At Milpero, Johnny Curiel is planting the future of Mexican fine dining

Johnny Curiel is a man with little left to prove, yet one who remains on a mission. 

Since he and his wife, Kasie, opened Alma Fonda Fina in December 2023, the accolades have come in non-stop. Michelin stars. James Beard nominations. Best of lists in both local and national publications. The Curiel empire today includes Mezcaleria Alma, Cozobi Fonda Fina, Alteño and Mar Bella Boqueria, with pending expansions into both Charleston and Austin. 

But although Curiel is no longer the underdog he was when landlords turned down the Alma Fonda Fina concept, he feels the cuisine and culture he continues to champion have a long way to go to attain the status they merit on the national culinary stage. 

“I think for a long, long time, Mexican food hasn’t been looked at the way that I think it deserves to look like,” Curiel says. “So that’s kind of like the chip on my shoulder.”

That chip is the driving force behind his latest opening, Milpero: an intimate, tasting-menu concept that opened May 13, tucked away in the TAXI complex. Part immersive tasting experience, part one-room schoolhouse, Milpero doesn’t feel like just a Michelin-star grab from an already celebrated chef. (Although we’re predicting that this will be Colorado’s second two-star establishment, following The Wolf’s Tailor’s 2025 nod.) 

Instead, it’s a highly entertaining, educational, and overwhelmingly delicious dinner party that only eight people can attend at any one time, with just two seatings available a night. All are led by Curiel himself, whose charm and confidence are as strong a draw as each of the near-perfect dishes that he and his team serve. 

“The beauty of it for me is that here, I can talk to everybody,” says Curiel. “This is as many people as there’s ever going to be. This is not the restaurant where you go and make millions. This is your restaurant where you truly talk about what you give a fuck about, and bring awareness.”

The University of Milpero

With each dish, Curiel seeks to banish any lingering stereotypes of Mexican cuisine. The cold counter starts things off with a series of aquachiles, dispelling the notion that Mexico’s only raw fish preparation is ceviche, using creative flourishes like replacing the sesame oil that might typically accent a bite of kampachi crudo with a hazelnut oil pressed in-house.

A series of masa-forward bites highlights the emphasis on corn throughout the menu — a tamal with hokkaido uni, a flauta with bluefin tuna and red mole, a raspada chip so finicky to make that the success rate is only 50 percent — all made from corn grown exclusively for the restaurant and nixtamalized by the staff. 

The hot counter, meanwhile, tackles the notion that mole is too sweet with a series of six mole-based dishes complementing a range of proteins — a chicharron gordita, a saddle of lamb, wagyu beef, layered pork, squab — each more flavorful and complex than the next, with nary a hint of chocolate throughout.

One protein you won’t find on the menu, however, is venison. A deer is not only the inspiration for Milpero’s logo (chosen for the animal’s habit of hiding in cornfields), it’s the restaurant’s “spirit animal,” according to Curiel. So when earlier iterations of the menu featured a venison dish, Curiel had it removed. 

“I thought that was a little messed up,” he says.

With eighteen courses served over three hours taking place across three different tables (yes, you need to move from one to the other), this is a story that could easily devolve into a lecture. 

Instead, the vibe feels more like a dinner party than a one-way presentation. Curiel introduces each course, telling a little personal story about why each was chosen (such as his memories of eating oysters with his father), answering questions about ingredients or techniques, and cracking jokes with the staff if there’s a slight jostling during plating. 

“I want it to be not pretentious and not uptight, so the people are comfortable,” he says. “I’ve never had the opportunity to work in a tasting-menu counter. So as a chef, you always have that in the back of your head. You always wonder, if you’ve never done it, how it is, how you would do it, how you would execute it, how it would come about.”

Planting a seed for the future

As his empire expands to more restaurants, Curiel is keenly aware of the challenges of spreading himself too thin, especially when Milpero’s tasting-menu setup demands his presence.

So instead of trying to be everywhere at once, Curiel designed Milpero to act as a centralized hub where his many chefs can come to him. The fact that the restaurant is housed in the former Comal Heritage Food Incubator space carries a certain poetic justice.

“That wasn’t luck,” he says. “This is kind of like an incubator, right? The whole plan was that we get the same people from our restaurants — a chef from Alma, a chef from Alteño, a chef from Cozobi, a chef from Mar Bella — to work this experience for a couple of months. They can learn, absorb, and then either move on to the next journey or take it back to our daily operations.”

After all, with only sixteen customers a night, Milpero is limited in the number of guests Curiel can educate. But each chef he trains in the same techniques and philosophies can go out into the world and spread the word to many more, whether within the Fonda Fina Hospitality group of restaurants or other spots they establish independently.

That makes Milpero a fitting moniker: A milpero is a farmer who grows and tends corn, not unlike Curiel’s desire to train and nurture chefs. Initially, the restaurant was to be called Maize, and later Fonda Maize, to emphasize its corn-based menu. While the change may have been motivated by the need to more clearly differentiate the restaurant from others with a similar name, the result seems a more appropriate expression of Curiel’s mission.

“For me, it’s how we can develop these people to make sure that not only Milpero is successful, but Alma continues to be successful and Mezcalaria continues to be successful,” he says. “When cooks start to look for another job, it’s because they feel stagnant, because they’re not learning they’re not being mentored, or there’s not a creative outlet.”

Denver’s toughest reservation?

If you don’t have a reservation yet, you’re probably not going to eat at Milpero anytime soon. Alma Fonda Fina is already one of Denver’s toughest reservations, but Milpero feels downright impossible. On the first of each month, at 8 a.m., the restaurant opens its reservation platform for the following month. So far, it’s sold out each time within 30 minutes. 

The tasting menu will set each guest back $225 before tax and tip, with several optional wine pairings. The mundial (“world”) pairing features global varietals for $175, and the El Chingon (“badass”) digs up the hard-core cellar options at a whopping $500. 

But it’s the Mexicano pairing that speaks the loudest, featuring all Mexican-produced wines. Priced at $125, it seems that Curiel and beverage director Justin Mueller prefer you pick this option in order to further Milpero’s mission to showcase all that Mexico has to offer. And as a bonus, there’s the option to try side-by-side pairings of Mexican wine with global wine for $200, which may just be the right choice. 

Little details like these show that Curiel is indeed out to make a point…just maybe not the one you might expect. 

“Today, it’s like, what else do you have to prove to the world?” he says. “The accolades don’t matter much if you don’t feel like you’re successful within your soul and your family and your team… I want to continue to share my message with as many people as I can. If I feel so passionate about the food, if I feel so passionate about the history. If I’m able to teach that to some population in the world, what other drive do you need?”

Milpero is located at 3455 Ringsby Court and open Wednesday through Saturday with two nightly seatings available by reservation only, at 6 and 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit milperodenver.com or @milperodenver on Instagram.