Is this Denver’s hardest-working chef? 

Not long ago, the auto feeder for the pellet smoker that Old Capitol Grill & Smokehouse in Golden uses to cook its signature brisket broke down at 2:00 a.m., interrupting the 14 hours needed for the meat to be ready for the next day’s service. 

Stepping in to fix it was not a device repairman or the “new guy” just hired, but executive chef John Wilson, who hand-fed the pellets by the fistful, hour after hour, using an antique miner’s helmet to light his way. Then, with very little sleep behind him, he did what he does most every other day: He went to work. 

“He’s a get-it-done kind of guy,” says Dean Valdez, who along with his wife, Aimee, owns the Old Capitol Grill. “Really hands-on. He has the ultimate commitment to seeing things succeed.”

That commitment is why the Valdezes have tapped Wilson to lead all four of their restaurants in Golden. In addition to Old Capital Grill, they include the Miners Saloon gastropub, the Alchemy craft cocktail bar and the Italian concept Bella Colibri. 

As if the responsibilities of being an executive chef for four different restaurants with four different concepts aren’t enough, Wilson also has three kids, thirteen dogs, two cats, and is studying business management part-time at the Metropolitan State University in Denver.

“There is no downtime,” Wilson says, smirking. By all accounts, that’s just the way he likes it. 

‘I’ve never met a harder-working man in my life‘

Born and raised in Colorado Springs, Wilson found a passion for cooking at a young age and eventually studied at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America. During the first half of his culinary career, he bounced around through various kitchens, such as those at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colt & Gray, Root Down, Linger, and OTOTO Den, among others. 

In 2016, however, he got a fateful call from his friend, Noah Heaney, whom he worked with at Colt & Gray and had partnered with the Valdez family to open a new bar in Golden called Miners Saloon. 

“Noah called me and said he was opening an interesting concept in Golden, and asked if I could possibly help set up the culinary program,” Wilson says.  “He wanted me to do something very hands-on and different for the area. So when we first opened, we were extruding all our own sausages. We did our own charcuterie. We did house-made lavash. Anything that possibly could be made in-house, we made it.”

That’s a big enough task, made more challenging by the size of the kitchen and its equipment — or lack thereof.

“It was just a panini press, a Cryovac machine, a sous vide circulator and an Alto-Shaam Combi Oven,” Wilson says. “The walk-in was pretty much a keg cooler. I had to get creative with what I had. It was an extreme amount of doing more with less.”

And more he did. He put panini press “through the wringer,” using it to grill sausages, cook chicken breasts, scramble and fry eggs. It doubled as a hot plate to heat soup, a steamer to cook vegetables, and an ad-hoc wok for stir-fries. Oh, and sandwiches too. 

The bar that, on opening, expected food to contribute to roughly 20% of sales wound up making half its profits from the menu Wilson created and executed, in some cases by sheer force of will. 

“I’ve never met a harder-working man in my life than John Wilson,” says Heaney.

‘We just let him go with it‘

But the Valdez family was just getting started. The very next year, they bought Golden’s Old Capitol Grill, then a tourist-focused restaurant that occupied a building that once served as Colorado’s capitol back when it was still a territory in 1863. The goal was to make it more of a local spot by elevating the fare beyond burgers and beers. 

But when the high-priced steaks and long table turnover time began to take a toll on profits, the team again turned to Wilson for help. 

“There’s not really any smokehouses in the Golden area,” he says. “So I thought, let’s do smoked meats and comfort food.”

And while that pivot succeeded, the restaurant was also looking for a way to fill up the back half of the building, a tall order for any establishment given the sheer size of the space. The Valdez family decided to open yet another restaurant, and yet again they turned to Wilson for help. 

Dean’s family is from Southern Italy, so they chose that as the concept and left the rest up to Wilson. 

“When we chose to open Bella Colibri, our first choice was John,” says Aimee. “Our only concern was whether he had the bandwidth. But he was so excited, he asked us to let him do it. Hopefully he won’t keel over from the work.”

At first, the owners insisted on sampling all the menu items that Wilson came up with, and often changed regularly to keep the menu fresh. But after a while, they stepped back and just let him loose. 

“We thought ‘This is ridiculous,’ because there was no reason to have to taste the food,” Aimee says. “We just let him go with it.”

A daily juggling act

With the 2022 opening of Alchemy across the hall from Miners Saloon, Wilson now has four restaurants to lead, all completely different in concept, and none have what would be considered a full kitchen. 

So they share equipment, space, team and operations between them, all navigated by Wilson at the helm. The trick is to get them to work together. 

The biggest kitchen is at Old Capitol Grill, which functions as a sort of commissary kitchen. It’s the only one with a proper oven, so bread for each restaurant is made there — cranberry walnut bread for Old Capitol Grill, focaccia for Miners Saloon and Bella Colibri. That same oven is also used to make the roast chicken for Miners Saloon’s salads and the crème brûlée for Bella Colibri’s dessert. 

“I’ve got to know when they plan on making bread, how much they want to make, because I also get to make cornbread for Old Capitol Grill,” he details. “You don’t want to have people roasting the chicken the same time that we have bread in the oven or baking crème brûlées.”

And that’s just the oven. Other prep includes Miners Saloon’s soups and sausages on Mondays or Tuesdays in the Bella Colibri kitchen (when that establishment is closed), Miners’ banh mi sandwiches on Wednesdays or Thursdays, and Bella Colibri’s pastas and chili for Capitol Grill worked in along the way.  

It’s all very much like planning a multi-family Thanksgiving dinner in one kitchen — only doing that every day. 

While that may sound like a nightmare for some, it’s exactly the kind of challenge Wilson seems to thrive on. There’s a reason why he’s been with the same ownership group for 10 years after bouncing around so much the previous 10. 

“The moment you feel like you’ve seen what you can see at one location, or done what you can do, or are feeling a little complacent, that’s the moment you need to be looking for something else,” he says. “If you’re not continually growing and learning and testing yourself, then you’re going to become stagnant. Some people are happy with that. I try to find people that aren’t.”