Over the past four years, Bruto, the Michelin-starred tasting counter from chef and restaurateur Kelly Whitaker, has built a culture of big ideas: experimentation, sustainability, regionally grown food, fermentation and flavor.
But Bruto’s culture has also been about change, from its head chefs to its menu to its flatware and even its branding.
The latest change comes Tuesday with the announcement that Whitaker and his restaurant group, Id Est, has hired chef Carolina Zubiate as Bruto’s new culinary director. She takes up the mantle from Byron Gomez, who infused Bruto’s menu with dishes from his native Costa Rica, and before that, Michael Diaz de Leon, who focused on Mexican flavors and influences.
Born in Peru, Zubiate lived with her extended family there until she was 13, eating dinner prepared each evening by her grandfather. The family later moved to the Washington, D.C., area, where Zubiate began her culinary career. She moved to Denver 10 years ago.
Zubiate may not be as familiar to Denver diners as her predecessors, but her work — a lot of work — in kitchens has garnered plenty of attention. For the past three years, she has been doing double shifts — during the day as a cook at Yuan Wonton, the James Beard Award-winning Denver dumpling spot, and in the evenings at culinary pop-ups at some of the most renowned restaurants and venues around town, serving Peruvian food and a Peruvian-Chinese mashup cuisine known as Chifa.
“I want to highlight my culture and what I have learned throughout the years,” she said Monday night. “But within the framework” of Bruto’s bent toward both its fermentation lab, known as Studio, and its live-fire open hearth, which is the centerpiece of the open kitchen, where chefs cook and prepare food in full view of patrons sitting around the 18-seat counter.
She shared some early takes on what that could look like with dishes that included a bison tostada with mole blanco and pickled vegetables; and trout tiradito, a cold Peruvian dish made, in this case, with a citrusy fermented melon sauce and the country’s famed aji amarillo, which are peppers. Over the next year, she hopes to incorporate anticuchos, which are traditional Peruvian meat skewers cooked over a flame, as well as the ideas behind pachamanca, which involves cooking meat, potatoes, peppers and corn using hot stones in a covered earthen oven.
But menu development will take some time, months even, and plenty of research as Zubiate gets to know Bruto’s staff and its processes, and as her fellow chefs there get to know her flavor profiles, Whitaker explained. “There is no need to rush or flip our menu right away. This is a daunting space,” he added. “There is nowhere to hide.”
There is a daunting legacy as well: Bruto, 1801 Blake St., has won three consecutive Michelin stars under Gomez and Diaz de Leon (the acclaimed guidebook will announce its latest awards for Colorado later this month). But both Whitaker and Zubiate played that down.
“We wanted to bring in some outside energy,” Whitaker said, adding that his goal is to learn something new from his chefs when he walks into the kitchen at Bruto, and that that can’t happen without fresh ideas.
Zubiate is one of only a few — and possibly the sole — woman in Colorado to lead a Michelin-starred kitchen. But even if the restaurant were to lose its star, she said she’s most proud of being one of the only Peruvian-born culinary directors in the U.S.
Whitaker’s restaurant group, Id Est, also owns The Wolf’s Tailor, which boasts two Michelin stars, along with Hey Kiddo in Denver, Basta in Boulder and Dry Storage, a Colorado grain and milling company.
