Event Location:
Six89
689 Main St., Carbondale, CO

Thursday, June 7
Members $100, guests $125

For reservations or more information, please call (970) 963-6890.

Any serious foodie thinking of heading to Aspen for this year’s Food & Wine Classic (June 15 to 17) might want to consider leaving a few days early. We’re having a little Colorado food and wine festival of our own, thanks to Mark Fischer, who has invited some of Aspen’s finest chefs to drive the 30 miles down to Carbondale for his first Friends of James Beard Benefit.

Carbondale, Colorado, sits at the junction of the Roaring Fork and Crystal Rivers. And while the scenery is certainly breathtaking, and the skiing and summer sports fine, the reason why people are making the drive these days is for Fischer’s New American cooking at his friendly restaurant and wine bar, Six89. Fischer, who was chef of San Francisco’s legendary Fog City Diner and Aspen’s Caribou Club, draws on the cuisines of the world to produce the highly personal fare that inspired Gourmet to call the restaurant "a must-stop on any self-respecting chow-hound’s Aspen itinerary." Writing in Aspen Magazine, Tom Passavant, the editor-in-chief of Diversion, warned, "If every Sunday drive ended at a restaurant as good as Six89, America would be facing a severe gas shortage."

Making that drive for this Thursday event will be Thomas Colosi, whose Southwestern, Caribbean, and Latin American flavors have made his Blue Maize restaurant as hot a destination as its flavorful cuisine. Colosi tries to use as many local high-mountain ingredients as possible, all to delicious effect (think blue corn–crusted trout with pineapple-habanero sauce and coconut rice, or grilled buffalo steak with cranberry-pasilla sauce and roasted-garlic mashed potatoes). Aspen.com’s Christina Patterson wrote that "people are flocking to [Colosi’s] restaurant as if it was the end point of a holy pilgrimage," offering up her own prayer, "Thank you, God, for those Jalapeño Seafood Poppers [jalapeños stuffed with shrimp] smothered with that chili preserve."

He’ll be coming with fellow Aspen citizen Charles Dale of Renaissance and the new Rustique, a familiar face at the Beard House. Twice nominated for one of our American Express Best Chef: Southwest awards, Dale shares with his cooking a warm, approachable, intelligent air. He worked in New York at Le Cirque under Alain Sailhac and Daniel Boulud, and was chef of the Casual Quilted Giraffe before opting for a change of scenery. He opened Renaissance in 1990. The editors of Cooking Light noted the uniqueness of Dale’s modern French menu among the other Aspen offerings. Food & Wine picked him as a Best New Chef in 1995. In Gourmet, Alison Cook wrote that Dale’s newest restaurant, the country French Rustique, "features sleeked-up dishes out of Dale’s French childhood," adding that the "creamy, bacon-laced rabbit risotto that could melt the chill edge off a snowy night."

James Beard Award winner George Mahaffey is probably the first chef who comes to mind when you think of fine dining in the Rockies. According to Wine Spectator, under Mahaffey’s direction the quality of the food at the Inn at Little Nell—where he was executive chef for five years—finally matched the skiing in Aspen. He ended his stint in the mountains by taking the top spot at Mary Elaine’s at the Phoenician in Scottsdale. But the mountains beckoned, and Mahaffey returned to Aspen to open his own restaurant, Conundrum, named after a local hot spring. Mahaffey’s inspired fare, which features pairings such as a gazpacho "martini" with peekytoe crab and a fried oyster, has earned the restaurant a Mobil four-star rating. In the Denver Post, Bill St. John wrote that "at Conundrum, chef George Mahaffey will give your tongue hours of delight."

After meeting Todd English at a culinary event, Jason Rogers, then the chef de cuisine at the Vail Cascade Club, was hired to open English’s Olives Aspen as restaurant chef. Rogers, who apprenticed with Lidia Bastianich at Felidia’s and was sous-chef at The Whitehall Club in Chicago, was recently promoted to executive chef at Olives, which was named Best New Restaurant 2000 by the Aspen Daily News.

What are you waiting for? Talk to your travel agent now.