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Hominess and nostalgia is a feeling Carlos Solarzano-Smith aims to maintain at the helm of Aspen Hospitality Group, a new restaurant partnership that just acquired Duemani and Acquolina. ....
A winning recipe: Solorzano-Smith rises through Aspen's hospitality ranks to become face of downtown restaurants aspentimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aspentimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Meridian Jewelers co-owners Robin and Kenny Smith drop envelopes at restaurants for the matching program in Aspen on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times) Lorena Rojas transcribes information from Rick Wark as he purchases two $200 gift certificates to restaurants in Aspen on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. “I want to support the community,” said Wark. “This is my small way of doing it.” (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times) “I don’t even know where to start and end,” said Craig Cordts-Pearce, who co-owns the Wild Fig, Steakhouse No. 316, The Monarch and CP Burger with his wife, Samantha. “I am absolutely flabbergasted there’s no words to even explain this.” ....
David Krause / The Aspen Times When the Pitkin County Board of Health voted to go all in on Red level COVID-19 restrictions last week, restaurants shouldered the brunt of the changes. Effective Sunday, indoor dining was out of the question; last call was bumped up to 8 p.m. Under the previous “Orange-plus-plus” restrictions, indoor dining was limited to 25% capacity with a 9:30 p.m. last call within Orange level guidelines while most other sectors of business were already subject to Red level restrictions. The new restrictions applied to all restaurants in Pitkin County. But not all eateries have the same ability to accommodate the rules: some venues fared better than others when Sunday rolled around, their fate contingent in part on the circumstances of their location. ....
Acquolina on Main St. is one of the Aspen restaurants asking customers to prepay for a portion of their dinner with a deposit at the time of a reservation. Empty chairs at empty tables won’t bode well for Aspen restaurants this winter after a challenging year of closures, tight capacity restrictions and strict COVID-19 protocols. It doesn’t help that Aspen has something of a “cancel culture,” said Candice Olson, who owns Local Coffee House, Here House and the new Firefly at Here House restaurant. Often, Olson said, diners make reservations weeks in advance only to cancel the day of, leaving venues hustling to fill seats in time for the dinner hour. ....