Eat your way through Colorado’s history with this 12-course tasting menu

What better way to tell the story of Colorado than a meal that celebrates the state’s history from dish to dish? 

That’s the goal of a new tasting menu concept in Breckenridge called Forage, which opened this June with little fanfare. Housed in an historic building along the town’s main street, the restaurant’s 12-course menu is a stunning exploration of Colorado history, nature and art, all presented through the lens of locally sourced ingredients.

Sourcing local ingredients in a mountain town like Breckenridge isn’t easy, but that’s exactly what drew chef and co-owner Ryan Cook to the project in the first place. 

“What attracted me to Forage was this canvas of the mountains, where the produce is really hard to get,” he says. “You don’t have the ability to get truckloads full of produce that every other restaurant is getting. So this idea was born that everything would be local … local nature, local art, local history. And when we got those three pillars of belief to build on, it all just came together.”

Think of it as inspiration by limitation. If you only have a few products to work with, you need to do as much as possible with each. And while the produce in the area may be scarce, the source material of Colorado’s history, nature and art is vast. 

Setting the stage

Forage is a small space designed to transport guests into the restaurant’s unique vision. The windows are covered with blackout shades. The walls are painted with abstract images of trees. The music is a fairytale soundtrack of ambient sounds and chirping birds. At the center of the only room is a U-shaped wooden communal bench with 16 seats where the meal is served.

The whole experience evokes the feeling of sitting in a forest clearing, which is entirely by design.

A brigade of staffers exits the kitchen in lockstep precision for every course, each holding dishes to serve guests in unison. This includes the three chefs, who sometimes finish the plating right in front of you, and always precede the course with a story behind its creation. 

“For this first course, we wanted to do something deeply rooted in Breckenridge and the region we stand in today,” says one of the chefs early in the experience. “You’ll see black currants on the plate, preserved as a gel atop the bite, as well as a mountain thyme garnish. Inside you’ll find beef cheek from Fitch Ranch Farms in Grandby, in a lightly battered rye sourdough and smoked cherry. Cheers.”

Each course is like this, presented directly by a different chef involved in the preparation and tied to a different agricultural element of Colorado lore. There’s a sweet corn cracker shaped like a snowflake and filled with a corn mousse and masa gel named after the Norse god of winter, Ullr, featuring goat cheese from Yonder Family Farms in Trinidad. A chicken liver pate is disguised inside a faux Palisade Bing cherry tart. Each comes with a full story behind the dish’s design and the inspiration. 

“If people are going to come and spend three hours here, and they’re going to learn about the history,” says Cook. “We have to make it so it’s interactive and fun. Almost casual. It’s not stuck up. It’s not too pretentious. It’s real people with real personalities showcasing themselves.”

Plating the narrative

One of the most flavorful, standout dishes is the trout from Frontier Farms, which requires a three-hour round trip to Fraser for chefs to pick up. It’s pan-seared and placed upon a bed of curry made from crayfish out of Steamboat, with cucumber, cashews and peanuts. The curry is strikingly yellow and delicately spiced, resulting in a lick-the-bowl triumph the team had finalized just the day before serving. 

On the history front, there’s a fun course called “Sticking Tommy,” named after — and plated with — the cast-iron candle holder that miners used to illuminate dark caves. Only here the “candle” is a beef tallow stick, lit and melting into the pan as a vessel for dipping a toasted sourdough made from grains produced by Colorado State University and Dry Storage. 

A trio of desserts provides a striking finish showcasing the creative vision. There’s a yogurt sorbet served in a bowl of mountain herbs and meringue shards flash-frozen with liquid nitrogen poured right in front of you, filling the air with a cloud of gas in a dramatic flourish. There’s what looks like a whole pear that, once you break into it, reveals itself to be a casing filled with pear compote and a red wine mousse that is a joy to destroy while wondering at its verisimilitude. 

But it’s the “Under the Ashes” course, inspired by the destructive wildfires plaguing the state at the moment, that hit home the most. The plate looks like a burned husk of ash and charcoal, shaped into an extinguished fire ring, on which the chefs spoon quenelles of marshmallow ice cream on top. Spoiler Alert: As you dig in, your spoon breaks through the crisp crust to reveal a hidden bowl beneath full of dark chocolate and cherry. 

It’s a dish that takes something as ugly and fear-inducing as a wildfire and turns it into a delicious and joyful surprise, leaving you walking away from the table with equal parts amazement and appreciation. 

Global roots, mountain focus

Colorado is a beacon for transplants, so maybe it’s fitting that the ownership team behind Forage is largely made up of transplants as well. Chef Cook hails from England, and his partners, Mike and Claire Shipley, are Breckenridge residents by way of London and Australia, respectively. 

The team also owns a beach resort and restaurant in Antigua. While the Shipleys are long familiar with Breck — they own the Country Boy Mine just outside of town, and Claire is a chef and cookbook writer who published a book, “Deliciously Breckenridge,” in 2019 — Cook had never been to the mountains before visiting for the first time to evaluate the possibility of opening the restaurant.

“The decision to go out to Breckenridge was made within the first 24 hours of being there,” he says. “I looked at this place that, for me, was just one of the most beautiful places in the world. I’ve never seen anything like it at all.”

Cook’s pedigree spans Michelin-starred restaurants in both England and Dubai; he’s currently back in England thanks to visa complications forcing him to return shortly after Forage opened. As he awaits his return, the restaurant brought in another Michelin-trained chef, Victor Muñoz, who’s originally from Guadalajara, Mexico. Muñoz moved to Breck from Miami, where he helmed the now-shuttered ORO. 

The remainder of the kitchen team is made up of locals — Austin Maki and his brother Jake, along with Jacob Tracy — all of whom have trained in the kitchens of Breckenridge’s James Beard Award-winning chef Matt Vawter. 

For a restaurant that seemed to have come out of nowhere, Forage is quickly making a mark thanks more to its food and vision than through a manufactured marketing push typical of big restaurant launches these days. While inevitable, it’s not really fair to compare it solely to other restaurants in Breckenridge. This place holds its own against any restaurant in the state, and is very much worth the trip to the mountains to experience. 

“There’s so much we haven’t explored yet,” says Cook. “This is our first menu, and we’re already excited behind the scenes for the next round of dishes that we’re going to be launching. These stories are so interesting, just so amazing. That’s why I know we’ll be successful.”

Forage is located at 322 N. Main St., Breckenridge, and conducts one seating a night at 5:30 p.m. The 12-course tasting menu costs $195 per person, with an optional wine pairing of $110 or a mocktail pairing of $80, plus a 20% service charge. For more information, visit foragebreckenridge.com.