Denver’s Mexican Scene: From Chingon Carnitas to Hanging Tequila Barrels

By Ed Avis

     Denver is a booming city that mixes a hip urban feel with world class outdoor recreation opportunities, so it’s no surprise that the restaurant scene is hopping. And Mexican restaurants are keeping pace – traditional Mexican spots are finding new customers and modern interpretations of the cuisine are taking off.

   Here are brief portraits of four thriving Denver Mexican restaurants.

Chingon Mexican Bistro

   Many chefs are inspired by their grandmother’s recipes, but few are as close to the source of those recipes as Chef David Lopez of el Chingon Mexican Bistro. He gets to work beside his

grandmother, Gloria Nuñez, nearly every day.

   “My grandmother just turned 80, but she still wants to be in there,” Lopez says. “We can’t get her not to work! But the next thing you know, she’s picking up a 50-pound bag of beans. We don’t want her to do that anymore!”

  Lopez’s abuelita may be his biggest influence, but he learned how powerful quality Mexican food can be from Mexican restaurant innovator Richard Sandoval. One of his first jobs after graduating from the Culinary School of the Rockies was at Sandoval’s Denver restaurant Zengo.

   “Chef Richard Sandoval had just opened Zengo (in 2006), and I was doing pastry for him,” Lopez remembers. “Chef Sandoval was the first one to really put (regional Mexican) food forward, back in the early 2000s, and we kind of took that as a lead.”

   Lopez worked for a couple of other local fine restaurants in Boulder and Denver until 2012, when the family decided it was time to launch their own venture. The recipes of Grandmother Nuñez, a native of Mexico City who learned to cook as a mother of seven, composed the heart of the menu. And Nuñez herself is the heart of the kitchen.

   “A lot of my grandmother’s recipes are still on the menu,” Lopez says. “Like her enchiladas verde, that’s one of the dishes that is like my soul food. When I was growing up my grandma would make whatever we wanted on our birthday, and I always asked for that. So I put that on the menu, and I don’t touch the recipe.”

   Some of the recipes on the menu today incorporate Nuñez’s classic recipes with modern interpretations. For example, the Chingon Carnitas is Lopez’s own take on the braised pork shoulder, but with his abuelita’s salsa verde.

   Other items on the current menu include the Rellenos de Hongo – three roasted Anaheim chiles filled with organic wild mushrooms and queso Oaxaca, plated with roasted corn and Anaheim pepper crema – and Conejo – a whole roasted rabbit roulade paired with pepian rojo salsa, braised carrots, and fresh pear.

   “I change the menu biannually,” Lopez says. “Probably about 30 percent of each menu is my grandmother’s recipes and 70 percent is whatever happens to come out of my brain. During menu changes I ask her about things she grew up eating. In my family food is about the culture, so I talk to them and take what makes a great memory for them and incorporate that into my menu.”

   Lopez favors local ingredients whenever possible. He says customers appreciate it when he lists the locations of his food sources on the menu, and two of his four beer taps are reserved for local brews.

   Next up for Lopez is a new restaurant called Cultura, which he plans to open at the end of this year. It will feature Latin food from around the world…but no doubt the menu will also be influenced by his abuelita.

Lola

   Jamey Fader remembers well the early days of Lola, the Mexican restaurant he and partner

Jen Broyles helped launch in 2002 in Denver’s Pearl Street neighborhood, when they mastered the art of free samples.

   “While I wasn’t the first person in Denver to have mole on the menu or Mexican seafood, we combined that with local seasonal ingredients and fine service, and I think what we were doing was revolutionary,” Fader says. “But there were people who came to the restaurant and were like, ‘Huh? I came to a Mexican restaurant and don’t see a burrito on the menu.’”

   Fader says he had to win over those customers by offering familiar dishes, then getting them to try others. That strategy was best manifest in their $2 Monday chicken taco night. For $4, customers could get a taco and a can of beer.

   “Then we’d hand out free ceviche and say, ‘Here, please try this!” Fader says. “Jen Broyles gets the credit for that strategy. We spent a lot of time giving away free stuff, but after a time they started coming back.”

   These days there is no shortage of customers who appreciate quality Mexican dining at Lola, which moved to a bigger location in 2006. Seafood is a focus – dishes like Hamachi Tiradito, made with thinly sliced Hamachi (a tuna-like fish), roasted macadamia nuts and cascabel chile oil – but the menu includes a wide range of non-seafood delicacies. Fader says a popular dish is the Crispy Fried Chicken Mole appetizer, small pieces of fried chicken thigh meat served with a mole verde.

   Fader, a Maryland native, got turned on to Mexican food while cooking at Jax Fish House in Denver. Some of his Mexican colleagues brought in home-made specialties.

   “In particular I remember one lady who made tamales and huraches, all these things with masa, and she would bring them in for us,” Fader says. “I was just a young 20-something chef and I fell in love with not just the flavors, which I found completely exciting, but also with the culture of the food.”

   Fader was able to apply that love of Mexican food and culture when the owner of Jax, Dave Query, told him he wanted to launch a Mexican seafood place, which led to Lola.

   Despite the restaurant’s success, Fader says they still hand out samples.

   “If you go anywhere in Mexico, you are met by a host of folks looking out for you,” he says. “That’s the feeling we like to emulate here. We’re glad you’re here, and we try to keep handing out freebies. I enjoy showing that Mexican food is really exciting cuisine.”

La Loma

    La Loma Restaurant occupies a dear spot in the heart of thousands of Denver residents – it is where many first tried Mexican food, especially the famous green chile and other recipes

made by founder Savina Mendoza. The Mendoza family sold the restaurant to Sonny Brinkerhoff in 1976, but the recipes remain.

   “The menu is based on the recipes from Savina Mendoza,” says Deanna Price, the restaurant’s marketing manager. “Her green chile is famous. It has big chunks of pork, and is spicy but not overwhelmingly hot.”

   The menu features a broad range of Mexican classics, such as chile rellenos and carnitas tacos. But there are also many fine dishes that would be unfamiliar at a strictly traditional Mexican spot, such as Plato al Olivo – chicken, asparagus, broccoli, bell peppers, carrots and mushrooms sautéed in olive oil.

   The restaurant has also long been known for their homemade flour tortillas. A BE&SCO tortilla machine in the main dining room produces 400 to 500 of the beloved discs each day, in full view of customers.

   One thing that has changed recently is the restaurant’s location – last November they moved from an 1800s-era building in the Highlands neighborhood that had housed La Loma for about 35 years to a busy downtown spot. Much of the old restaurant made the trip, including the famous stained glass.

    Another interesting feature of La Loma that moved to the new location is the tequila barrel hanging over the bar. It’s not just a decoration – the barrel is full of reposado tequila that is tapped for certain cocktails and shots.

   “Don Julio had put in the barrel in the previous location,” Price says. “It’s an American White Oak barrel. We just add bottles of tequila as it gets low. When we moved, we emptied it, and switched to Arta tequila, a local company.”

   La Loma is expanding in the next few years. Price says a sister restaurant, Sierra Grill, will soon open in Lonetree, Colorado, and two more La Lomas will open by 2020, she says.

   So soon many more people will be introduced to the recipes of Savina Mendoza.

Uno Mas Taqueria

    Tacos are wildly popular these days. Chefs love how tacos let them try so many

combinations of tastes in soft little packets, and customers love how they can enjoy two or three distinctly different tastes in one taco meal.

   Uno Mas Taqueria y Cantina takes full advantage of that popularity. When customers walk into the restaurant, which has two locations, they get a pencil and a long, skinny paper menu that lists 14 street tacos – only one costs more than $4 -- six tortas, and five apps. They check off their selections and hand it to the server.

    And those selections can be hard to make! The tacos include Smoked Chicken (chicken marinated in Bohemia beer, guajillo salsa, pickled onions, cotija cheese); Carnitas (smoked Duroc pork shoulder, orange, radish, poblanos, roasted tomatillo salsa, cotija cheese); and Sea of Cortez (chili rubbed sea scallops and shrimp, fresh avocado, cilantro, ranchero salsa, cotija cheese); to name just a few.

    “I always knew that one way or another my work would revolve around tacos. There’s just so much you can do with them,” says Rick Sharman, Uno Mas’ executive chef. “There are so many styles of meat, so many styles of cooking. I love chiles – the flavors you can get from them are amazing. And to apply those to pork, goat, lamb, or whatever, really highlights and accentuates their taste.”

   Sharman can’t take credit for the restaurant’s current list of tacos – he joined the company just this past spring. He previously worked at Fonda in San Antonio and restaurants in Austin, the Virgin Islands, and Alaska.

   Sharman says he’ll be evaluating the menu over the coming months, trying some new tacos and deleting those that aren’t selling well. He’ll be keeping the popular ones, though, such as the carne asada, duck confit, and lengua.

    “We sell a lot of lengua – that shocked me,” he says. “Our pork belly taco is also amazing. It’s an ancho chile coffee rub, smoked for three hours over oak, then sliced up and heated on a plancha. We add avocado, queso and salsa. It’s one of our biggest sellers.”

Ed Avis is the publisher of el Restaurante.