Metate Room is the award-winning fine-dining option at Mesa Verde in south-western Colorado. Run by Aramark, the industrial food services corporation with a 20-country footprint and concession contracts in many of the largest US national parks, Metate Room offers diners a sweeping view of the park’s landscape and wildlife, including wild mustangs. Its name, Metate, evokes the concave stone against which corn was ground in Mesoamerican cultures, suggesting an aware-ness of and appreciation for (or appropriation of) Indigenous foodways on the part of Aramark.
Aramark opts for a minimalist approach in its web representation of Metate Room. A higher-level web page summarizes “Mesa Verde Dining Experiences,” and Metate Room is one of four venues teased there with thumbnail photos and enticing taglines. Headlined “A Feast for All Your Senses,” the page offers the possibility of an “elegant evening” with “breathtaking views” and notes that “the menus at Mesa Verde National Park celebrate the local culture with favorites in-spired by the past and present” (Aramark 2022). A thumbnail photo depicts a completely unoccupied Metate Room, with tables and chairs in the foreground and the floor-to-ceiling wall of windows looking out onto the scrub of Chapin Mesa in the background. Beneath the thumbnail, a teaser reads, “Colorful Native American art-work surrounds you as you enjoy our award winning, contemporary menu inspired by regional heritage foods and flavorings.”
Upon clicking through to Metate Room’s own web page, one finds a slider with eight photos depicting the empty dining room, Native American artwork on the walls, and lovely views, a table set for two with wine chilling and artfully arranged food on plates, and aesthetically pleasing close-ups of ornately plated salmon, steak, salad, and a brownie.
The pictures of food are artful, well-lit, and competently composed shots with an occasional human arm or hand visible. Beyond the photos, the text is sparing. Readers are advised of the hours of operation and how to make a reservation, which is strongly recommended, and the line about colorful Native American artwork is repeated, but no other claims are made about the restaurant. Links are provided to three menus: dinner, kids, and dessert.
Like the website, the dinner menu for Metate Room does little to make claims about health or sustainability. It does feature icons to indicate vegetarian or gluten-free options, and a box at the bottom of the menu provides a stock warning about consuming raw or undercooked foods; it also advises that additional nutrition in-formation is available upon request and suggests that 2,000 calories a day is a good general guideline. This connects to the calorie information that accompanies each menu item listed. There are no claims to organic, healthy, or local food on the menu.
Metate Room’s menu, with starters ranging from $6.75 to $15, salads from $6 to $12, and entrees from $24 to $35, seems to indicate reasonable prices. As we saw at Jordan Pond House, many of the modifiers describing the preparation of each item emphasize authenticity, tradition, abundance, or choice: The focaccia crisp is “house-made” and the chicken wings are “house seasoned,” the charcuterie board comes with “traditional accompaniments,” the arugula and the cheese are “fresh,” the au jus is “natural,” and the angus beef is “hand-carved.” But the overall tone of the Metate Room is more subdued, with less of the anxious, overhyped tone seen on some other park restaurant menus. The menu offerings are more adventurous than is typical at park restaurants, with nary a burger in sight. Although familiar options of beef, chicken, and fish are represented, there are some preparations that stray from the expected: The chicken wings are “Korean BBQ” style, prepared with gochujang BBQ sauce alongside the typical celery and blue cheese. There are multiple dishes that feature ancient grains. And there are a handful of offerings containing elements—crème fraiche, candied pancetta, herbed red wine demi-glace, red pepper aioli, goat cheese, and caper sauce—that are upscale, allowing cosmopolitan foodie visitors to feel at home. How the promised “regional heritage foods and flavors” find expression on the menu is anyone’s guess, as there is no indication of local or regional sourcing, nor are brand names of any ingredients provided.
Messaging from the outside professional community about Metate Room tends to praise the quality of the food and to highlight the creativity and talent of its executive chef. An article on the National Parks Traveler site from 2010 applauds Metate Executive Chef Brian Puett’s win of the “Award of Culinary Excellence” by the American Culinary Federation Colorado Chefs Association. The award ac-knowledged Metate Room’s involvement with the Colorado Department of Ag-riculture’s program to promote Colorado food (Repanshek 2010). The National Parks Traveler article notes Puett’s efforts at “creating contemporary interpretations of heritage foods from the original Mesa Verde inhabitants, while maintaining ARAMARK’s commitment to incorporating sustainable and organic ingredients in all menus” (Repanshek 2010), which is fascinating praise, given the lack of information about sustainable, organic, local, or heritage elements in the way Aramark itself presents Metate Room. An earlier feature from 2009 in the same publication profiles Chef Puett and emphasizes his reliance on heritage foods of the Southwest—bison, elk, turkey, quail, squash, black beans, tortillas, and prickly pears—in building his menu (Repanshek 2009). A 2015 feature in the Durango Herald commends Puett’s successor, Derek Fontenot, for his formal training in classical French cuisine; it notes that “He has been working to increase the number of fresh, local and sustainable offerings, not an easy feat when food delivery trucks make the trek up the switchbacks only twice a week” (Anesi 2015). The author acknowledges the Metate Room’s Southwestern regional influence, citing the presence of squash, beans, and corn alongside Hatch green chilis, poblanos, prickly pear, pine nuts, and red pepper coulis (Anesi 2015). Similar themes are echoed in a piece on MesaVerdeCountry.com: Fontenot’s French cooking expertise is foregrounded, supported by details about his commitment to “getting products locally whenever possible, to support the regional economy and a sustainable farm-to-table ethos” (Mesa Verde Country, n.d.).
At the time of this writing, in 2022, the Metate Room is seeking an executive chef, and most traces of these regional specialties or evidence of local sourcing are absent from the menu. In 2009, Chef Puett was quoted as saying that Aramark requires him to get 80% of his food ingredients through its national distributor, but that he tries to buy locally for greater sustainability and to support smaller farmers (Repanshek 2009). One can only speculate that such conditions are constricting for talented, creative chefs, while noticing that today’s menu is more pro forma than the versions profiled a decade ago. The menu stands in striking contrast to the focus on local and Indigenous foods at the Mesa Verde Museum Association Bookstore in the Mesa Verde visitor center just down the road, where Indigenous foods (bags of blue cornmeal, tiny burlap sacks of Anasazi beans, and Cliff Dweller bean soup mix) and books about Indigenous foodways (Frank’s Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, Dahl’s Native Harvest, Niethammer’s American Indian Cooking, and Swentzell and Perea’s The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook) are the first things a visitor sees upon entering the store.
Professional community commentary on Metate Room takes up discourses of sustainability and status, but not health. But what do Metate Room eaters have to say about their experiences there? To discern what discourses prevail in the eater imaginary, I examined Tripadvisor’s 712 reviews, with an overall rating of 4.0/5, with 4.0 for food and service, 3.5 for value, and 4.5 for atmosphere, as well as Yelp, with 80 reviews and an overall rating of 3.5/5, and Google, with 51 reviews, with an overall rating of 3.8/5. Across all the review sites, it is difficult to find consistency, except for commentary on the views (sometimes including horses on the horizon) from the Metate Room. Opinions on the food position it as ranging from out-of-this-world delicious to terrible, but overall, reviewers seem to like the flavors and presentation. In general, reviewers argue that the food is anywhere from a little expensive to ridiculously high-priced. At the same time, they acknowledge that there are few alternatives nearby; the words “captive” and “monopoly” show up often. Many reviewers begrudgingly give props to Aramark, stating that they had low expectations of an industrial concession going in, but that the dining experience was surprisingly good. Reviews of service are quite varied; there are frequent complaints about slow or poor service, but just as many comments about the friendliness and skill of the servers. Several reviewers claim to have eaten in the high-end restaurants of many national parks, thus establishing their credibility as judges, before stating that Metate Room is the best or one of the best.
The theme of landscape over foodscape that dominates internet reviews of Jordan Pond House is less pronounced in reviews of Metate Room, where reviewers seem to have a more positive perspective on the culinary offerings. Some reviews, like the one posted by Jeffrey Cole on Google Reviews in September 2021, evaluate both positively: “The restaurant has a stunning wraparound view of the mesa and the distant San Juan mountains, so beautiful. The menu is limited but ‘curated,’ more suited to adults with expensive tastes.” An effusive Yelp review, posted by Jon L. in August 2018, mentions the sunset views only to explain why the service was off during an otherwise spectacular dining experience:
Better than Tom Colicchio, blew away Thomas Keller. We were driving back from Vegas where we were doing the foodie tour of our favorite chefs’ restau-rants. This review isn’t about those places, but the Metate Room was the best meal we had on the entire trip. As brilliantly executed as the classic steakhouse experience was in Vegas the Metate Room brought real creativity and a modern twist to the entrees. A perfect approach to traditional ingredients with just the right amount of southwest flair. The service struggled a bit, but I understand why. It’s the Far View Lodge and everyone wants to camp out until the fantastic sunset. It’s not their fault that they were overloaded, but they always stayed polite and the food was fantastic.
(Jon L., Yelp, August 26, 2018)
Others are less enthusiastic about the food without ever mentioning the view, like Chuck: “It may be masquerading as a fine restaurant, but it’s still run by a giant food service corporation, and it shows. Bad food, high prices” (Chuck L., Yelp, July 9, 2017). Other Yelp critics describe the menu descriptions as “typically dramatic” but claim that “the actual product is not even close,” suggesting that the restaurant does not even meet the low bar of tolerability set by its remote location (John E., Yelp, May 18, 2021).
Overall, reviews posted on these sites focus more on the food than on the land-scape, and many comments about food assert a cosmopolitan identity on the part of the reviewer. Steph D. asserts that her meal at Metate Room is “the MOST impressive National Park food I have ever had,” describing it as authentic and well-prepared. She provides details on price, ambiance, service, and views, but most of her review describes the food, noting that the local “native Mesa Verde ingredients” of corn, beans, squash, and quail were very impressively used in what her party ate. She summarizes by assuring readers that what they’ll get at Metate Room is of equal quality to urban high-end dining: “The quality of the food is in line with major city fine dining…think NYC, Miami” (Steph D., Yelp, August 5, 2012). Other reviewers reveal their evaluative capacities by describing the flavor of the dish in depth, like VeryVito on Tripadvisor who waxes poetic about his pork, “the best meal I’ve ever had at a restaurant” (July 13, 2021), and mikeg-C6777EY, also on Tripadvisor, who describes the food as “surprising [sic] good for a corporate venue” (July 12, 2021). This theme is picked up by SusanH2466 on Tripadvisor, who admits, “Our expectations for concessionaire dining is [sic] pretty low, however the Metate Room provided a fabulous meal.” She acknowledges that the small number of items on the menu allowed the chef to concentrate on a few items, an endeavor she deems successful before concluding that “we left with much higher expectations of other restaurants in the national park system” (September 20, 2020). Even when reviewers describe the food as just “meh,” as millukeer418 did on Tripadvisor, some position themselves as discerning foodies not easily taken in: “The Metate Room is touted as the fine dining option for foodies who visit the park,” he writes, while noticing that the much-vaunted reservations seemed unnecessary given that the dining room was only a third full during his visit; he concludes, “Maybe to drum up excitement for an otherwise mediocre restaurant?” (millukeer418, Tripadvisor, August 29, 2019). These reviewers demonstrate cosmopolitan traits—well traveledness and an ability to render assessments of quality, whether euphoric, passable, or poor.
Review site postings are limited for Metate Room, compared to Jordan Pond House. Likewise, the social media presence is quite limited as well. On Instagram, there are only 25 posts hashtagged #metateroom and just a half dozen that use the Metate Room geotag. Among the posts that do exist, there is an equal balance of view and food shots, and there are a handful of images that combine the two, with the table/food in foreground and the view in background. Some of the photos are of the Metate Room’s décor, and a few are of the user’s dining companions. Just as there is no menu equivalent here of the famous Jordan Pond House popover, there is no iconic food shot, perhaps because Metate Room is far from the actual cliff dwellings that are visually distinctive. On Instagram, posts with Metate Room hashtags or geotags do not provide commentary on health or sustainability, but here there are some beautiful pictures of food.