Aspen Art Museum announces new concept for its restaurant

Chef Brian Banister and Aspen Art Museum food items and Alex Fonseca on the web site of their incoming Rooftop Cafe, opening Dec. 3.

The Aspen Art Museum has appointed a new culinary group and will start a new restaurant in its rooftop house when the constructing reopens on Dec. 3. The renamed Rooftop Café will be led by Chef Brian Banister and foodstuff and beverage director Alex Fonseca, the museum declared.

The pair will work carefully with close by farms and community associates on the new cafe, established beside the out of doors art installations in the rooftop sculpture yard.

“I am delighted to welcome chef Banister and Alex Fonseca to the Aspen Art Museum crew,” director Nicola Lees said in the announcement. “As the premier rooftop cafe in Aspen, we have a unique prospect that combines the city’s iconic setting atop a artistic institution in the heart of our neighborhood. The Rooftop Café is definitely a gathering position not only to appreciate the business of fellow diners, but to serve as a venue that promotes dialogue and group connections, built-in in just our lively artistic programming.”



Bannister and Fonseca succeed the spouse and spouse culinary group of Julia and Allen Domingos, who originated the museum’s rooftop So Café notion and led it given that the new building’s opening in 2014. Their final working day of operation at the museum was Oct. 16, when an extended closure started to prepare for the installation of this winter’s “Andy Warhol: Lifetimes” exhibition.

“We are very proud to have formulated the AAM’s food items and beverage application as the founding culinary spouse of this fantastic Aspen establishment,” the pair wrote last month. “While we have savored our collaboration with the museum above the earlier 8 a long time, we sense it is time to change our concentrate on relatives and our up coming culinary enterprise.”



In addition to the new eating services, the museum will proceed to work The Slippery Slope, a operating sculpture by Los Angeles-based mostly artists Adam Stamp that serves as a bar on the rooftop and opened very last year.

Banister explained the restaurant would team with regional farms and the food items cooperative Farm Runners to supply ingredients from the Roaring Fork, Gunnison and Grand valleys.

“The Rooftop Café’s offerings will mirror a lot of of my personalized passions all around sustainability, plant-based mostly cuisine and community agriculture,” Banister explained in the announcement. “You will see this in a menu that is constantly updated all through each and every period, earning it a exceptional addition to Aspen’s culinary scene.”

Fonseca extra an expanded beverage plan is in the operates together with a collection of purely natural and biodynamic wines from smaller winemakers from around the world as very well as espresso from Bonfire Coffee in Carbondale and beers from Casey Brewing in Glenwood Springs and Primitive Beer from Longmont.

“I am assured we’ll put the Rooftop Café amid the ideal of the après-ski locations in the town,” Fonseca claimed.

Cafe assistance several hours will coincide with the museum’s program, Tuesday by means of Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. In addition, there will be a aim on après from 3 p.m. to closing including an après food menu and activation of The Slippery Slope.