A bed of quinoa salted with Parmigiano Reggiano was topped with tender lamb shank, its slightly wild richness laced with the pungent taste of mustard. On another plate, chunks of beef slid right off the haunch in a version of osso buco, the meaty juices pouring into a dune of polenta sweetened with roasted tomatoes.
The caliber of the dishes was fairly typical of an upscale Italian restaurant in any major city – Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, LA
Except I was in… Alamosa in southern Colorado. Population: approx. 9,800. I was just outside of town on a balmy September evening on my way to camp under the stars before hiking a few miles to go rafting on the Conejos River, a popular fishing spot.
Before I left Trinidad early that morning, several friends had texted me that there was an “amazing” new restaurant in Alamosa. Yes, right, I said – it’s probably right next to the Nobu and the Nordstrom, which are also absent on the way to and from the sleepy little town that serves as a gateway to the surrounding San Luis Valley and is frequented mostly by out-of-towners Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve.
Imagine my surprise when I pulled up in front of The Friar’s Fork, located in a disused adobe church one block off Main Street at 607 4th Street. The 1926 building has always been striking, but it had sat vacant for years, its episcopal tenants long gone, the facade was beginning to crumble slightly, and trash clung to the walls along the sidewalk.
But last year it was transformed into a warm and welcoming space, colorful with southwestern turquoise and red, made whimsical by ecclesiastical touches — a lectern serves as a host’s stand and pews are pews — and sits across from The Sanctuary in a pretty courtyard, a cocktail bar, and a coffee house in a chapel owned by the same family.
Now, what doesn’t surprise me is that Friar’s Fork is one of the thirteen Colorado chefs and restaurants announced on the 25th.
The news came as a shock to owners Denise Vigil and her husband Nealson Vialpando. “We’re still working on it. I really don’t know how that happened,” says Vigil, who is originally from Alamosa and says she’s “delighted” to be back. “I’m not a big, flashy person; I just keep my head down and do my job. Being in the spotlight is just not my thing and we were blown away.”
Because she’s so proud of her hometown, Vigil says what makes her really happy is that this will also bring the spotlight to Alamosa. “I worked at a really high level for decades; then COVID hit, and it made me think, ‘What am I going to do with these last 25 years of work that I have left?’” she says. “I knew I didn’t want to plate with tweezers anymore, and I wanted to do something different that really felt like it was my vision. I’m just… the James Beard… that never crossed my mind.
However, if you listen to Vigil’s work history as a professional chef, it all makes sense: After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1997, she traveled the country cooking in some of the most famous kitchens: Coyote Cafe & Cantina in Santa Fe; little Nell in Aspen; Higgins in Portland; Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort near Provo, Utah.
She worked in the kitchen at The Fort in Morrison for a while – ‘Sam [Arnold, the founder] was still alive and it was just wonderful to meet him,” recalls Vigil – and then found himself cooking at the Devil’s Thumb Ranch in Tabernash on New Year’s Eve 2000. However, after she gave birth to her daughter, she knew she needed to get off the foodie treadmill and her crazy hours, so she spent the next seven years managing eight Starbucks stores between Denver and Pueblo.
By the time her daughter started school, Vigil was ready to get back into the kitchen, and she says one of her most memorable experiences was working as executive chef for billionaire Louis Bacon at Trinchera Ranch in Colorado’s San Luis Valley . “I mean, I used to grill sausages for the bigwigs at the Bass Pro Shop, you know, but the budget was amazing and the people I got to meet, wow, because it was mostly Louis’ family and guests,” she says: “It was just very interesting to be at this level and with this type of clientele.”
As the pandemic wound down and their daughter left college, Vigil and Vialpando were visiting friends and family in Alamosa when Vigil noticed that the old St. Thomas Church, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was for sale.
“It was exactly what I was looking for: a small, low-key place in my city where I could just do my thing in peace,” Vigil recalls. She figured no one would know she’d bought the building.
“Honestly, my friends asked me, ‘Do you think you’re going to open Twyla’s Cafe here?'” she adds, laughing at the reference to the television show Schitt’s Creek. “But at that point I didn’t think anywhere in my vision that anyone would pay attention to what I was doing here.”
With the exception of the ‘big stuff’ like electrical and plumbing, Vigil and Vialpando did most of the work in the space over a nine-month period. “This interior – I painted, glazed, stained and textured the walls,” she explains. “We really cleaned it up and pretty much remade everything to make it usable.”
The Friar’s Fork opened last July. Soon after, a couple of real brothers stopped off during an annual pilgrimage, which was another pleasant surprise. Vigil says the city is open-minded about what the restaurant is doing, which is a menu that focuses on three food categories.
First, Vigil names the “usual Italian suspects – things like spaghetti and lasagna, things people recognize”. Then there are more sophisticated dishes like the osso buco and the lamb risotto. “The third category is kind of a combination,” she explains. “For example, we have a fried sausage sandwich on the menu for lunch, and people know that, but we make it with an imported sausage that we shave very, very thin and we stack it high with the giardiniera and lay all in on a really nice piece of bread.”
Obtaining it in a small, remote town was a bit tricky, but Vigil feels like figuring it out. “We try to be local and only good environmental choices whenever possible, like agave straws and compostable to-go packaging,” she notes. “We source our vodka from Marble [in Carbondale] – it’s the greenest distillery in the country – and we only ever stock four or five beers because we don’t even drive out of the valley to get them. We hope to transfer our lamb to a local rancher who is interested soon.”
However, unlike so many unfortunate scenarios across the state, Vigil says she has had no trouble finding good people to work in Friar’s Fork. “There were very few people with experience here, but that was okay,” she says. “I would rather train people from scratch than have to break their bad habits. But we also pay very well – fourteen dollars an hour plus tip. I think the most important thing is to give people a living wage and pay them what they are worth. Then they have to learn the dance moves and how to dance together. And so far they have done wonderfully.”
Vigil is already looking forward to Friar’s Fork’s first full summer at Space: “I’ll get out the big pans and make paella in the courtyard,” she promises.
And she really doesn’t have time to worry about the restaurant getting the James Beard Award. “I don’t know how to proceed. It might be, but really, that’s pretty good, isn’t it? It’s so much more than we ever expected,” she concludes. “As far as we’re concerned, we’ve already won.”
