Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i 5280 Magazine

In 2022, NeKeia McSwain visited the Johannesburg manufacturing facility of Ngala Trading. The Denver-based interior designer was working with the South African decor-maker on a new line of furnishings, and during her tour, she asked one of Ngala’s artisans, “Can you braid?” “She looked at me like I was crazy,” McSwain recalls. “Then she showed me eight or nine braid options and asked, ‘Which one do you want?’” Getting to know the talented crafts-people at Ngala was a career highlight for McSwain. She first teamed up with the company in 2021, when they collaborated on a capsule collection of lighting designs featuring cascading tiers of hand-cut leather in the rich colors of the savanna. This past fall, McSwain and Ngala reunited for the second NeKeia Collection. “My culture means everything…

GET A SPECIALDISCOUNTWHEN YOU PURCHASE 4+ TICKETS!* *SIMPLY CHOOSE GA: BRUNCHCREW MARCH 29 10 AM – 1 PM A memorable Saturday morning jam-packed with the best of Denver brunch is calling your name! Delectable menus from editor-picked restaurants, tasty beverages, build-your-own Bloody Mary station, stunning lounges, and a dynamic DJ set are just some of the wonders you can expect to revel in! Scan for tickets TICKETS WILL GO ON SALE 2/17 THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:…

Alma Fonda Fina, Cozobi Fonda Fina, and Mezcaleria Alma Luckily, there are multiple opportunities to taste the fare of chef Johnny Curiel. His Michelinstarred LoHi restaurant Alma Fonda Fina pays homage to his Guadalajaran roots; Boulder’s Cozobi Fonda Fina hosts an impressive nixtamalization program; and three-month-old Mezcaleria Alma serves small plates and agave spirits next door to Alma Fonda Fina. Mi Tierra Caliente When the trio of Ayax Silva, Sandra Calderon, and Fernanda Calderon opened Mi Tierra Caliente in Arvada in 2023, they wanted to turn the spotlight on the cuisine of Michoacán: All three are from the western state in Mexico. Settle into their colorful restaurant and order the dishes denoted as Michoacán, such as the morisqueta, a family recipe of rice and pinto beans topped with fried pork…

Growing up on her family’s sprawling ranch an hour southeast of Trinidad, Kaylinn Gilstrap recalls that her great-grandfather, who moved to the homestead in the early 1900s, loomed large in family lore: Roy Louden was remembered for dipping his cowboy hat into murky ponds for a drink and popping his fake eye into his mouth to clean it. Relatives said less about his wife, Zita, who outlived Roy but died three months after Gilstrap was born in 1983. That Zita was overshadowed by her husband eventually began to weigh on her great-granddaughter. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, there is a woman behind these guys,” Gilstrap says, “and she is just as powerful and interesting.” A professional photographer, Gilstrap now lives in Atlanta and tries to return to the ranch for…

Back To Basics The Velveteers, a Boulder rock trio featuring vocalist/guitarist Demi Demitro (middle) and dual drummers Baby Pottersmith (left) and Jonny Fig (right), spent six years scheduling their own gigs and producing their own music before releasing their first label-backed album, Nightmare Daydream, in 2021. But the following two whirlwind years on the road, opening for big-name acts including Guns N’ Roses, proved that entering the music-industry machine can grind at a band’s soul. “We do this because we love making art,” Demitro says. “And a lot of times, when you’re successful at something, it pulls you away from the reason you started doing it in the first place.” So for their follow-up, A Million Knives, which debuts on Valentine’s Day, the Velveteers attempted to channel their early, independent…

When superstar snowboarder Shaun White announced his retirement in 2022, he had amassed three Olympic golds, 23 X Games medals, and a fortune unheard of for most action sports athletes. His latest follow-up trick: providing up-and-coming riders with a launchpad to similar success. Debuting at Aspen’s Buttermilk Mountain next month, the Snow League is a four-event, yearlong series that will travel to different resorts around the world. The inaugural season runs through the winter of 2026 and boasts a combined prize purse of $1.5 million––half a million more than the X Games and an all-time high for snowsports. And with the heightened visibility of live, ticketed events that will air on Peacock and NBC, the league aims to bring major sponsorship opportunities to athletes, many of whom struggle to make…

Edible Art How do you go from being a software engineer to producing 1,500 to 2,500 bonbons a week in your basement? For Liane Pensack-Rinehart, it started with a weekend pastry school program. Demand quickly grew for the organic, fair-trade chocolates she began making in 2019 under the name Colorado Cocoa Pod in her Green Valley Ranch home. There, it takes Pensack-Rinehart four days to produce each batch of jewel-like rounds (around $23 for six) and glossy tablets (starting at $16), often inspired by the flavors—milk tea, caramel and black sesame, matcha—she grew up devouring as a child of Chinese and Japanese descent. She makes all her fillings from scratch, hand-paints the exteriors with colored cocoa butter, and slowly heats and cools the chocolate to yield a smooth, shiny finish…

Stephen Graham Jones loves knives—slashing implements of any kind, really. His first task during a recent reorganization of his desk? Figuring out where to put his “big knife.” (Right next to the computer monitor, of course.) During lunch this past December, the Boulder author whips out a blade from his belt and marvels over its Damascus titanium edge. “This is my dress knife,” Jones says. Perhaps sharp objects serve as motivation, though less directly than they once did: As a young, struggling writer living in a Dallas suburb, Jones worked a series of warehouse jobs to pay his bills. He rarely got to his computer before 11 p.m. Exhausted, he’d often fall asleep, collapsing face-first on his desk. To stay awake, Jones gathered a few small knives and glued them…

Growing up in Detroit in the 1980s and ’90s, Anna Kaye saw a lot of abandoned homes, blighted buildings, and neglected city parks—scenes of urban decay that prompted the visual artist to search for greener pastures in her mid-20s. But after she landed in Colorado, Kaye found herself enthralled by a different kind of destruction: the Centennial State’s cycles of rampant wildfires. Like a moth to a flame, Kaye has dedicated a large part of her artistic career (which has included watercolor paintings and colored pencil drawings) to depicting forest fires in hyperrealistic charcoal works, and 20 of them will be on display during a solo exhibit at the Denver Botanic Gardens from February 15 to May 20. Ahead of the opening of Finding Light, we spoke with Kaye about…

When you walk into Xiquita, the new Uptown restaurant from James Beard Foundation Award–nominated chef Erasmo Casiano, one of the first things you’ll notice is a vibrant mural of multicolored corn cobs. The painting, by Panama-born artist and former Denver resident Jahna Rae, is a clue to what Xiquita (pronounced “Chiquita,” like the banana), is all about. Another hint: The menu, written in Spanish and a variety of Mexico’s Indigenous languages, points to Casiano’s commitment to ancestral foodways. An English-translated menu is tucked beneath the primary version, and non-native Spanish speakers needn’t feel shy about using it. Xiquita is an unapologetic ode to the dynamic cuisine of Mexico City, and diners will benefit from learning all they can about how that translates to the kitchen’s ingredients and techniques. In fact,…

When Alex Jump started bartending 12 years ago, a customer asking for a nonalcoholic (NA) option usually sent her scrambling to dust off an expired bottle of O’Doul’s. In fact, she didn’t work for an establishment with NA drinks on the menu until she was hired to open the Denver location of illustrious NYC cocktail bar Death & Co in 2018. Today, she says, “a lot of people are exploring sobriety or just mindful drinking”—and local bars, restaurants, and beverage makers are responding by offering more alcohol by volume (ABV) diversity in the form of session and NA beers, mocktails, and dealcoholized wines. In fact, Colorado is one of the top five states for NA sales, which have increased 25 to 30 percent in the United States each of the…

PRICE KEY Average Entrée $ under $15 $$ $16 to $20 $$$ $21 to $30 $$$$ $31 and higher SYMBOL KEY Indicates a restaurant featured in 5280 for the first time (though not necessarily a restaurant that has just opened). Indicates inclusion in 5280’s 2024 list of Denver’s best restaurants. These selections are at the discretion of 5280 editors and are subject to change. ACE EAT SERVE $$$ Uptown / Asian This Uptown restaurant and pingpong hall features Asian-inspired cuisine and 10 ping-pong tables. Try the Sichuan shrimp wontons. Reservations accepted. 501 E. 17th Ave., 303-800-7705. Dinner, Brunch AFRICAN GRILL & BAR $$ Lakewood / African Explore a bevy of dishes from across Africa at this warm and inviting restaurant. Peanut soups, samosas, and jollof rice are just some of the crave-worthy options available here. Reservations…