I remember the first time I experienced Denver’s great emergence.
It was the ’70s, if amnesia serves, and the city was awash in oil and optimism. At once the anti-Texas and the anti-California, Denver and its golden young citizenry epitomized promise, providence and everything else post-Vietnam America desperately wished it had.
The all-but-impenetrable Orange Crush proved our brawn, the chart-topping John Denver our name recognition (even if he was really from New Mexico and his name was really Deutschendorf), and Cinderella City (touted at the time as the biggest mall in the world) our consumer chops.
Avant-garde cred oozed from the Denver Art Museum’s Gio Ponti-designed North Building, critical sports-fan-mass spurred our first NHL hockey team (the original Rockies) and Denver’s golden air of glamour wafted even to Hollywood’s hyper-imaginative writing rooms, which bore the seminal Nolan Miller-swathed catfight drama “Dynasty,” set in this Queen City of the Plains-likely rarely (if ever) visited by anyone in the cast.
But as the ’80s wore on, fate wasn’t quite as kind to Denver. The oil started to dry up, the money tree withered, the Rockies decamped to Jersey, John Denver recorded a Christmas album with the Muppets, the brown cloud got browner, and “Dynasty” spun off to the Colbys – who lived, emphatically, in L.A., not Denver.
And our great emergence lost its mojo.
At least, that emergence.
Well, we’ve emerged two or three times since then, and once again, Denver is the Next Big Thing. Thanks to an unpredictable convergence of events over the past couple of years (“The Real World: Denver,” Chipotle, Crocs, The Fray, the looming Democratic Convention, and, oh yeah, the Rockies) we’re once again on the national radar.
What’s this have to do with food? Well, this: Culture is nothing without food. You cannot be a great city without great restaurants. Denver can’t lead, in baseball or politics or fine art or anything else, unless we have the food to back it up.
We have an excellent collective opportunity over the next year to prove to the thousands of people who would otherwise never come to Denver that not only can we hit baseballs and host politicos, but we can turn out innovative, sophisticated, soulful food.
So I say this to the restaurateurs, chefs, line cooks, hosts, wait staff, bartenders and everyone else who busts their behinds to make Denver the excellent and underappreciated food town that it is: Take a cue from the Rockies and step up the game. No matter how good your restaurant is, make it better.
And I say this to my fellow diners: Get out there. Get a table tonight. And tomorrow night, and the next. Be appreciative, be demanding, be adventurous, be picky, be extravagant, be frugal, be whatever, but be there.
We need to show the rest of the world what we already know ourselves: As a city, we hit the big leagues a long time ago. Now, we’re in contention for the championship.
Let’s eat like it.
Tucker Shaw: 303-954-1958 or dining@denverpost.com
