Chef Jennifer Jasinski is just back from the Culinary Institute of America, where the 1989 graduate was inducted into the CIA Alumni Hall of Fame and added to the Culinary Walk of Fame on its Hyde Park, New York, campus.
“It was so fucking cool,” she says of the two-day October celebration. “Holy fuck, there were all these people I look up to. It was extra special to be on that stage, and then hang out with them.” She also got to hang with members of her team past and present, “peers and other people I respect so much” who had come out from Colorado to celebrate with her and meet all the other luminaries honored at the ceremonies.
“I was extra blown away,” she admits.
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Chef Jen Jasinski posing with her star on the Culinary Institute of America’s Walk of Fame.
Provided by the Culinary Institute of America
After all her awards and honors, you’d think it would take a lot to blow away Jasinski, who was the first Denver chef to win the Best Chef: Southwest (now morphed into Best Chef: Mountain) category in the James Beard Foundation awards after being nominated in 2011 and 2012. She was also the first female Colorado chef to receive this honor. “Wow, I’m just really happily surprised…holy crap,” she said at the start of her 2013 acceptance speech.
Denver boosters were happily surprised to see how Jasinski’s Beard award finally put Denver on the culinary map, as a place people had to visit not just to see the world-class mountains, but to eat world-class meals.
Born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, Jasinski took culinary classes at Santa Barbara City College before heading to the CIA and then stints at New York City restaurants, including the Rainbow Room. After that, she moved to Los Angeles, where she worked for Wolfgang Puck. And worked hard; she earned the nickname “Tasmanian Devil.”
While she was at Puck’s Spago in Las Vegas, the legendary Paul Bocuse came in for a week and singled out Jasinski for special praise. Even so, he wasn’t willing to let her work with him in France, as Puck requested — just because she was a woman. That was in 1996.
“Back in the old days, I did feel that I had to work a lot harder to get noticed,” Jasinski says. “I felt I had to have longer staying power to get noticed. I didn’t ask for help a lot — but I’ve now very much changed that. I think asking for help is a strength.”
In 2000, Puck promoted Jasinski and sent her to Denver, where she soon became head chef at Panzano at the Hotel Monaco. “When I came into Denver, there weren’t many name chefs here,” she says, ticking off the likes of Noel Cunningham, Kevin Taylor, Sean Kelley, Frank Bonanno and Sean Yontz. “And definitely not any women.”
Jasinski soon changed that, when she left Panzano after five years and, joining with Beth Gruitch, opened Rioja in Larimer Square. “When we opened Rioja, it was my place. There was nothing holding me back,” she says. “Rioja is what I dreamed of opening my whole life.”
The Rocky Mountain News devoted an entire section to Rioja’s 2004 opening.
Mark Piscotty/Rocky Mountain News
A starring turn on “Top Chef” came almost a decade later, the same year she won the Beard. Along the way, she and Gruitch opened more restaurants: Bistro Vendome, also in Larimer Square; Euclid Hall around the corner; Ultreia, the first restaurant to open in the renovated Union Station. But Euclid Hall closed for good the day the pandemic shut down all Colorado restaurants, and two years ago, she and Gruitch handed over management of Bistro Vendome (now relocated to Park Hill) and Ultreia to chef/owners Tim Kuklinski and Adam Brash.
“Adam is running Ultreia well, we had fun in a cooking class,” Jasinski says. “Tim at Bistro Vendome is doing a really good job; he hasn’t asked me for anything.”
And at Rioja, executive chef Gabe Wyman — who’s been there 18 years — “is just crushing it,” she adds.
“i love them all, but i have a deeper love for Rioja,” Jasinski admits. “If someone wanted to open a new Rioja in a cool place, I would say okay, let’s do it.”
But while she misses Euclid Hall, too, she acknowledges that “you can’t go back.”
Instead, Jasinski continues to go forward. While she might not be interested in doing more reality shows (she did commit to a “Top Chef Masters”), she’s interested in consulting, in the chef trip she’s about to take to Morocco, in the One Table: A Chefs Collective Dinner at the Mercantile on October 25, where she’ll be one of the cooks. Kukilinski will be there, too; she cheers on all the chefs she’s mentored, including Dana Rodriguez, who was with the crew that traveled to New York to celebrate Jasinski’s CIA honors.
“I still think I have important things to say. I have relevance,” Jasinski says. “But these other people have important things to say, too.”
Sitting on the patio outside Rioja, Jasinski definitely has plenty to say. About winning the Beard, about being honored by the CIA but ignored by the Michelin Guide when it added a Colorado version. About the challenges that restaurateurs face today with increased costs and the tipped minimum wage situation. And about the new “peach fancy toast” on Rioja’s menu, which was inspired by a recent visit to the Santa Barbara farmers’ market.
“There’s a lot of great food here in Colorado that people don’t hear about,” she says, giving a shout-out to all the great ranchers and farmers, including Ela Farms — whose entire peach crop was wiped out this year.
When she moved here 25 years ago, Jasinski liked the weather and “the nice community of independent thinkers,” but didn’t think Denver had a particularly exciting dining scene. That’s changed.
She’s excited by the work many cooks are doing, taking time to name-check Kelly Whitaker. “I like how thoughtful he is about what he’s doing, the whole cycle of food, with as close to zero waste as possible,” she notes. She’s excited about the chef-driven restaurants all over town, and the collegial community of chefs who are changing the dining landscape every day.
“Change is inevitable, growth optional,” she concludes. “You can fight it, learn from it, it’s up to you. Denver has really great restaurant scene,” she concludes. “It didn’t when I moved here.”
Holy crap, Jen, you helped make it happen.
This story was originally published as part of a series on women in Denver who have won James Beard chef awards; the complete piece is included in Westword’s annual Food & Drink guide, inserted in the October 22 issue.
Dining and Cooking