Old & The New
This issue’s “Sumptuous Summit” features four restaurants, each of which has found a way to distinguish itself in Summit’s ever-competitive culinary world. Two of the restaurants are distinctly old school. Their buildings are rustic and cozy, both of them being at least 50 years old, and their names are old and familiar, too. Both the Arapahoe Café and Café Alpine have been serving up food for a long time in Summit.
The other two selections represent the best of Summit’s new breed, restaurants that offer a new urban chic to dining in the mountains. Both Relish and Farley’s Chop House have opened for business within the last two years — Relish in Breckenridge and Farley’s in Frisco — and judging by the success of their casual gourmet menus, each will be enjoying success for many years to come.
Without further ado, here is this winter’s “Sumptuous Summit:”
Café Alpine
Café Alpine is located on Breckenridge’s East Adams Avenue, in Breckenridge, in a three-story wooden home that dates back to the late 1800s. The ambiance inside is rustic and snug, with each of the three floors offering seating for just 30 diners. On the second floor, a large stained-glass window lends a warm light to the dining room.
“People want to have a view of the mountains,” says Laura Shearer, the restaurant’s manager. “Well, our view is on the plate.”
Café Alpine prides itself on an upscale, approachable menu that changes nightly, depending on the season and the special meats, fish, and vegetables chef/owner Keith Mahoney finds at the market each week. During the winter, the menu assumes a hardier nature, with a characteristic entrée being an espresso graced lamb shank with focaccia pine nut stuffing. A popular dish this past summer was the phyllo-wrapped halibut with arugula-pesto couscous, grilled fennel, and a baby tomato salad.
“We’re gourmet, but we use items that people probably aren’t that familiar with,” notes Shearer. “We try to educate people on different kinds of food. We like to push the envelope.”
Diners find an eclectic wine list to complement their food, with most of the red wines coming from California and most of the champagnes from France. The price of entrees can range from $16 to $25. Chef Mahoney also serves up a daily selection of tapas if diners are looking for a lighter meal.
“We always try to bring the best new ideas to the diner,” says Chef Mahoney. “We’re always out there looking, doing, trying new ideas, things that you don’t generally see in this area … Each plate is custom done with custom vegetables, sauces, proteins, and then how we present it, it’s a complete thought.”
106 E. Adams Avenue
Breckenridge
970-453-8218
www.cafealpine.com
Relish
For those who know their restaurants, Matt Fackler is not a new name in Summit. The chef/owner of Relish worked for years at Café Alpine beneath Keith Mahoney before he moved to the historic Ski Tip Lodge in Keystone, where he assumed the role of executive chef. But Fackler’s professional aspirations have always targeted running a restaurant of his own, and when he opened the doors to Relish this past summer, his goal had finally been realized.
“Once I got involved in the restaurant business, I knew I wouldn’t be all the way satisfied until I owned my own restaurant,” Fackler explains. “Now it’s a like a dream come true.”
Located on Breckenridge’s Main Street near the Riverwalk Center, Relish offers diners Colorado-inspired cuisine in a casual, upscale setting. The capellini-wrapped Pacific cod with roasted asparagus and the Buffalo New York Strip Steak were particularly popular entrees last summer, but Fackler assures that everything in his restaurant is of the highest quality, whether it be a daily special he conjures up from a farmer’s market or a staple like the strip steak.
“My biggest thing with this restaurant is that I want people comfortable coming in here and spending as little or as much as they want to,” he says. “We have two phenomenal decks, and people can come in and have beer, shrimp, and oysters on the half shell, or they can get three- or four-course meals.”
All of Relish’s entrees except one cost less than $25, and during the summer, the restaurant offers some very affordable, upscale lunch options. Vegetarians are welcome to ask for specific dishes at lunch or dinner.
During winter, Relish is open only for dinner. www.relishbreckenridge.com
137 Breckenridge Main Street
Breckenridge
970-453-0989
Farley’s Chop House
Like the Arapahoe Café, Farley’s Chop House on Frisco’s Main Street has the dual identity of a tavern and an upscale restaurant. The tavern is situated at the front of the building, where patrons looking for upscale bar food and fine beers on tap (Guinness, Pilsner Urquell, and Fat Tire) are greeted by a sleek bar and an even sleeker flat-screen TV. The dining room is at the back of the restaurant, elevated a few steps and set apart by several home-built wine cabinets.
The cuisine is what you would expect of an upscale chop house: excellent center-cut steaks and chops, along with prime rib and fresh seafood. The Filet Farley, which features a center-cut filet mignon topped with Florida lump crab, béarnaise sauce, and artichokes, is the restaurant’s signature dish. As for the tavern, the $5 beef tips during happy hour have made Farley’s somewhat of a local phenomenon.
“We have a very strong local base,” according to Seth Zelen, who owns Farley’s along with George and Lisa Tousey. “We have a pretty aggressive happy hour, which gives locals a chance to come in for moderate prices.”
Farley’s first opened as a chop house at Copper Mountain back in 1973, which in part explains the restaurant’s popularity with the locals. But Zelen adds that when Farley’s moved in 2004 to its current location in Frisco and changed its décor to upscale urban, a new wave of recognition followed. Beyond the steaks, the beers, and a noteworthy vegetarian dish, the restaurant also boasts a healthy array of fine wines by the glass and a wide range of martinis.
Reservations are strongly recommended.
423 Main Street
Frisco
970-668-3733
Arapahoe Café
The Arapahoe Café in Dillon is what general manager Jason Hodges likes to call “just a great mountain café.” It begins, he says, with the building itself, a quirky, rustic structure that houses a pub downstairs — fittingly called The Pub Down Under — and a more refined dining room upstairs. Refined, that is, in a classic Colorado sense: The doors aren’t square, the wood trimming is more than 50-years-old, and the floor has a nasty tendency of wanting to tilt.
Charming quirks aside, the café specializes in hearty mountain cuisine for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Its signature dish is the ruby red trout, which is served alongside eggs or over a spinach salad with chipotle sun-dried tomato vinaigrette, depending on the time of day. Another favorite is the corn beef and hash browns for breakfast and the ever-popular Arapahoe burgers for dinner. Dinner entrees range from $9.95 up to $21.95 for the Flatiron Sirloin.
“We work on keeping it simple and keeping it good,” says Doug Pierce, the café’s likable owner and head chef. “It’s a locals’ place. We know your name. We know what you want. And the hospitality is sincere.”
And it’s been that way for a long time. The Arapahoe Café will be celebrating its 60th anniversary in Summit this year, a lifespan that has seen the restaurant change its location twice, while keeping its original structure intact both times (hence the leaning doors and the tilting floors). The fact that the Arapahoe Café was just voted the best restaurant in Dillon speaks to the enduring popularity of the establishment.
“We can’t get any busier,” Hodges said. “We’re a historical site, so we can’t grow. We’re beating last year’s numbers times three. We are off the beaten path in Dillon, but people know how to find us.”
626 Lake Dillon Drive
Dillon
970-468-0873
Andrew Tolve is a regular contributor to Colorado Summit Magazine.
