About Colorado BBQ

What is Colorado BBQ?

You’ve heard of Kansas-City style, Texas-style, and Mem­phis-style BBQ, but by now you might be ask­ing your­self, “what’s Col­orado-style BBQ?”

A photo of 11 racks of Colorado BBQ ribs sitting in CO BBQ's smoker outside their restaurant. The bbq ribs are light red in color and flecked with oranges and browns from spices used in the dry rubs used on the meat. Blackened char patterns ripple across the top and bottom of the pork ribs from laying on the surface of the smoker for nearly 24 hours.

Accord­ing to Head Chef Greg Ander­son, Col­orado BBQ is about tak­ing the best that the bar­be­cue world has to offer and cre­at­ing some­thing new. Just as the Col­orado restau­rant scene has become a melt­ing pot for many cuisines, Col­orado BBQ is doing the same with their smoked meat and sauces.

Bar­be­cue is a com­mu­ni­ty and it’s not just lim­it­ed to the Unit­ed States. You’ll find vari­a­tions of slow-smoked meats in a vari­ety of cul­tures around the world, from Char Siu in Chi­na to Carne Asa­da in Mexico.

At Col­orado BBQ, you’re going to rec­og­nize some of the bar­be­cue fla­vors from tra­di­tion­al Texas-style or North Car­oli­na-style BBQ, but our menu draws inspi­ra­tion from a more glob­al selec­tion of herbs and spices to enhance the fla­vors of each type of meat.

Meet Chef Greg Anderson

Hail­ing from Tyler, Texas, Head Chef Greg Ander­son grad­u­at­ed from Le Cor­don Bleu Col­lege of Culi­nary Arts in Austin. He made his way to Col­orado via the Rocky Moun­tains as a sous chef for Vail Resorts, where he first fell in love with the mountains.

It was dur­ing his time as exec­u­tive chef and pit mas­ter at the West End Tav­ern in Boul­der that he got to pull from his Texas BBQ roots and begin show­cas­ing what Col­orado had to offer the bar­beque com­mu­ni­ty at large. But Boul­der wasn’t the right place for Anderson.

He real­ized he was a dif­fer­ent, bet­ter ver­sion of him­self in the moun­tains, so it was back to the Rock­ies he went, end­ing up in Sum­mit Coun­ty as the exec­u­tive chef for the Key­stone Lodge, fol­lowed by The Uptown and now Col­orado BBQ.

It’s his goal to bring the sense of com­mu­ni­ty that he’s always felt with BBQ into all the food that’s served on the menu, whether it’s their sig­na­ture beef brisket or skil­let mac ‘n’ cheese.

A photo of the head chef at Colorado BBQ, Greg Anderson. He is wearing a gray chef's jacket with pens tucked into the sleeve pocket, red apron, and a black baseball cap and smiling while looking directly into the camera.

Sustainability and Colorado BBQ

When we start­ed Col­orado BBQ, we made sus­tain­abil­i­ty one of our core val­ues and hit the books to see how we can reduce our envi­ron­men­tal foot­print as a busi­ness. Here’s how we’re doing that:

Recy­cling: We do our best to ensure that dis­pos­able items we use can be recy­cled and we offer recy­cling con­tain­ers at both of our loca­tions. Since there’s no recy­cling pick up at either of our loca­tions, we trans­port the recy­cling our­selves to the drop-off centers. 
Com­post­ing: Both the front and the back of the house par­tic­i­pate heav­i­ly in com­post­ing with any biodegrad­able food products. 
Sus­tain­ably raised meat: We work with ven­dors that raise their cat­tle and pigs as eth­i­cal­ly and sus­tain­ably as they can. Our main sup­pli­ers are Har­ris Ranch Beef and Old MacDonald’s Farm Pork.

Community and Colorado BBQ

Anoth­er impor­tant core val­ue is that we pitch in to sup­port the com­mu­ni­ty that’s sup­port­ing us. We do this by pro­vid­ing the orga­ni­za­tions we sup­port with food or space to meet and some­times hold­ing the occa­sion­al fundrais­er to ben­e­fit them. Below are some of the incred­i­ble orga­ni­za­tions we work with and links to their dona­tion pages if you’d like to show them some love.