What if those places were to vanish? What if you were to wake tomorrow morning and learn that that remnant of your life and that portion of your community’s lingua franca had been erased? Such a prospect has been a real threat all year, with the relentless tragedy of COVID-19 leaving many American restaurants, even established classics, on the brink of bankruptcy. The threat will only intensify as winter progresses and restaurateurs have to abandon the outdoor dining that has kept them treading water for months. We love restaurants here at
Esquire, and we hope that during this holiday season you’ll consider making donations to Southern Smoke and the Lee Initiative and other organizations that are helping restaurant workers endure the crisis. We also hope you’ll raise a toast to these spots around the country old and new, scruffy and spiffy that we consider restaurants that America can’t afford to lose. Because if we lose them, we lose who we are.
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A view of Alpino Vino which can only be accessed by skiing or snow-coaching in from the gondola at Telluride mountain. (Provided by Telluride Ski Resort)
If you haven’t yet been, it’s time to put these three Colorado restaurants on your 2021 bucket list. The editors of Esquire magazine last week published “100 restaurants America can’t afford to lose,” a tribute to timeless dining spots across the country that would be a sure shame for reasons cultural, personal, gastronomic to watch close during the pandemic.
Colorado’s three mentions on the map are good ones, too. In Telluride,
| Read all about Wolf Creek and Pagosa Springs, then get current regional ski conditions. |
By Daniel Gibson |
Count me among the most fortunate of in our corner of the world, as I just returned from a ski outing to Wolf Creek and the charming town of Pagosa Springs, Colorado.
On the drive north, we entered the white realm as we reached the higher elevations near Chama, after climbing out of the stunning orange, yellow, and tan sandstone cliff and mesa country around Abiquiu. The land lay locked under a blanket of white, with frosted trees, rivers slipping silently beneath mantles of ice, and homes burdened with snow piled high on their roofs.