Watoga State Park
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At age 18, Luck enrolled in culinary school at the Art Institute of Phoenix. The hard work paid off. Today, he owns three restaurants: Four By Brother Luck, Eleven18 Latin Tapas Bar, and The Studio in Colorado Springs. He’s appeared on Beat Bobby Flay, Top Chef: Colorado, and Chopped. Luck has also spearheaded collaborations with various other chefs and, most recently, big names like Blue Apron and Visit Colorado. Throughout, he’s remained passionate about pushing culinary boundaries and sharing his roots—both as a Cajun-Creole man, and as a lifelong resident of the Southwest. In fact, that’s the way he’s using the Blue Apron collab: to share Colorado flavors with home cooks across America through a custom, limited-edition recipe.
The fact that Blue Apron chose to kick off a major culinary partnership in Colorado—part of a bigger collab with Visit Colorado—isn’t a small detail. While the state’s food scene is currently on a skyward trajectory, it hasn’t always been that way. According to Colorado food historian and author Adrian Miller, the state was “mostly a steak and potatoes kind of place” until about 20 years ago.
“In fact, that was our very first challenge on Top Chef: Colorado—to cook meat and potatoes, and make it fancy,” Luck laughs.
“Back then, the average town would have a steakhouse, a French restaurant, and an Italian place. That was about it,” explains Allyson Reedy, a Denver-based food writer who’s been covering the Colorado restaurant scene for nearly two decades. But, Luck says, the state has always had something of a hidden culinary underbelly.
“In Colorado Springs, we have great Jamaican food because summer resorts used to hire Jamaican employees and bring them here to work,” Luck says. And Denver had tons of incredible, hole-in-the-wall Ethiopian restaurants, thanks to its large and thriving Ethiopian community. Beyond that, there have always been Black-owned soul food restaurants, good Chinese food, and authentic Mexican joints, Miller says. These places just weren’t often mainstream.
Calvin Price State Forest
Immersive Escape
Illuminated night skies make this one of West Virginia's most enchanting places.
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Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park
War and Peace
The overlook tower is a dreamy vantage point for stargazing.
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Blackwater Falls State Park
Feel the Rush
These enchanting falls drop 57 feet through the Allegheny Mountains.
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Green Bank Observatory
New Wavelengths
The imposing deep-space telescope weighs 17 million pounds.
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Calhoun County Park
Hidden Gem
This lesser-known park is a top pick for stargazers.
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Spruce Knob
Elevate Your Senses
The highest point in West Virginia offers an unbeatable star show.
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Colorado’s famous heritage grains—like quinoa, rye, and emmer wheat—have helped fuel the state’s craft brewing, baking, and restaurant industries. HOLDEN KUDLA
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Corn season is a big deal in Colorado. Each summer, the long-awaited, succulent, sweet kernels appear on restaurant menus across the state.
WILLIAM WOODY
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A cutting-edge collaboration
Around the turn of the millennium, things started to change. In the early 2000s, people started moving to Colorado in droves, in part driven by the outdoor recreation boom, and in part driven by the later rise in remote work. Some newcomers—like Matt Chasseur, now the owner of white-tablecloth eatery Pêche in Palisade—were chefs who wanted to raise their children away from the constant buzz of New York City. Others were millennials searching for work-life balance and easy access to outdoor recreation.
“Young people started moving here, and suddenly there were these changing demographics,” Reedy says. The state began attracting adventurers who were open to trying new foods. As a result, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean cuisines started taking off in a new way.
That was good news for Brother Luck. After graduating from culinary school, Luck began traveling around Asia and spent some time working in Japan to study Japanese cooking. Around that time, he’d also settled in Colorado Springs, where he opened Brother Luck Street Eats, then Lucky Dumpling. Both celebrated regional street food from around the world—and both were smash hits. As Luck says, the timing was ideal.
“By the time I stepped onto the scene, there were generations of chefs who had come before me and laid the foundation,” Luck says. (As examples, he cites Jennifer Jasinksi, the executive chef of Rioja, who won the James Beard Award for Best Southwest Chef in 2013, and Alex Seidel, who won the same award in 2018 for Fruition.) And of course, there were the legions of home cooks and family-owned restaurants that helped uphold regional culinary traditions before they were popular, too.
“The nice thing about Colorado cooking is we get to play with elevation,” Luck says. “There are so many different landscapes to work with, whether you’re on the plains or the foothills or the Western Slope,” he says. Those landscapes and their ever-shifting colors and seasons help in
spire Luck’s menus. They also provide an abundance of fresh ingredients to experiment with.
“Quinoa is really regional for us here in Colorado. So is the goat cheese we get here from Colorado farms,” he says. “And we have such amazing produce—from Rocky Ford melons and Palisade peaches to Pueblo Chiles and Olathe blue corn, which is one of my favorite things to cook with.”
- Chef Brother Luck, colorado based chef
"We have such amazing produce—from Rocky Ford melons and Palisade peaches to Pueblo Chiles and Olathe blue corn."
Between the spirit of innovation, local bounty, and mountain inspiration, Colorado’s food scene has become a hotbed of energy and culinary progress. In 2023, the state took home its first Michelin Stars when the iconic organization awarded five restaurants in a single season. And over the past year, the restaurateurs have raised even further: Michelin awarded a star to a sixth Colorado restaurant in 2024, and even more innovative eateries have opened up across the state.
It’s a wave Luck is both riding—and leading. In 2017, he opened his flagship restaurant Four by Brother Luck, also in downtown Colorado Springs, setting a new standard for Southwestern food. And this year, he’s working with Visit Colorado and Blue Apron to develop that brand-new, Colorado-inspired recipe.
Corn season is a big deal in Colorado. Each summer, the long-awaited, succulent, sweet kernels appear on restaurant menus across the state. WILLIAM WOODY
COURTESY OF CHEF BROTHER LUCK
Colorado’s food scene goes global
Luck and Blue Apron first connected in spring of 2024, as part of a collaboration with Atlas Obscura and Visit Colorado. As one of Colorado’s foremost chefs and most recognizable culinary stars, Luck had been on Visit Colorado’s radar for a while. So, they set up the connection—and let the sparks fly.
For Luck, the opportunity felt like redemption (he lost a Blue Apron challenge on Top Chef years ago). For Blue Apron, it seemed like a match made in heaven. After all, Luck has a reputation as a quintessential Colorado chef who values unique flavors and fresh ingredients, and wants good food to feel accessible to people. It all seemed to fall in line with Blue Apron’s mission to share the love of cooking.
“When the opportunity to partner with Brother luck presented itself, it felt like a perfect match,” says John Adler, Blue Apron’s senior vice president. “His innovative and approachable flavor combinations and dishes are perfect for the Blue Apron customer experience.”
Almost as soon as he got off his first call with Blue Apron, Luck’s head began buzzing with ideas. He sent over four recipes, each inspired by Colorado meat and game, seasonal local produce, and cooking methods he’s learned (and perfected) in the Centennial State. After some back-and-forth with the experts at Visit Colorado and fine tuning and testing the recipe with Blue Apron, the team settled on the perfect recipe: a chipotle-cherry marinated pork chop with quinoa and lime sour cream.
“We wanted to do a Colorado-focused dish that tells a story about our region,” Luck says. This one includes a number of uniquely Colorado ingredients that he and Visit Colorado helped identify and brainstorm around. They came together on a few top favorites, including a melt-in-your-mouth cut of pork, poblano pepper-spiced quinoa, and a rich sour cherry spread—all of which feature prominently in the dish.
Creating a masterpiece
“We like to have a sort of ‘plus-one’ that goes along with every recipe. It could be an ingredient that’s special, or a simple part of the method that feels special—something that’s easy to do at home and really elevates the dish,” explains Lisa Appleton, Blue Apron’s culinary director. This recipe has two plus-ones: the lime sour cream, a cooling element that helps balance the smoky heat of the peppers, and the chipotle-cherry marinade, which involves both a clever technique and a surprising flavor combination.
The recipe will hit the home kitchens of Blue Apron subscribers this September, giving hundreds of Americans the same opportunity Luck so treasured as a young cook: the chance to travel through food.
“At my restaurants, we don’t sell meals. We sell stories,” Luck says. “The stories of the people who work here, the stories of the people who supply our food, and the stories of the food itself. It’s our job to connect our guests to those stories.” By bringing together diverse ingredients from Colorado’s desert, mountain, and plains communities, this recipe does exactly that.
Chipotle-cherry marinated pork chop with quinoa and lime sour cream. COURTESY OF BLUE APRON
Celebrating the future of Colorado food
The Blue Apron project is exciting in other ways, too. It’s yet another sign that Colorado is officially on the map as a national taste-maker and top culinary destination. And as far as Brother Luck can see, that trend is just going to continue.
“My favorite thing about the Colorado food scene is the next generation. I’m seeing this next chapter begin, and new cooks starting to tell their stories, and it’s powerful,” he says. As more new chefs experiment with cutting-edge concepts here, the local restaurant scene will only get more varied and more elevated, Reedy says.
- Chef Brother Luck, colorado based chef
“My favorite thing about the Colorado food scene is the next generation."
“The food here is going to keep getting more diverse. It’s going to get more specialized as we get more people coming here from different parts of the country and the world,” she explains. Miller adds that he sees a continuing evolution in farm-to-table dining and locally sourced ingredients. These days, both chefs and consumers are paying more attention to where their food comes from. Miller expects that hyperlocal, sustainable emphasis to continue.
Over the next few years, Luck is looking forward to seeing those trends unfold. He’s also excited to watch some of his local heroes—like Chef Matt Vawter of Breckenridge’s Rootstalk and Chef Josh Niernberg of Grand Junction’s Bin 707 Foodbar—continue to do big things. (Vawter, for example, just took home a James Beard award this year.)
These chefs don’t feel like rivals, Luck says; they feel like mentors, co-conspirators, and friends. That spirit of collaboration is another of his favorite things about Colorado, and one of the things he’s certain will keep driving the state to great things.
“It’s really inspiring,” Luck says. “We really support each other. If one of us wins, we all win.”
Chef Brother Luck graduated from high school in Arizona and immediately enrolled in culinary school. COURTESY OF CHEF BROTHER LUCK
Chef Brother Luck is known for incorporating Colorado ingredients—like quinoa, sour cherries, and blue corn—in some of his most imaginative dishes. COURTESY OF CHEF BROTHER LUCK
- Chef Brother Luck, colorado based chef
“I didn’t have the opportunity to travel as a kid, but food took me around the globe”
has been traveling the world since he was a child—not via plane, train, or car, but through recipes.
For Luck, now a Colorado-based chef (and Food Network celebrity), cooking was always a part of growing up in Phoenix, Arizona. His parents are of Creole and Cajun descent; good food was central to his family’s culture, he says. But early on, he found himself experimenting with other dishes and flavors, too. It was his way of exploring the world beyond his hometown.
“I didn’t have the opportunity to travel as a kid, but food took me around the globe,” Luck says. “I think there’s something beautiful about being able to transport yourself to a different region or country when you’re cooking a dish. You might not be able to afford a plane ticket, but that dish can take you there.”
Chef Brother Luck
The Centennial State's food scene is entering its
golden age–and bigger things are yet to come.
Stone fruits thrive on Colorado’s Western Slope, where fragrant orchards grow heavy with ripe, tart cherries. CREDIT: Daria - stock.adobe.com
Meet the Chef Blending Global Cuisines with Colorado Flavors
A Mesmerizing Guide to Stargazing in West Virginia
The Centennial State's food scene is entering its golden age–and bigger things are yet to come.
Chef Brother Luck
has been traveling the world since he was a child—not via plane, train, or car, but through recipes.
For Luck, now a Colorado-based chef (and Food Network celebrity), cooking was always a part of growing up in Phoenix, Arizona. His parents are of Creole and Cajun descent; good food was central to his family’s culture, he says. But early on, he found himself experimenting with other dishes and flavors, too. It was his way of exploring the world beyond his hometown.
“I didn’t have the opportunity to travel as a kid, but food took me around the globe,” Luck says. “I think there’s something beautiful about being able to transport yourself to a different region or country when you’re cooking a dish. You might not be able to afford a plane ticket, but that dish can take you there.”
- from October Sky, a film based on Homer Hickam’s memoir Rocket Boys
“My favorite thing about the Colorado food scene is the next generation."
A cutting-edge collaboration
At age 18, Luck enrolled in culinary school at the Art Institute of Phoenix. The hard work paid off. Today, he owns three restaurants: Four By Brother Luck, Eleven18 Latin Tapas Bar, and The Studio in Colorado Springs. He’s appeared on Beat Bobby Flay, Top Chef: Colorado, and Chopped. Luck has also spearheaded collaborations with various other chefs and, most recently, big names like Blue Apron and Visit Colorado. Throughout, he’s remained passionate about pushing culinary boundaries and sharing his roots—both as a Cajun-Creole man, and as a lifelong resident of the Southwest. In fact, that’s the way he’s using the Blue Apron collab: to share Colorado flavors with home cooks across America through a custom, limited-edition recipe.
The fact that Blue Apron chose to kick off a major culinary partnership in Colorado—part of a bigger collab with Visit Colorado—isn’t a small detail. While the state’s food scene is currently on a skyward trajectory, it hasn’t always been that way. According to Colorado food historian and author Adrian Miller, the state was “mostly a steak and potatoes kind of place” until about 20 years ago.
“In fact, that was our very first challenge on Top Chef: Colorado—to cook meat and potatoes, and make it fancy,” Luck laughs.
“Back then, the average town would have a steakhouse, a French restaurant, and an Italian place. That was about it,” explains Allyson Reedy, a Denver-based food writer who’s been covering the Colorado restaurant scene for nearly two decades. But, Luck says, the state has always had something of a hidden
culinary underbelly.
“In Colorado Springs, we have great Jamaican food because summer resorts used to hire Jamaican employees and bring them here to work,” Luck says. And Denver had tons of incredible, hole-in-the-wall Ethiopian restaurants, thanks to its large and thriving Ethiopian community. Beyond that, there have always been Black-owned soul food restaurants, good Chinese food, and authentic Mexican joints, Miller says. These places just weren’t often mainstream.
Chef Brother Luck graduated from high school in Arizona and immediately enrolled in culinary school.
COURTESY OF CHEF BROTHER LUCK
Chef Brother Luck is known for incorporating Colorado ingredients—like quinoa, sour cherries, and blue corn—in some of his most imaginative dishes.
COURTESY OF CHEF BROTHER LUCK
Around the turn of the millennium, things started to change. In the early 2000s, people started moving to Colorado in droves, in part driven by the outdoor recreation boom, and in part driven by the later rise in remote work. Some newcomers—like Matt Chasseur, now the owner of white-tablecloth eatery Pêche in Palisade—were chefs who wanted to raise their children away from the constant buzz of New York City. Others were millennials searching for work-life balance and easy access to outdoor recreation.
“Young people started moving here, and suddenly there were these changing demographics,” Reedy says. The state began attracting adventurers who were open to trying new foods. As a result, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean cuisines started taking off in a new way.
That was good news for Brother Luck. After graduating from culinary school, Luck began traveling around Asia and spent some time working in Japan to study Japanese cooking. Around that time, he’d also settled in Colorado Springs, where he opened Brother Luck Street Eats, then Lucky Dumpling. Both celebrated regional street food from around the world—and both were smash hits. As Luck says, the timing was ideal.
“By the time I stepped onto the scene, there were generations of chefs who had come before me and laid the foundation,” Luck says. (As examples, he cites Jennifer Jasinksi, the executive chef of Rioja, who won the James Beard Award for Best Southwest Chef in 2013, and Alex Seidel, who won the same award in 2018 for Fruition.) And of course, there were the legions of home cooks and family-owned restaurants that helped uphold regional culinary traditions before they were popular, too.
“The nice thing about Colorado cooking is we get to play with elevation,” Luck says. “There are so many different landscapes to work with, whether you’re on the plains or the foothills or the Western Slope,” he says. Those landscapes and their ever-shifting colors and seasons help inspire Luck’s menus. They also provide an abundance of fresh ingredients to experiment with.
“Quinoa is really regional for us here in Colorado. So is the goat cheese we get here from Colorado farms,” he says. “And we have such amazing produce—from Rocky Ford melons and Palisade peaches to Pueblo Chiles and Olathe blue corn, which is one of my favorite things to cook with.”
Colorado’s food scene goes global
Colorado’s famous heritage grains—like quinoa, rye, and emmer wheat—have helped fuel the state’s craft brewing, baking, and restaurant industries.
HOLDEN KUDLA
- Chef Brother Luck, colorado based chef
"We have such amazing produce—from Rocky Ford melons and Palisade peaches to Pueblo Chiles and Olathe blue corn."
Between the spirit of innovation, local bounty, and mountain inspiration, Colorado’s food scene has become a hotbed of energy and culinary progress. In 2023, the state took home its first Michelin Stars when the iconic organization awarded five restaurants in a single season. And over the past year, the restaurateurs have raised even further: Michelin awarded a star to a sixth Colorado restaurant in 2024, and even more innovative eateries have opened up across the state.
It’s a wave Luck is both riding—and leading. In 2017, he opened his flagship restaurant Four by Brother Luck, also in downtown Colorado Springs, setting a new standard for Southwestern food. And this year, he’s working with Visit Colorado and Blue Apron to develop that brand-new, Colorado-inspired recipe.
Stone fruits thrive on Colorado’s Western Slope, where fragrant orchards grow heavy with ripe, tart cherries.
CREDIT: Daria - stock.adobe.com
Luck and Blue Apron first connected in spring of 2024, as part of a collaboration with Atlas Obscura and Visit Colorado. As one of Colorado’s foremost chefs and most recognizable culinary stars, Luck had been on Visit Colorado’s radar for a while. So, they set up the connection—and let the sparks fly.
For Luck, the opportunity felt like redemption (he lost a Blue Apron challenge on Top Chef years ago). For Blue Apron, it seemed like a match made in heaven. After all, Luck has a reputation as a quintessential Colorado chef who values unique flavors and fresh ingredients, and wants good food to feel accessible to people. It all seemed to fall in line with Blue Apron’s mission to share the love of cooking.
“When the opportunity to partner with Brother luck presented itself, it felt like a perfect match,” says John Adler, Blue Apron’s senior vice president. “His innovative and approachable flavor combinations and
dishes are perfect for the Blue Apron customer experience.”
Almost as soon as he got off his first call with Blue Apron, Luck’s head began buzzing with ideas. He sent over four recipes, each inspired by Colorado meat and game, seasonal local produce, and cooking methods he’s learned (and perfected) in the Centennial State. After some back-and-forth with the experts at Visit Colorado and fine tuning and testing the recipe with Blue Apron, the team settled on the perfect recipe: a chipotle-cherry marinated pork chop with quinoa and lime sour cream.
“We wanted to do a Colorado-focused dish that tells a story about our region,” Luck says. This one includes a number of uniquely Colorado ingredients that he and Visit Colorado helped identify and brainstorm around. They came together on a few top favorites, including a melt-in-your-mouth cut of pork, poblano pepper-spiced quinoa, and a rich sour cherry spread—all of which feature prominently in the dish.
Creating a masterpiece
“We like to have a sort of ‘plus-one’ that goes along with every recipe. It could be an ingredient that’s special, or a simple part of the method that feels special—something that’s easy to do at home and really elevates the dish,” explains Lisa Appleton, Blue Apron’s culinary director. This recipe has two plus-ones: the lime sour cream, a cooling element that helps balance the smoky heat of the peppers, and the chipotle-cherry marinade, which involves both a clever technique and a surprising flavor combination.
The recipe will hit the home kitchens of Blue Apron subscribers this September, giving hundreds of Americans the same opportunity Luck so treasured as a young cook: the chance to travel through food.
“At my restaurants, we don’t sell meals. We sell stories,” Luck says. “The stories of the people who work here, the stories of the people who supply our food, and the stories of the food itself. It’s our job to connect our guests to those stories.” By bringing together diverse ingredients from Colorado’s desert, mountain, and plains communities, this recipe does exactly that.
The Blue Apron project is exciting in other ways, too. It’s yet another sign that Colorado is officially on the map as a national taste-maker and top culinary destination. And as far as Brother Luck can see, that trend is just going to continue.
“My favorite thing about the Colorado food scene is the next generation. I’m seeing this next chapter begin, and new cooks starting to tell their stories, and it’s powerful,” he says. As more new chefs experiment with cutting-edge concepts here, the local restaurant scene will only get more varied and more elevated, Reedy says.
Celebrating the future of Colorado food
Chipotle-cherry marinated pork chop with quinoa and lime sour cream.
COURTESY OF BLUE APRON
- Chef Brother Luck, colorado based chef
“I didn’t have the opportunity to travel as a kid, but food took me around the globe”
“The food here is going to keep getting more diverse. It’s going to get more specialized as we get more people coming here from different parts of the country and the world,” she explains. Miller adds that he sees a continuing evolution in farm-to-table dining and locally sourced ingredients. These days, both chefs and consumers are paying more attention to where their food comes from. Miller expects that hyperlocal, sustainable emphasis to continue.
Over the next few years, Luck is looking forward to seeing those trends unfold. He’s also excited to watch some of his local heroes—like Chef Matt Vawter of Breckenridge’s Rootstalk and Chef Josh Niernberg of Grand Junction’s Bin 707 Foodbar—continue to do big things. (Vawter, for example, just took home a James Beard award this year.)
These chefs don’t feel like rivals, Luck says; they feel like mentors, co-conspirators, and friends. That spirit of collaboration is another of his favorite things about Colorado, and one of the things he’s certain will keep driving the state to great things.
“It’s really inspiring,” Luck says. “We really support each other. If one of us wins, we
all win.”