2000s Archive

Twin Peaks

Originally Published February 2001
Restaurants Rustique and Six89 are two Colorado highs the locals don’t want you to know about.
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The minute chef Charles Dale opened his new bistro, Rustique, last fall, approximately half the real population of Aspen shoehorned itself inside. For the clannish souls who live year-round in this high-Rockies never-never land, reveling in those quiet months when the Fendi-clad skiers and vacationing nabobs vanish, it was a window of opportunity. The man behind Renaissance—the most opulent restaurant in town, where a green salad costs $12 and no entrée can be had for less than $30—decided to play the grandma card. You didn’t have to have a bank balance the size of Michael Eisner’s to slide into Rustique’s bar for sleeked-up dishes out of Dale’s French childhood: rillettes and sausage, a bowl of mussels, or a soup plate of creamy, bacon-laced rabbit risotto that could melt the chill edge off a snowy night.

For a brief, happy moment, Rustique felt like a private party. Enveloped in candle-flecked light, diners hopped from one table to another, swiveling in their chairs to gossip, talk politics, nudge each other when some-body interesting made an entrance. They craned to see the blackboard specials. They chuckled over a menu item baldly advertised as “The Weird Dish of the Night.”

The more adventurous among them discovered this was almost invariably the best dish in the house: a sweetbread hash, say, full of life and contrast, its crisped pieces of meat tumbled with diced butternut squash and potato and soft flaps of chanterelle, its spiky frisée underlayer wilted by a warm, lemony sauce. Or tender slices of veal tongue, perhaps, their slightly musky richness cut by the sauce gribiche Dale’s mother favored—a sort of mayonnaise plus, sharpened with capers and fluffed with crumbs of hard-boiled egg. Homey extras cushion the weird (to Americans, anyway) factor in these organ-meat plates, from roasted acorn squash halves to cheerful fried eggs with their yolks barely set.

Dale’s version of cuisine grandmère has none of the rough edges that the name Rustique implies. Neither did his version of a French childhood. His diplomat father became an adviser to Monaco’s royal family, and Dale’s formative years were spent hanging out at the palace with the Grimaldi kids. So it’s hardly surprising that his navarin of lamb over broad noodles is less funky stew than sophisticated braise, eddied with deep currents of orange and rosemary. A long skate wing is so deftly grilled that it slips apart in softly resilient ridges; tomatoes and zucchini stuffed with peppery caper tapenade give the fish a vigorous kick in the pants.

It’s tempting to romanticize granny-style cooking, but—let’s be honest—real-life grandmothers are as apt to produce bland, boring dishes as soulful and satisfying ones. That’s the problem at Rustique. As appealing as Dale’s best efforts are, there were moments when I found myself longing for a big pinch of sea salt, an astringent herb, a genuine rustic edginess. A custardy wild mushroom and leek tart could hardly have been tamer. A handsome salad of grilled vegetables needed more in the way of seasoning than a melty wedge of good aged goat cheese. Fricassee of chicken “grandmother-style,” complete with skin and bone, languished in an excessively gentle brown sauce. Escargots in a green- tinged garlic butter were too restrained to be much fun. And a dehydrated pear clafoutis was the sort of moribund dessert that would leave guests at Grandma’s table searching desperately for a plausible compliment.

Better to stick to the nostalgic ice-cream profiteroles draped in dark-chocolate sauce, or the gloriously sticky pecan tart with crème fraîche. If only the tarte Tatin—deconstructed and seemingly decaramelized, too—were that successful. And if only the mostly French, not-too-expensive-for-Aspen wine list were as fascinating as it wants to be. (The by-the-glass choices, billed as “Interesting Wines,” mostly aren’t.)

But there is plenty in the way of comfort here after a hard day on the slopes or in the boutiques. And thanks to Dale’s weird dishes du jour—the kind of thing the grandma of your dreams might have made—there is a real incentive to go back again and again.

Down the Roaring Fork Valley in the Wild Westy town of Carbondale, a 30-minute drive away, chef Mark Fischer’s exuberant palate makes Six89 a must-stop on any self-respecting chowhound’s Aspen itinerary. Fischer, who has cooked at Fog City Diner in San Francisco and Aspen’s Caribou Club, has a born contrapuntalist’s feel for contrasting ingredients. It’s there in a smoked-trout salad that leaps with flavor and texture: bitter greens, a sweet crunch of pear, a tang of Maytag Blue cheese, and a snap of spiced walnuts, all gathered up in a surge of horseradish vinaigrette. This is the kind of food I travel for—local, personal, hard to forget.

So is Fischer’s winter soup of butternut squash, deepened with roasted red chile and set off by a keen, tart green-apple relish. It takes a lot to interest me in fried calamari, but Fischer delivers with the crispest Italian-style fritto misto of squid ringlets and tentacled stars, skinny slices of batter-filmed sweet potato and zucchini, and skinnier onion strings. A vibrant mustard seed aïoli acts as rocket fuel. Even a not-so-old chestnut, red-miso–glazed fillet of Angus beef with shiitake and red-wine sauce and the ubiquitous wasabi mashed potatoes, exudes the self-assurance of a classic. And Fischer’s tostada of grilled prawns with chipotle peppers captivates with a chorus of tastes, from disciplined chile heat to the tinge of goat cheese that livens a substratum of earthy black beans.

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