<\/p>\n
In 1930, a Philadelphia hot dog vendor named Pat Olivieri tossed some beef on a grill for a sandwich. A passing cab driver caught a whiff of the sizzling steak and soon Olivieri had a following. The Philly Cheesesteak \u2013 a signature of the city \u2013 was born.<\/p>\n
Is there one Colorado food that\u2019s as iconic?<\/p>\n
Texan John Battey\u2019s niece recently moved back to the Lone Star State after living in Colorado for many years. As he helped her move, Texan braggadocio took over as they spoke of their shared love of cooking and they \u201cstarted bragging and getting competitive,\u201d Battey said.<\/p>\n
Now, he wants to surprise his niece with an authentic taste of Colorado.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hoping to include the dish as part of Christmas dinner,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
CPR\u2019s Colorado Wonders found where to start, but there\u2019s no clear champion. For Battey and Coloradans everywhere, it\u2019s time to decide. We spoke to historians and the owners of some of Colorado\u2019s oldest restaurants to find our eight contenders.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been in Colorado for any amount of time, you\u2019ve probably noticed that you can get green chile in a cup or bowl, smothered burrito or inside your breakfast burrito, pretty much anywhere in the state. Its ubiquity alone makes it a top contender. It\u2019s also delicious. Made with pork, tomatoes and Pueblo green chiles, it\u2019s a stew that shows a collision of cultures in Southern Colorado.<\/p>\n
\u201cItalian migrants came to Pueblo in the early 20th century to mine coal. And there they encountered the Chile. Their Hispanic neighbors were eating chilies and they would take the ingredients, all of the flavors and all these cultures and kind of smash them together,\u201d said Sam Bock, a historian at History Colorado. \u201cAnd that\u2019s where we get Colorado green chili, which is really prevalent up and down the Front Range. And in the San Luis Valley, it\u2019s a very unique dish that you don\u2019t find anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Green chile is also the chief reason Colorado is in a long-running feud with New Mexico.<\/p>\n
A cheeky name for a dish most certainly not from the ocean. Also known as Cowboy Caviar and Prairie Oysters, these oysters belonged to bulls before they were castrated. Chefs like Edgar Garcia at The Buckhorn Exchange in Denver cut them apart, fry \u2019em and pair \u2019em with horseradish or cocktail sauce. In fact, the Buckhorn serves between 300 and 500 pounds a week.<\/p>\n
\u201cRocky Mountain Oysters has been around for centuries. I heard a story from other people that in years past, you had to use every part of the animal,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cYou\u2019re not able to or you wouldn\u2019t be allowed to waste any food. So, therefore, somebody came up with the idea eating of Rocky Mountain Oysters.\u201d<\/p>\n
They sound scary, but they\u2019re fried deliciousness. Seriously.<\/p>\n
Take that delicious green chile stew and drown a cheeseburger in it. Voila, you have the Slopper. It\u2019s also a Pueblo invention, said Dean Gray, owner of Gray\u2019s Coors Tavern.<\/p>\n
\u201cA guy named Herb Casebeer used to own a sport shop over here around the corner. He used to come in all the time and order food from the old owners, the Greco\u2019s,\u201d Gray said. \u201cAnd he would come in and say, \u2018Can I get a burger? Add some chile, just slop it all up.\u2019 And so every time he\u2019d come in and they started calling it, \u2018just give me one of those Sloppers.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Gray\u2019s claims to be the birthplace, but others say it was born at the nearby Star Bar.<\/p>\n
Did you know the cheeseburger was almost trademarked in Denver?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right, the owner of the long gone Humpty Dumpty Drive In at Speer and Federal, put cheese, peanut butter and even chocolate on burgers to figure out the perfect combination. After the cheese started to bring in customers, Louis Ballast started the trademark paperwork but never finished it. Today, a marble marker where the restaurant once stood claims the Mile High City as the birthplace of this iconic staple.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t the first to put cheese on a burger, but he certainly was the first to try and file the trademark,\u201d Bock said. \u201cHe filed the trademark in 1935, but we have some menus from other restaurants around the country that offered cheeseburgers around that time. In fact, one in LA had chili cheeseburgers. So, you know, the cheeseburger is really something that goes back almost a whole century in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coloradans really like their burgers, and this one was definitely invented in the Mile High City, said William Philpott, an environmental historian at The University of Colorado Denver.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt came from a place called Joe\u2019s Buffet on the west side of Santa Fe Drive in the \u201960s,\u201d Philpott said. \u201cI remember growing up and seeing Mexican hamburgers on the menu and thinking, well, I don\u2019t want to eat that because that\u2019s not truly Mexican, but I didn\u2019t realize it was from Denver and it\u2019s more intriguing to me now that I realize it was, you know, that it is that mix of influences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rumor has it a waitress at Joe\u2019s had the idea to put a hamburger patty in a burrito that was on the menu and the Mexican hamburger was born, and in true Colorado fashion, it\u2019s smothered in green chile.<\/p>\n
This omelet of ham, onions and green peppers \u2013 it oftentimes also has cheese \u2013 has been around since the railroad days according to historians. In other parts of the country, it\u2019s also called a Western omelet.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome believe that it is a riff on an egg foo yung, which would have been an Americanized kind of Chinese, get all kinds of leftovers, put them together in an egg dish,\u201d said soul food historian Adrian Miller.<\/p>\n
However, there were many more Chinese immigrants in California than Colorado, Miller said, so it\u2019s likely the dish started in California and made its way here.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s unclear if it started in Denver, but Denver certainly took on its name,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
This is perhaps the easiest thing to prepare. Just crack a cold one. We\u2019re not going to get dragged into the beer as food debate, but you can\u2019t argue that craft beer isn\u2019t synonymous with Colorado in some way. The relationship started with German settlers drawn by the early gold and mining rush. The name Coors rings a bell, right? Later, our love of suds blossomed into something more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a quirk of Colorado that we have this beer industry here,\u201d Bock said. \u201cIt\u2019s related to the explosion of outdoor recreation and sort of our amenity lifestyle that rose up in Colorado since the 1970s and people moved here for the lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n
We have the fourth most breweries per capita in the U.S. with almost 400 established breweries, according to the Brewers Association. Colorado is a beer lovers dream, and for that, microbrew might just be our claim to fame.<\/p>\n
This is less a food and more about a state of mind. Colorado\u2019s claim as the \u201cfast casual capitol\u201d is best exemplified by the spread of Chipotle and now there are too many chains to count.<\/p>\n
\u201cFast casual is an approach to food that emphasizes things like fresh quality ingredients, often healthy ingredients,\u201d Philpott said. \u201cIt\u2019s premised on kind of a fast pace of life. Like you want quality food, but you don\u2019t have a lot of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Centennial State launched Noodles & Co., Tokyo Joe\u2019s, Quizno\u2019s, Good Times, Illegal Pete\u2019s, Mad Greens \u2013 and the list goes on. The dining style epitomizes that Coloradans seem to prefer something healthy but quick so we can go out and get doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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