Woodland wonder 🍽
Woodland wonder 🍽
Red Diamond Gastro Pub exceeds expectations up Ute Pass
Why is Red Diamond Gastro Pub so damn good?
The answer could easily be singular items on its menu. Like the chili-lime chicharrones, the wild mushroom arancini or the kimchi reuben. Hell, even the house-smoked salt fries.
But there’s a more sinister answer to that question, too. Not unlike the legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil, Red Diamond owner/chef James Deimling, by his own telling, nearly gave his life to become a great chef.
Alcoholism. Divorce. A stroke. Acute kidney failure. “It was 20 years of poor choices,” he says. “I wasn’t taking care of myself.” Illustrating with a single story how the brutal food and drink industry consumes some people, he offers an example from his early years when he badly burned himself at work. Instead of getting him to a hospital, his chef at the time pulled him off the line just long enough to give him a bump of coke and triple shot of Tuaca. Then told him to go finish the shift.
In his most recent role cooking for another company, as Executive Sous Chef at the Westin Westminster during a $3M renovation, overseeing 47,000 feet of banquet space, he says the restaurant group managing the hotel “broke me.”
That was it. He tried jobs out of the industry but he didn’t take to any of them. It wasn’t until he started his own food truck back in his hometown of Woodland Park in late 2020 that he realized “I wasn’t meant to work for other people.”
He’s 40 now, five years sober, and finally seeing the other side of the coin: “There’s other ways to do the things you love,” he says.
Enter Red Diamond Gastro Pub.
The Pub, and advancement of Deimling’s earlier Red Diamond Gastro Truck, celebrated its year anniversary on Jan. 23. And things are off to a great start says the chef. “I’m a hundred times busier than I initially expected. I would call this a huge success.”
Backing up to earlier in his story, Deimling started working at the Donut Mill at age 13; his friend’s parents owned it at the time. At age 16 he moved down the highway to a now defunct, catch-all-menu, family restaurant named Austin’s where he worked up to lead line cook. At 17 he left for culinary school to the Colorado Mountain College Culinary Program in Keystone. The summer after graduating from the intensive three-year apprenticeship, he became one of a few contracted personal chefs for the Denver Broncos.
He’d already caught the bug for the restaurant industry in his earlier years. “It wasn’t just the cooking, it was the after hours partying,” he says. But here he was cooking three meals a day (plus midnight snacks) for his childhood football team — The Broncos! — getting playfully teased as a scrawny little cook by giant defensemen at the morning omelette station he’d set up in the locker room. Then there was the seemingly real harassment: “Rod Smith threatened to kill me twice.” Once was for serving Beef Stroganoff, and the other for not cooking Smith’s eggs to his liking, as Deimling tells it.
After his contract expired he moved out to Seattle and spent 12 years in fine dining, which included three years at the Four Seasons Hotel downtown. His marriage brought him back home to Colorado eventually, where he leaned into family support to get healthy and recover after his body had crashed out. His dad is still his “maintenance man” today, having retired out of the engineering field.
James gained an easy following with the food truck once it launched, attending rallies around Teller County, popping up at places like Paradox Brewing Co. in Divide and parking regularly outside of a since-closed wine bar in Woodland Park. He’d made a play to buy the spot but something in the whole deal went south, as he tells it, which led him to exploring his current location, a former bakery. It needed a lot of renovation, including an expensive hood system, to become what it now is. Deimling pulled four loans and ran up nine credit cards, he says.
The risk is paying off.
“When I came back after 20 years, I noticed it’s the same food. Nothing’s changed,” he says about Woodland Park. He acknowledges that it’s never escaped its meat-and-potatoes vibe, but the place is growing and there’s definitely a consumer appetite for good (read: better) food. So, what to cook?
“I joke that my food is elevated stoner food,” he says. “I keep it recognizable so that people know what they’re eating. I’m aware I’m serving Woodland Park. I know my town. I have that going for me.”
“I know my town. I have that going for me.”
Deimling says he aimed for the “in between” of fine and casual dining. He reaches for “old flavors” that are familiar and appealing to an older-aged demographic in town; they’re many of his regulars. But that’s not to say it’s not exciting for everyone else. “My food is simple, not too extravagant. I’m doing it the way I believe food should be prepared. I cook the way I want to eat,” he says, adding “simple and consistent is what will keep you alive.”
My opinion after dining through a handful of dishes with a discerning friend (and Side Dish subscriber/supporter) who tipped me off to the spot (thank you, Warren), is that Deimling’s self-assessment is accurate but understated.
Yes, it’s fare like a patty melt, pot roast dip, pulled pork mac ‘n cheese and loaded nachos. But there’s also a dedicated veggie section with smoked tomato falafel, chickpea fries and charred broccolini. His chef in Seattle was an inspiration toward vegetarian food “not having to be a pain in the ass,” he says. “I’m not skipping the veggies. A lot of people up here eat my chickpea fries alongside a steak special.”
And Deimling brings truly elevated (French foundational) techniques to everything he touches, gifting a distinct gourmet character to common plates. Example: my simple basket of coconut shrimp over the aforementioned epic, applewood-smoked salt fries come perfectly battered and fried crisp with a coat of browned coconut flakes and topped with a bright coconut-lime aioli and a side dip of mango-habanero chutney. Deimling’s obsessive about properly crisp fries, he says, and he views the smoking and house-grinding process on the salt as that tiny extra step that makes an everyday item like fries really pop.
“I’d be faster at getting food out if it weren’t 14 steps for each dish,” he jokes. Even with plating composition each item has a sauce and at least three garnishes. “It’s my process, the way I was trained. Things need crunch, acid, etc. My classical training is makes us stand out.”
For Red Diamond’s chili-lime chicharrones the chef confits the pork after sugar- and salt-curing it for 24 hours. Then he deep fries it before plating the crispy chunks with pickled onions, sweet corn purée, tomatoes, cilantro and Cotija cheese. For a fried item it eats rather vibrant and not too heavy/guilty. All the fresh components balance out the rich, fatty pig bits. It’s a great bite.
Ditto on the wild mushroom arancini with truffle aioli and a bounty of fried mushrooms. They offer an explosion of earthy flavors and deep umami with big truffle aroma and pleasant textural counterpoint between the crispy risotto balls and almost jerky-like, chewy mushroom slivers. This is a dish to definitely get, a fan favorite dating back to its debut as a special on the food truck, which had a weekly-changing menu. In fact, Deimling says about 90 percent of his pub’s current menu originated as food truck experiments. “I’m not much of a planner,” he says. “My specials come together best when I wing it.”
I don’t happen to catch one during my visit, but the chef does typically offer weekly specials. He bucks the trend of Mondays and Tuesdays being dead by running specials like lamb shanks on those nights. Or a filet and crab combo, or beef tartare, or a soft shell crab sandwich that likely will make the next menu update. He says he packs the house out. (On a Monday … in Woodland Park!)
We also try a seasonal salad made with spinach and sweet potatoes that’s perky from salty feta and a sharp red wine vinaigrette. We pair it with the excellent house trout chowder, a simple twist on a classic clam chowder, with trout giving it a localizing touch to Colorado. (Less than an hour’s drive away and at many honey holes beyond fishermen and women hunt for rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout in nationally celebrated waters.)
Our final flavor from our visit is Red Diamond’s Kimchi Reuben, which is apparently a Seattle-popularized item. Deimling calls kimchi “maybe my most favorite thing in the world,” and says he’s kept this sandwich on his menus ever since working in the Pacific Northwest (where Asian culture and foods are significantly more prominent). By adding the fermented kimchi in place of the traditional sauerkraut, you achieve the same desired acidic tanginess, but the Korean red chile (gochugaru) adds another welcome dimension of subtle heat and spice to play off the pastrami, Swiss cheese and house dressing on toasty marbled rye.
I know I’ve left many menu items to try and I truly am excited for whenever I make time to return to Woodland Park to eat at Red Diamond again. I ask Deimling what I should eat next time, that I missed, and he says I need to get his beef patty melt with bacon red onion jam and Gouda, calling it “a game changer.” That, and the Honey’s Buttermilk Pie with berries and butterscotch sauce — his mom’s recipe.
After having heard his industry-life story and noticing that Red Diamond is open seven days a week until 11 p.m. — opening at 11 a.m. Wednesday-Sunday and 3 p.m. Monday-Tuesday — I try to sensitively inquire how Deimling won’t eventually burn himself out again, even if it’s on his own terms.
He concedes he does 98 percent of the cooking himself and has struggled to find reliable kitchen help. Other than major holidays and a for a week that he decided to close for a personal break in early February (something he plans to do annually), he’s on all the time with only a bar manager for assistance.
“But I’m good with it. I have a purpose and I have a goal,” he says, before winding our discussion back around to mortality (or morbidity) one final time: “I’m gonna kill this if it be the death of me. I’m gonna destroy this.”
Which in the end does satisfactorily explain Red Diamond Gastro Pub is so damn good. All that’s left for you to do is go taste it for yourself.
Thanks for the shout-out (and the food! Wow!)
As a local, I can attest that Red Diamond opening full time was one of the best things to happen to this town since I moved here four years ago. Everything is always delicious, and he's really dialed the timing in. Don't forget to give yourself those much deserved breaks James!!