The Food and Wine Classic in Aspen and the Hotel Jerome’s “Epicurean Passport” program concluded on Sunday. For more coverage from the festival, head to our arts and culture section online.
It was 10 a.m. on a Friday, the first seminar of the Food and Wine Classic, and Chef Claudette Zepeda had some competition: Bobby Flay was back at the festival, cooking pasta in the conference room next door to the sound of raucous applause.
But on the other side of the wall from Flay and his pasta, the audience showed plenty of enthusiasm for Zepeda’s tostadas in a session called “The Flavors that Raised Me.” After all, these attendees actually got to try the food — a rare departure from the usual look-don’t-touch format of cooking demonstrations at the Classic.
The seminar was all about the food Zepeda grew up eating in Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, and it featured influences from the Middle East, China and Japan.
Zepeda calls her style a “United Nations of food,” meant to inspire bigger conversations beyond the dinner plate.
“Tomato comes from Mexico, chiles come from Mexico, everything else came through spice trades, came through slave trades, came through wars, through migration, immigration patterns,” Zepeda said in an interview after the seminar.
Zepeda wants to “move food forward,” to show just how diverse Mexican food can be and encourage people to broaden their horizons about what defines a culture.
“Food is how I lure you in, and then we talk about all the things that you might not talk about and how beautiful and insanely diverse our culture is,” Zepeda said.
And events like this festival are one way to do it. The Classic turned 40 this year, and hosted its first-ever “Aspen Asada” at the top of Aspen Mountain with Zepeda and Chef Bricia Lopez.
Lopez sees it as a significant step toward more representation and inclusion.
“I think that it's so beautiful to be represented as a Mexican-American in Aspen, where you get to taste the best food of the world, and finally have something like carne asada that would be represented in that sense, and that sort of stage,” Lopez said during a break from asada prep over the weekend.
Lopez and her family immigrated to America from Mexico when she was 10. Her parents and her siblings have been restaurateurs too, and she’s now considered one of America’s foremost authorities on Oaxacan cuisine.
“I think it's a way to retain my heritage,” Lopez said. “I think it's a way to empower my culture and it's a way to pass down my culture to my children.”
So to have it showcased here, during the Food and Wine Classic?
It’s a pretty big deal, she says — and not just for the celebrity chefs like her and Zepeda.
“When I look around in Aspen, and I see the people behind the kitchen, the people that are serving everyone, the people that drive in here every day to serve everyone else, I think it's going to be very special for them to see their food represented and feel acknowledged,” Lopez said.
Over at the Hotel Jerome, a separate “Epicurean Passport” program also put the spotlight on Latin American food.
Chef Byron Gomez, whose family is from Costa Rica, was involved in two of the dinners. One also featured chefs David Castro Hussong, Tomas Bermudez and Rodrigo Escalante, all from restaurants in Mexico, plus bartenders Gaby Lozada and Eli Martinez; wines came from Mexico, too.
“I think Latin America has a big stronghold now in the culinary industry, … so why not highlight the talent and gastronomy influences that Latin America has had and has contributed to the world?” Gomez said in an interview at the Jerome.
Gomez used to be the the executive chef at 7908 Aspen, and he’s worked with some of the biggest names in fine dining, but he’s always cooked “someone else’s food” at that caliber, Gomez said.
“Coming up the ranks in these Michelin restaurants, you know, back in the day, it was either French cuisine or Italian cuisine,” Gomez said. “That's what held, you know, a pedestal and people held it at a podium to a certain degree.”
Gomez wants to put Costa Rican food on the same pedestal, and late last year, he opened a restaurant called “Pollo Tico” in Boulder.
“When I speak to people about [the fact] that I'm from Costa Rica, I want to say 90% of the reactions, people are like, wowed, and they're like, ‘I love it there. I love the people. I love the zip lining, the volcano, the beach,’ and they never speak about the food,” Gomez said. “And that, to me, it's an issue as a chef, the message is not getting there.”
But it might get there through events like the Classic, which he calls “the Coachella of food festivals,” and “the best food festival in the country.”
“I think though, how the movement is going, … it's very positive, and it's extremely yummy,” Gomez said.
Gomez, for his part, prepared a twist on caviar for the first course at one passport dinner.
Instead of pairing it with pickles or bread, he served it up with plantain ice cream, yuca crumble and foam from a Costa Rican beer.
