woensdag 4 juli 2018

Forget Aspen. Carbondale is Colorado’s hottest summer playground


Barely 30 miles northwest of Aspen, in the shadow of the majestic Elk Mountains, tiny Carbondale is becoming Colorado’s most exciting summer destination.

True, the town has more family-owned cattle ranches than Michelin stars, and there are still more farm stands than white tablecloth spots. The restaurant best poised to elevate the town’s status doesn’t even have a proper dining room.

Instead, at the Guest House, French Laundry alumna Seth O’Donovan serves her experimental farm dinners outdoors, usually next to a horse paddock or in a roomy tree house that surveys 1,200 acres of pristine Colorado pastures. Meals include savory links of deer sausage served with soft, house-made cheese and a mind-bending dessert of carrots with butter and cinnamon, cooked to the point where they almost resemble pie filling. 

Those who come for her experimental, starlit dinners can roll into an assortment of rustic cabins on the property, many of which date back to the 1940s. In two years, O’Donovan aims to turn the main house on her property into a five-star, eight-room hotel.

Some of Aspen’s best chefs are catching on. Down on Main Street, a new izakaya is soon to be opened by Aspen sushi master Kenichi Kanada. Down the same road, Mladen Todorovic and Kyle Raymond, two transplants from Aspen’s seafood-centric Grey Lady and brunch favorite Over Easy—are collaborating on Roosters, which will soon serve crepes in the morning and rotisserie-based entrees by night. “The produce that we can get in the summer in Colorado is amazing. We want to accentuate that,” Raymond told the Sopris Sun, a Carbondale newsweekly.