Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2024 i 5280 Magazine

When I moved to Denver in the early aughts, Union Station was a grand but dilapidated building that didn’t offer much beyond a couple of model train layouts that had long occupied its basement. By 2014, though, the depot had been remade—courtesy of a historic public-private partnership—into a transportation hub dressed up with high-end restaurants, a boutique hotel, smart retail, and an elegant central hall. In those days, 5280’s office was right around the corner, a location that gave us a front-row seat to Union Station’s rebirth and what it did for the area. And what it did was spark verve: There was an energy in LoDo that hadn’t been there before. Kids frolicked in the plaza fountain, downtown workers grabbed lunch at Zoe Ma Ma, and travelers with roller…

Chef Sean Baek’s two-decade-long culinary journey has taken him to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and multiple other Middle Eastern countries, where he worked as a private chef and as the brand executive chef for luxury Japanese chain Katsuya. The Korea native’s first restaurant job, though, was in comparatively humble Cherry Creek, where Baek cooked at the long-closed Mao Asian Bistro after moving to Aurora at 16 years old. In 2022, Baek returned to Colorado hoping to establish a business of his own. Baekga, an eatery that’s been serving out of Lowry Town Center since May, is just that. The restaurant offers a menu of Korean fare that’s as delicious as it is versatile. For dinner, keep it casual with an order of pajeon—a thin, crispy-chewy pancake with…

When Elise Wiggins was six years old, her father took her hunting on family land in Louisiana. The duo eventually came upon a blackbird, but before firing, he told her, “We don’t just shoot to kill. We shoot to eat.” Wiggins never forgot the lesson. Today, she’s the chef/owner of Cattivella, a wood-fired Italian restaurant in Denver’s Central Park neighborhood, as well as an avid sportsperson who’s passionate about wild game. In fact, she bagged her first elk last year in New Mexico. Many people would have ground the resulting meat to make simple sausages or chilis. Then again, most people aren’t world-class toques—but you can pretend to be by following Wiggins’ recipe for grilled elk chop, featuring ingredients found in the wilds of Colorado. WILD ELK DISH Serves 2…

Tin Can Camp may be Instagram-worthy, but the collection of five new rental micro-cabins in the San Luis Valley is far from an amenity-laden glamping experience. That’s by design. “We wanted to make sure that we would be able to restore the landscape to its original integrity [when we eventually remove the structures],” says Maddy Ahlborn, development and communications coordinator for the nonprofit San Luis Valley Great Outdoors (SLV GO), which opened the camp ($80 per night) to visitors in May. The purpose of the project is twofold. It will help relieve pressure on the dispersed camping areas near Penitente Canyon—a climbing, hiking, and biking destination about 30 minutes southwest of Saguache that has seen a massive increase in use since the pandemic began—and provide SLV GO with another revenue…

If a dish can tell a story, then the deep-fried shrimp paste at Dân Dã—the Vietnamese restaurant that sisters An and Thao Nguyen opened on Aurora’s East Colfax Avenue in April—weaves a full yarn. The crispy-edged envelopes, composed of rice paper spread with shrimp paste and then fried, brim with notes of shallot and garlic and the springy texture of their namesake crustacean. For me, when the fried shrimp paste is tucked into a spring roll and dipped in the accompanying sweet-tangy nuoc cham sauce, it’s a drive-across-town-worthy snack. But for chef An, the pockets are a nod to the past. Her mother, Ha Pham, created this recipe for New Saigon, which opened on South Federal Boulevard in 1987. The Denver institution, which the family ran for decades before selling…

Small Plates, Big Flavors Five-month-old Corsica Wine Bar, from the team behind Barcelona Wine Bar, caters to the same cravings for easy-to-drink wines, specialty cocktails, and streamlined small plates as its sister concept. But instead of serving Spanish fare, the RiNo spot’s menu is inspired by the island of Corsica, a former geopolitical battleground between France and Italy whose cuisine is influenced by both countries. Pick a glass of vino sourced from the namesake isle, or cool down with a slushy-machine-dispensed Pastis-y Freeze, which offsets French Pernod’s licorice notes with a strong dose of lime and mint. Then fill up on beef brochettes and white beans en brodo—a meal that’ll transport you to the shores of the Mediterranean. SYMBOL KEY Indicates a restaurant featured in 5280 for the first time…

Marissa Garcia describes her family as supportive, but mental health wasn’t something they discussed around the dinner table. So when she struggled with her emotional well-being in high school, she felt alone. “By overcoming that and piecing myself back together,” she says, “I just really became interested in the meaning behind what happened and the ‘whys.’ ” The 23-year-old Thornton resident’s search for answers led her to the Youth Mental Health Corps (YMHC), an AmeriCorps initiative that launched in four states, including Colorado, this past summer. With 42 percent of high school students reporting persistent feelings of hopelessness and with suicide ranking as the second-leading cause of death among kids ages 10 to 14 in America, the youth mental health emergency isn’t burgeoning—it’s raging. To quell the epidemic, the YMHC…

Peter Heller has an uncanny ability to, as he puts it, hear the train whistle from around the bend. In 2012, he penned his debut novel, The Dog Stars, about a postapocalyptic world ravaged by a never-before-seen virus. Within a decade, COVID-19 emerged, creating a pandemic that has killed more than seven million people worldwide. Then, in 2019, he wrote The River, about college friends trying to outrun a massive wildfire—among other dangers—in northern Canada. In the years since, Canadian provinces have seen some of their most active fire seasons in recorded history. “It’s a little weird,” Heller admits. His eighth work of fiction, Burn, was published on August 13 (Knopf) and follows two lifelong friends and hunting partners who emerge from the woods of Maine to find a civil…

LUMPIA Filipino-style lumpia are usually slightly longer and thinner than an egg roll and have a more delicate, shatteringly thin fried skin. Order the pork-packed shorties at Paborito, a ghost kitchen in Lincoln Park that began serving Filipino barbecue for delivery and pickup this past June. BO SSAM This Korean dish typically features braised pork that’s eaten wrapped in lettuce with a rainbow of condiments. At Silla, one of Aurora’s oldest Korean eateries, guests top ruffly green leaves with pieces of tender pork belly, sliced veggies, kimchi, and a bit of umami-rich ssamjang paste. TEMAKI Nearly four-year-old Temaki Den inside the Source Market Hall in RiNo specializes in the eponymous Japanese specialty, a classic sushi roll (or a cone-shaped handheld) that consists of nori wrapped around rice and fillings. The…

Before she was big enough to carry a gun, Melissa Johnson would follow her father through the grasslands surrounding Trinchera, the rural southeast Colorado community where her family has hunted for decades. But when she turned 14, Johnson approached her dad. “I’m not going to be able to hunt,” she told him. “I just cannot pull the trigger. I cannot kill something.” He conceded to her conscience, and Johnson retired her rifle. About 15 years later, the Colorado Springs resident returned to Trinchera to interview ranching families for her master’s degree at Colorado College, which focused on Southwest studies. Through her research, Johnson came to understand that hunting provided food for locals’ tables and connected them to the land and each other. She started stalking again, this time with gratitude…

For rookies who are light on skills, Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s (CPW) Hunter Outreach Program includes educational offerings, from in-person clinics to online curricula. The agency also organizes mentor hunts, during which a seasoned stalker guides novices on an outing. Perhaps no Coloradan has embraced these opportunities more than Cheryl Varela, 53, who attended her first class as a beginner in 2016 and became CPW’s first woman mentor this summer. We recently spoke with the Longmont resident about the importance of proper schooling. 5280: Why did you want to start hunting? Cheryl Varela: Being a mom of two boys, one of them with special needs, hunting is just a good way for me to get outdoors. It’s not even about the harvest. It’s about enjoying nature and being part of conservation.…

On a crisp morning in February 2023, a few pals and I set off through the woods outside of Fairplay—though this was hardly a leisurely hike. Armed with a shotgun, I scanned the trees looking for movement. The silence was broken when we finally heard a rustling in the branches above us. Acorns from the wall of oaks surrounding us littered the ground. As yet another hit the earth, I steadied my gun and took aim at the critter perched on a branch above me. Even from 20 yards away, I knew this particularly plump squirrel would make for good eating. Now 30, I grew up hunting deer and turkey on my grandfather’s farm in Missouri and survived college in Florida on the wild boar meat I harvested there. I…