Dining on the rails
Royal Gorge Route Railroad's new chef and fresh offerings + more food & drink news
The Royal Gorge Route Railroad recently hosted a Cañon City-area business appreciation night. We accepted an invite to ride along and check out new features this season, including overhauled food and beverage menus. As the F&B aspect of the train’s concerned, there’s breakfast, lunch and dinner menus for à la carte ordering (from which we bought our dinner). And there’s first class lunch and dinner trains which feature three-course experiences with a choice of entrée and dessert following a salad and French roll course that includes a glass of Champagne.
Trackside at the train station, the Happy Endings Caboose Cafe offers everything from alcohol beverages and coffee to breakfast and lunch fare plus sweet treats. And nearby, on Saturdays and Sundays at noon, you can go for afternoon tea at the Royal Gorge Mansion. With all its offerings, the enterprise supports Colorado-grown and produced items, from wines, beers and spirits to locally ranched meat products. RGRR owner Mark Greksa explains why good food is so important to him and his wife and business partner Dawn.
That may read like a bunch of smart marketing (which it is), but after spending nearly a half hour getting to know Greksa, I left the convo feeling like his efforts are sincere. He has a fascinating personal story, which includes a love of airplanes too, not just trains; he’s also a pilot. He was once on ski patrol and is active in an array of winter sports. He also bikes, runs and he and Dawn are avid travelers. Considering he’s the No. 2 employer in Cañon City (with roughly 300 employees) and operating what he believes to be the No. 1 tourist train in the country (by metrics, as I understand him), we find him quite down-to-earth.
That’s confirmed for me by Chef Nathan Dirnberger, who recently became executive chef and food and beverage director for RGRR. Dirnberger was once chef at Nosh, followed by Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and many other ventures I’ve loosely tracked over the years — dating back to when he was a PPCC student working on creating an urban farm. (On that note, he’s brought along former PPCC instructor/chef/ice carver Mark Painter to RGRR.)
To operate the many kitchens between the train station, mansion and those located on the train, you’re talking a volume game. High volume. Greksa anticipates having 250,000 riders in 2023. That’s after the pandemic, when he tells us “I thought I was going to lose everything.” (The outdoorsman in him said ‘I know how to backpack. I’ll be okay,’” he says.)
Dirnberger’s experience at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo of course plays nicely into the railroad’s needs for quality eats in high quantities. “Nate’s phenomenal,” says Greksa.
And, from what I know of Dirnberger, he’s always maintained a local-food-when-possible ethos, similar to Greksa’s with his past railroad offerings (which I wrote about in 2013 on a wine train dinner). But he knows how to strike a balance between that and what’s achievable at budget and volume.
So, for example, on our nachos appetizer he suggests we try, he’s using tortilla chips made with Bow and Arrow Brand corn grown on the Ute Mountain Reservation near the Four Corners area. They get a house-made chile con queso with pickled red onions and jalapeños and a choice of barbacoa or grilled chicken. (We go barbacoa and are happy for it.) Our beef brisket barbecue sandwich, also a great bite, gets served with kettle chips and there’s a Denver-made Harvest Moon brioche bun.
We drink a Grand River IPA plus a Royal Gorge Route Rouge (described as “not an IPA, not a red”) brewed exclusively for RGRR. Both hail from San Luis Valley Brewing out of Alamosa.
Burger me
May is National Burger Month. It’s okay if you didn’t know this; neither did I. There’s so many honorary holidays in America it’s impossible to track them all, as noted on a worthwhile recent episode of the Cautionary Tales podcast (specific to Mother’s Day). Anyway, you know who did know that? My partners over at Gather Food Studio. Says Cortney, “Dave does an online class that is all about how to make the perfect burger. The recipe instructions give tips for making a great burger at home, grinding your own meat, etc. So it’s a recipe, but also full of content about how to make a burger.”
So, here you go: Dave’s recipe, titled “A Hamburger: Simple Enough, Right?”
Ingredients:
1 lb. chuck beef, cubed and cold
½ # short rib, boneless, cubed and cold
½ # sirloin, cubed and cold
4 hamburger buns, toasted – buns of choice I like a hearty challah or brioche bun. (Make sure the bun is the size you want your finished burger to be.)
Ketchup, or BBQ sauce
Mustard
Pickle slices, optional
4-8 slices thick cut cooked bacon, optional
4 slices cheese, room temperature
Tomato slices
Lettuce of choice
Red Onion, sliced
Mayo
Preparation:
1. Start with very cold meat. Grind once through the grinder on the large grind, then chill. Change the dye to the medium grind and grind the meat through again. Chill for 30 minutes.
2. Form the meat into 4 patties. Do not densely form the patties. Shape.
3. Indent the center of each patty. Chill.
4. Fire up the grill. One side of grill high heat, the other side a medium low heat.
5. Oil grates just before grilling.
6. Place burgers indent side facing up on the grill. Cook the burger until a nice brown crust has developed. Flip over and develop crust. When the burger has a great grilled crust, move to the low heat side of the grill. Cook to desired doneness. When burger is 75 percent cooked, add the cheese and let melt. If using bacon, add the bacon and then the cheese.
7. Rest the burger patties for 5 minutes.
8. While the patties are resting, grill/toast the buns.
9. To assemble: place ketchup and mustard on the bottom bun. Top with pickles. Next is the patty (bacon and cheese), then the tomato, lettuce, red onion, and finally the mayo on the top bun.
Green me
The Poor Richard’s complex on the 300 block of N. Tejon St. has placed two single stream recycling bins on the sidewalk in front of its pizzeria, toy store, book/gift shop and cafe/wine bar. The bins are a community service, for public use, “because the City stopped their street-side recycling program,” says a press release. “We would like to invite our downtown neighbors to join the movement to help our planet by offering recycle bins outside of their businesses, too!”
Back in 2015, I spoke to Rebecca Taraborelli at Rasta Pasta about how much money the restaurant was saving by composting and recycling, which offset their trash costs. “I can't believe all restaurants aren't doing it,” she told me at the time.
I thought of their effort when I read the Poor Richard’s release, as they too say they’ve cut their trash down significantly, from five pickups weekly to only two because of everything composted and recycled. “Almost all of our take-out containers are compostable or recyclable. Even our straws are made out of sugar cane,” they say, noting they’ve also upgraded all fixtures and equipment for efficiency, utilizing 117 solar panels on their rooftop as well.
Beer me
(Mostly) from Focus on the Beer’s Focal Pint newsletter this week:
Thursday, May 11:
Juice Box Sour tapping at Metric
Saturday, May 13
Next Week: American Craft Beer Week
Thursday, May 18:
Sip with Schnip Happy Hour at The Carter Payne, 5-7 p.m. (Paid Side Dish subscribers, come get your free drink! Free subscribers get 20% off first drink.)
Upcoming Festivals:
Catch me while you can
Dos Santos and White Pie both offer monthly specials, and while in touch with the wider company for my recent Sushi Row preview, I was invited to sample the features at each spot. Here’s what I sipped and snacked on; descriptions in the photo captions:
Release me
• Free subscribers may now read my full review of Paradox Beer Company, which highlights the brewer-chef’s recently launched (kick-ass-legit) New Mexican food menu to complement their "wayward" beers.
Cover me
Last week, Side Dish with Schniper appeared in an exceptionally well researched and written article published by Zach Ben-Amots for Rocky Mountain PBS.
The story, cathartic for those of us who lived it, is titled “Inside the effort to keep independent, local news alive in Colorado Springs.” It covers the recent collapse and revival of the CS Indy, along with a deep history of the newspaper plus a handful of adjacent narratives, which include my creation of this Substack after having been laid off in mid March. (But, as I told ya’ll back in April, here, I’m now being syndicated in the Indy as part of a new relationship brought on by these circumstances.)
Listen to me
I went on the Mike Boyle Restaurant Show this week to talk shop with the longtime food enthusiast. I told him I remember waiting on him back when I worked at Sencha in the early aughts. He said he’s been a longtime reader of mine in the Indy, often citing my work. My segments will air this Saturday morning at 11 a.m. and 12:20 p.m.; you can find the podcast stream here anytime thereafter.
Can't wait to try out these new options I wouldn't have thought of without your input and great work! Thank you for spicing up my restaurant options!
Great write up. Chef Nate is such a talented individual and good friend. With Chef Marc alongside, they will do amazing things at the railroad.