Dirty Love

Sean Yontz is a survivor, a success story in an industry that does not take kindly to failure. He worked in the shadow of Richard Sandoval at Tamayo when modern Mexican and Nuevo Latino were all the rage, then set off on his own and wound up taking some serious hits with his super-high-end, nouvelle Mexi-French Vega -- a restaurant that opened big and then died slowly, a little bit every night.

And when it finally went down, it went loudly -- with Yontz cursing fine dining to anyone who would listen. Denver didn't like white tablecloths and Denver didn't want white tablecloths, he said. And he swore to God and Escoffier that he would never, ever make that same mistake again.

And he didn't. When Yontz came back on the scene, it was with a passion for places without tablecloths, for honest food inspired by the way real people actually eat. He opened the kitchen at Mezcal (along with his buddy and almost-partner, owner Jesse Morreale) to rave reviews. He consulted quietly around town for some very big names, turning borderline kitchens into profitable operations. He got involved in the menu at Sketch (also a Morreale joint) and is on the hook for the All-Inn (Morreale's hotel). But four months ago, he took all the tough lessons he'd learned and struck out on his own again, this time in Belmar, his second attempt at having his own place and doing things his own way.

The restaurant is called Chama, and with it, Sean Yontz has become Denver's poster boy for failing upward.

Although I know Sean Yontz, it's not like we're BFF or anything. We don't hang out on the weekends and kick it downtown. But we do keep the same sort of schedule, tend to haunt the same kind of places, and I use Mezcal -- where Yontz is still a consultant -- as an occasional home-base location for those two activities most important to journalists: interviews and curing hangovers. After a few years of doing this job in Denver, it would be tough not to have crossed paths with Yontz now and then. We've shared a few beers. We talk on the phone. And he and his guys have cooked for me (both knowingly and not so) more times than I can count. That's why I can say that I think Yontz is one of Denver's big-time movers in the city's transformation from played-out, high-end excess to serious food-world respectability. I can say it because I do know the guy -- because I've been watching him for years -- and because with Chama, I believe he's finally proven his genius.

Despite what Gourmet magazine, the Food Network and a glut of celebrity cookbooks would have us believe, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to make a great taco. What it takes are some good carnitas or asada, decent tortillas, a little shredded cabbage, a few diced tommies, cheese, and the will to leave it at that -- which Yontz has. It also helps if a cook has actually had the real thing before, walked the streets of Mexico eating street food, collapsed onto a bar stool at the end of a long night in Juarez and turned his last American dollars into a plate of tacos al pastor. And Yontz has done that, too.

The tacos and burritos and sides of calabacitas and beans at Chama might not be brilliant, but they're right. All the little details are perfect. The ceviche would only taste more authentic if it were served in a waxy Dixie cup. The coctél de camarones is charged with an electric dose of jalapeño, cooled out by smooth chunks of avocado and a great tomato juice rather than cocktail sauce. And the hostess stand doesn't stock mints for customers to pick up at the end of their meal, but a basket of Canel's chewing gum -- the kind of Mexican Chiclets that little girls on the border sell to tourists for pocket change.

Still, Yontz's true genius lies in his approach to the restaurant business. After crashing and burning at Vega, he lost his taste for fine dining, but developed a respect for restaurants that truck money in gross amounts. Right down the street from Chama is P.F. Chang's China Bistro. Yontz likes P.F. Chang's. Not necessarily for the food, but for the fact that P.F. Chang's turns some serious numbers. Before he thought of opening Chama, he asked me why an independent restaurateur couldn't do the same thing, only better -- why a single owner with a single location couldn't use a chain restaurant's tricks to get a piece of that action.

I didn't have a good answer, except that he wasn't the first guy to try -- and that others had failed miserably. But Yontz went on to open Chama right in sight of a P.F. Chang's (a move akin to setting up a Democracy Now booth in the middle of Tiananmen Square), across the street from a Johnny Rocket's, next door to a Lucky Strike Lanes and more or less in the lap of Belmar's Century 16 multiplex. He kept his prices on the floor (the menu tops out at $19, but more than three-quarters of the dishes come in at under $10), built a restaurant in the round, with excellent flow and tables crammed in every which way, outfitted a great bar with a killer tequila list longer than the menu, staffed the place with some serious mercenary talent and then set about making his fortune.