By Jim Keim
Restaurant kitchens are an odd combination of highly organized hedonism, manic creativity, and mind-boggling repetition. The people who thrive in such conditions are unusual souls, and to be a chef in Crested Butte is to have twice veered from life’s beaten path. This column, which will appear in The Weekly on a somewhat irregular basis, explores the stories and menus of our local restaurant professionals.
I had the pleasure recently to chat with Spencer Hestwood, co-founder and chef at the Ginger Café. Spencer started in the profession as a teenage dishwasher and eventually trained as a chef in a traditional French kitchen. After serving in a wide variety of restaurants, he became a banquet manager and wine steward at a high-traffic French bistro in Omaha. Spencer then stepped away from it all, came to Crested Butte, and in conjunction with his partner Jennifer Cochlin, opened The Ginger Café, a fusion of Indian and Thai cuisine.
While some step away from the beaten path, Spencer tumbled off. A thirty-foot fall from stage scaffolding at the age of thirteen left him with a broken back and an unusual sense of the importance of quality of life. “I was actually working for my dad on a set for Shakespeare on the Green in Omaha,” Spencer remembers. “I was painting a set and was crossing from one to another section of scaffolding...and I just missed my footing. I watched my foot [step into air instead of onto scaffolding] and I said ‘Oh sh-t’ and I started to fall headfirst.” As he plummeted towards the hard, stage floor thirty feet below, he had the clear realization that his life had taken a terrifying and irreversible turn.
Later, a witness told Spencer that on the way down from the scaffolding, he hit a light cable. His body rotated around the cable as if in a trapeze artist’s show. “I was falling head first and then it swung me around; I landed flat on my back instead of on my noggin.” Although he avoided the almost-certain death of a headfirst impact, Spencer’s body was shattered. “I was totally broken. I shattered my whole right shoulder. I broke my collarbone in three different places. My shoulder blade was cracked in half. I cracked a couple of vertebra in my back. It was not cool.”
Six months later, Spencer was out of his body brace and making a stellar recovery. But the experience left him spiritually altered. He had faced almost-certain death as a result of a single misstep and had then been reprieved by the chance placement of a lighting cable. The vagaries of karma, the ease with which death can claim us or gracefully glide by, cannot help but mess with the head of an adolescent. His attitude towards life took on more extremes of fun and caution. “I realized I should have fun, do whatever the hell I want to do, and just live life the way you dream about it. Really enjoy it, do what you want to do, and don’t have any regrets at all. But be smart about it. Don’t do any more stupid stuff like fall off scaffolding.” In less dreamy tones he adds, “I don’t go near scaffolding much, any more. It kind of freaks me out.”
A year after getting out of his body brace, Spencer found work in a restaurant and was hooked. His need to experience and enjoy life found embodiment in the aromas of simmering stews and sauces. Preparing a meal, Spencer notes, is for him “a very…intimate thing. It really is. No matter if it’s a quickie or a three-hour dinner, you know, it’s an intimate thing. And it should be. Always. It should be special.” He is one of those chefs with a profound spiritual sense that cooking is something that happens between people, and this led to quick success in the restaurant world. Spencer worked at a wide range of restaurants learning the ins and outs of Indian, vegetarian, and other cuisine. He developed a fascination with wines and discovered that he had a fairly good palate. By his mid-twenties, Spencer had become a wine steward and banquet manager for a large French restaurant in Omaha. He had ascended to one of the most stressful and insane levels of the restaurant profession, simultaneously managing several gourmet events involving hundreds of customers each.
It is at this point that Spencer’s story takes on a Crested Butte flavor. It is the tale of one who achieves higher and higher levels of financial and career success only to loose touch with that which gave life meaning, flavor, and enjoyment. And so that person chucks it all and, sets out to rediscover life, and, somehow and in some way, ends up in Crested Butte.
Together with Jen, his girlfriend since the two met while working in an Indian restaurant, Spencer moved to Crested Butte. “I did what everyone else has done here, you know. I painted houses for a while, I bartended at The Princess for a while, I worked at the Wine House for a good while…I bounced around like everybody else here.”
Spencer and Jen had a vague idea that they wanted to open a restaurant, but it was quite by accident that the enterprise came together. “I was standing behind Scott Yost of Pita’s at the bank one day and he mentioned that he was moving, and I tapped him on the shoulder and asked if the space was free, and that was that. That’s exactly how I finally became a restaurant owner. Absolutely. We had no idea of what we were going to do, you know, we had no idea…I put the deposit down on the place before we even had worked up a business plan. Yeah, I put a grand down with George, my landlord, and there it was. We made it up. That’s what I always wanted to do, though, you know. I moved here, and I was, like, I think I could open up a restaurant here.“
Though originally trained in French cuisine, Spencer’s secret passion has been Pan-Asian cuisine, and not surprisingly, this became the focus of the restaurant. An additional chef, Pook, brings an unconventional influence from her native Thailand. She is one of those tremendously shy souls that turn into a force of nature when they step into the kitchen.
Although the Ginger Café has produced more than its share of Pad Thai addicts in town, the menu offers numerous seductively tasty dishes. You can choose a range of spiciness that suits all from the faint of heart to the extreme chili connoisseur. I always ask my server Zen for her top recommendation of the evening. The most recent addition to the menu, a Thai Lavosh, is one of my favorites. It is a cracker bread covered with saffron shrimp, roasted red pepper, green onions, a Thai pesto spread, and topped with melted Havarti cheese. Surprised that a Middle Eastern dish like a Lavosh has been converted into an appetizer with a delectable Thai twist? Welcome to the Ginger Café.
Specializing in Indian and Thai cuisine, the Ginger Café offers Colorado Lamb, Pad Thai, many curries, soups, and some out-of-sight fusion dishes. Many veggie options. Full bar, exotic drinks, and an intimate setting makes this not your average Asian restaurant. Entrees average $8. Offering lunch and dinner everyday. Dine-in, take away, delivery, 313 3rd Street in the heart of Crested Butte. 349-7291.
