Center’s mission. For more than 50 years, the historic sheep and cattle operation turned visual artists’ residency and educational retreat has been hosting both students and professionals. Anderson Ranch is open year-round but summer is when it truly shines. Fourteen rustic outbuildings are surrounded by five acres of forest and wildflowers. From June through September, the campus buzzes like a hive, the artists in their studios, working and creating.

Just steps away from the studios is the Kent Campus Center Café, perhaps the Roaring Fork Valley’s best-kept secret. In addition to excellent food, there’s a casual, community atmosphere and the most affordable BYOB meals in the Aspen area. Open to the public for breakfast, lunch and dinner Monday to Friday, from June through October, the cafeteria-style meals always include a salad bar and a daily soup and vegetarian option. Meals start at $11.50 for adults (kids under 6 eat free); all proceeds are used to fund art center programming and operation costs.

The Ranch estimates that the café, which seats 150 in total, serves approximately 30,000 meals per year. It takes a strong and organized seasonal kitchen crew to devise and produce daily lunch and dinner menus (at this writing, the breakfast program was still being developed) that appeal to such a diverse clientele.

Photo 1: The menu changes daily.

Photo 2: Many of the recipes come from Vero's grandmother.

Photo 3: Students at work in one of the art studios. photo Courtesy of Anderson Ranch

Photo 4: The café is open to the public five days a week in summer. photo courtesy of Anderson Ranch

Cooking from the heart

After several years under the successful tenure of kitchen co-managers Geri Maeshiro and Kendra Lizotte, who left last fall, the café has a new duo at the helm, infusing the food with new flavors. Veronica “Vero” Machado and her partner Emilio “Emo” Hernandez grew up on the outskirts of Mexico City. Avid rock climbers, they came to the United States four years ago and started their culinary careers at Bonnie’s Restaurant on Aspen Mountain.

When they took over the kitchen at Anderson Ranch the couple kept some of their predecessor’s menu items, such as Hawaii native Maeshiro’s lamb loco moco, a smoked salmon open-faced sandwich and a “Turkish Day Lunch” with falafel and lamb meatballs, pita, tzatziki and roasted pepper and feta spread. What they introduced were a number of family recipes (many from Machado’s grandmother) including posole, chilaquiles, cochinita pibil and mole enchiladas.

“When I was young, my grandmother bought a piece of land and split it between her kids,” says Machado. “On that land she built a garden, and I shared it with 32 cousins. She cooked very good meals for us, but it was my nanny, Guadalupe, who taught me about tradition and how to make everything from scratch.” (Guadalupe, she says, is now 90 years old and still a masterful cook.)

“What I like about cooking for other people is making them happy,” she adds. “Food is a basic need, but flavor has so many dimensions. Our style is rooted in Mexican traditions and ingredients, but we also try not to waste food and appreciate local products. We love the purveyors that we work with.”

The aforementioned include Rock Canyon Coffee, Eagle Springs Organic, Delicious Orchards, Rendezvous Farm, Farm Collaborative (formerly Aspen TREE) and Paoniabased distributor Farm Runners. Machado also praises regional ingredients including potatoes, peppers, winter squash, herbs and meat, some of which comes from Homestead Meats, Happy Hogs Farm and Colorado Pastured Pork (see our feature on page 20).

A recent dinner featured birria, a Jaliscan stew usually made with goat (here, it’s beef) which had simmered for more than six hours in a mixture of adobo spices—cloves, cinnamon, oregano and cumin—until the meat was tender and the sauce dark and rich. The hearty dish was paired with grilled nopales; a tangle of grilled zucchini, corn and poblano peppers; fresh salsa; a watercress salad with pomegranate seeds; and homemade corn tortillas. The finale was a striking, soft green flourless pumpkin seed cake.

Hernandez acknowledges that good ingredients (“Nothing artificial or processed”) are essential to making good food, but he sees the café as part of a bigger picture. “We want to aid the artists’ inspiration by providing healthy, nourishing food. We think that it provides fuel for the mind and the creative process.”