When Kelly Liken opened her namesake restaurant in the heart of the village of Vail, Colo., in 2004, Ski magazine wrote that the young chef “rattled the village’s culinary boy’s club.” But Liken, now 31, says the restaurant she owns with husband and partner Rick Colomitz is in part an effort to raise the bar in culinary cuisine in Vail and to lift Vail itself as a dining destination.
“I don’t feel as if we compete against the other great restaurants here,” says Liken, who has also been written up favorably in The New York Times Travel section, twice in Bon Appétit and in the United Airlines magazine, Hemisphere. Instead, she says, the competition is places like Aspen, Breckenridge, Telluride and even Denver.
“We have an unusual situation,” she says. “Our customers are people who don’t live here, so they are not going to eat at same place every night. We get people in town for five or six nights. We just want one of them.”
Liken’s mother was a cook who constantly explored new recipes and sought out fresh products at the local farmers’ market. Taking that cue, Liken, who grew up in Pittsburgh, showcases the ingredients of the local Rocky Mountain region including elk, wild trout and organic rabbit, all of which are sourced from local purveyors.
She also purchases as much local produce as she can, winter weather notwithstanding.
“Winter is a challenging time when adhering to a seasonal menu, yet it is also our busiest season,” Liken says. “I like to create a menu that is as flavorful as it is distinctive to the region. If I can’t find an ingredient or product from Colorado, I won’t buy it from someplace else.”
This forces her to change her menu frequently as various products come into, and go out of, season.
Liken often calls on one local farmer who custom grows microgreens and mixes for her year-round including corn and pea shoots, baby rainbow chard, and lemon balm, all of which are featured on the menu. Indeed, she says, vegetables inspire her creativity more than proteins. She almost always builds a dish around a vegetable instead of meat as is traditional.
“So I spend a lot of time in farmers’ markets,” she says. “I say, ‘Gosh look at those gorgeous English peas. What can we make?’ I am more inspired by the bounty of fresh things that grow in the earth, so when I am at the farmers’ market I am like a kid in a candy store.”
The restaurant’s cocktails are hand-crafted using fresh local ingredients, though it didn’t start out that way. Colomitz explains that liquor sales initially weren’t as high as the couple had hoped, and the commercially made mixers behind the bar seemed incongruous with the kitchen’s fresh ingredients.
“So we said ‘let’s do seasonal cocktails,’ and we bought a juicer,” he says, “and with help from Kelly’s amazing palate as well as the staff’s, we created cocktails.”
Like the food menu, the cocktail list changes seasonally and has more than 100 recipes for specialty items. Colomitz, who is the restaurant’s general manager and wine manager, says the program resulted in a threefold cocktail sales increase and garnered praise in Vail’s local press and in Wine Spectator.
Liken, who graduated first in her 2002 class of The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., interned at the renowned Inn at Little Washington, outside of Washington, D.C., where chef Patrick O’Connell introduced her to the techniques of refined American cuisine.
Liken knew she wanted to be away from big cities, so she passed on offers from heavyweight establishments like Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago and New York City’s restaurant Daniel. The Rocky Mountain region had been a longtime family holiday destination, so for Liken, the bucolic environs made Vail an obvious choice.
AT A GLANCE Cuisine: seasonal AmericanWebsite:
Thus, after graduation, Liken headed west to work at Splendido at the Château in Beaver Creek, Colo., for a year and a half, which is where she also met Colomitz.
Liken, who comes from a long line of entrepreneurs, really wanted to “do her own food,” and when a dilapidated Chinese eatery at the entrance to Vail Village was for sale, she felt it was fortuitous. She says the dinner-only restaurant, which has cosmopolitan decor and about 2,000 square feet in the dining room, was financed with personal loans. Aside from her and Colomitz, however, there are no other partners.
Asked if she was worried that her age might detract from her success, Liken acknowledges that she was worried at first.
“I had no issue with the cooking part because I knew I could cook better than anyone in town, but the entire package of getting it open was daunting,” she says. “It was like I jumped in the deep end of a pool with my eyes closed. I was naïve, but I am glad that I was.”
She says the hardest part, which she never anticipated, was how personally she took even the smallest complaint that inevitably comes with the kinks of opening a new restaurant.
“Because I put my name on the door, I felt like any little problem—the dining room being too cold, a wait in the lobby—was leveled at me,” she says. “It really upset me a lot, and I had to learn to separate it. Fortunately there are very few kinks now anyway.”
The restaurant turned a profit in the third year, Liken says, but it was cash-flow-positive in the first seven months. She attributes the success of the restaurant to her team’s determination, passion and unerring commitment to quality.
“We’ve always said from the very beginning [our] goal was to create a positive, repeatable dining experience,” she says. “We feel we have achieved it, so now we are figuring out what to do next.”
So what’s next? Liken doesn’t want to change the original restaurant, but instead wants to open a second venue in Vail.
| FIRST COURSES |
| Winter Green Salad baby bibb lettuce, radicchio, toasted pecans, local pears, Gorgonzola cheese, cider vinaigrette $13 |
| Roasted Beet Salad Haystack Farms goat cheese sabayon, micro-brioche croutons, tarragon vinaigrette $15 |
| Seared Foie Gras pain d’épices french toast, orange-agave syrup, orange sections $23 |
| IN THE MIDDLE |
| Florida Grapefruit Granita fresh citrus salad, rum, cardamom emulsion $9 |
| MAIN COURSES |
| Kelly’s SIGNATURE Potato-Crusted Trout Fillets caramelized Brussels sprout leaves, toasted pecans, plump golden raisins $35 |
| Colorado Wildflower Honey-Glazed Duck Breast “high altitude turnip” laced creamy faro barley, crushed grapes, duck demi glace $36 |
| Mountain Meadows Lamb Loin sage and chèvre studded sourdough bread pudding, brown butter braised salsify $46 |
| Pan Seared Cod maple-mustard glaze, white quinoa pilaf, sautéed swiss chard $37 |
| Pot Roasted Organic Poussin white corn grits, pancetta, pearl onion-parsnip ragoût, butter kissed chicken reduction $35 |
| Braised Colorado Beef Short Rib leek scented organic lentils, Parmesan-truffle gratinée $41 |
| Pan Roasted Hampshire Pork Tenderloin sweet potato pirogi, caramelized onions, verjus scented napa cabbage slaw $38 |
“Maybe a ‘Bistro Kelly Liken’ serving breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she says. “I want to open something bigger, more casual and family-oriented that is fun and high-energy. I don’t want to compete with myself, but I do want to maintain the quality and keep it fresh and organic. We are looking right now for that opportunity, but we’ll wait for the right one.”
As for the original restaurant, she says that just because it is a success, she doesn’t want to sit on her laurels.
“I know I always need to come up with ideas on how to blow people away,” she says. “I want to keep it fresh and new, know when to change it, and [know] when to keep it organic.”
