During our time out in Steamboat Springs earlier this year, we had time to check out many of the restaurants that we had seen during our visit two years prior, but didn't get a chance to visit. When we were first in Steamboat, we noticed a new-ish restaurant that specialized in Latin-fusion cuisine. That was on our list to try when we made it back to the area earlier this year. Here's our visit to Bésame.
Bésame - which means "kiss me" in English - is the result of a collaboration between two chefs who made their way to Steamboat Springs and a local developer who has helped the chefs carry out their dreams. The backstory is pretty interesting and if you'll indulge me for a few moments, here's how Bésame came to be.
Hannah Hopkins was a noted chef and caterer who lived an hours drive north of New York City. She had been featured on the Food Network program Chopped and developed a following of food enthusiasts who would come to the small town of Mahopac, NY to dine at her restaurant - Dish Bistro and Wine Bar. About 10 years ago, her husband, Kevin, was eyeing a job opportunity in the Steamboat Springs area to work as a consultant and legal counsel for a company specializing in environmental projects. He took it on himself to send out a number of Hannah's resumes to restaurants in Steamboat Springs, and one clicked - an Italian restaurant by the name of Mambo. Hannah Hopkins sold her restaurant and her catering business, packed up the family and moved to Steamboat Springs in 2011 where she became the executive chef at Mambo.
Pictured at right - Hannah Hopkins. Photo courtesy Bésame
In 2015, the opportunity came about for Hannah Hopkins to buy Mambo, but she needed some financial backing. Local developer Jeremy MacGray was a big fan of Hopkins' style of cooking at Mambo and he became a partner in the venture which allowed Hannah to run the restaurant as the managing partner.
Joe Campbell was a native of Minneapolis who started cooking at the age of 14. He went to culinary school and graduated at the top of his class at the Le Cordon Bleu school of culinary arts in Minneapolis. He worked for a couple high-end restaurants in the Twin Cities before ending up in Steamboat Springs in 2013 to be the executive chef at Ragnar's - a Norwegian-influenced restaurant at the top of Mount Werner in the Steamboat Springs Ski Resort.
Campbell left Steamboat Springs in 2017 to become the head chef at the upscale Madeline Hotel in Telluride, CO. But after a short time there, Hannah Hopkins was able to convince him to come back to Steamboat Springs. One of the reasons Hopkins was able to get Campbell to come back was because she and Jeremy MacGray were working on a new restaurant concept just down the street from Mambo. And she wanted Campbell to be the executive chef of both Mambo and the new restaurant.
Pictured at left - Joe Campbell. Photo courtesy Bésame
The Cantina was a longtime Mexican restaurant in Steamboat, opening in 1973, but the restaurant closed in the fall of 2017. Hopkins and MacGray took a look at the property and thought that it would be a great place to open their new restaurant. However, the building - which was originally built in 1918 - was in need of some upkeep as the previous tenants really didn't do much to the place during their nearly 45 year run. The hardwood floors were stripped and refinished, the exposed brick walls were cleaned, painting helped spruce up the place, and then Cuban artwork from an artist in Miami, as well as reproductions of paintings by Pablo Picasso went up on the walls. Bésame was open for business in the early Spring of 2018.
The restaurant was a hit right off the bat. The flavors of Spain, Cuba, and South America garnered the attention of the James Beard Foundation which invited Hopkins and Campbell to their headquarters in New York City to prepare a five-course meal to highlight a Latin-fusion evening the Foundation hosted in September of 2019. Preparing a meal for a James Beard Foundation dinner is a high honor among chefs across the United States.
We had made reservations for 7 p.m. at Bésame on the Open Table application on my smart phone. We pulled up to Bésame which is located on Lincoln Ave. in the heart of downtown Steamboat just before 7. (see map) We're glad we made reservations because the place was nearly full and there were people waiting to be seated. There are tables for al fresco dining in front of the restaurant, but it was too chilly that evening for outside dining. Tables inside the restaurant were spaced out due to pandemic restrictions and we were shown to a table with four seats along the wall in the main dining area. We had plenty of room to spread out.
Bésame is a bustling place with incandescent lights criss-crossing over the dining room, colorful artwork on the exposed brick walls, and lively Latin music from artists such as contemporary Columbian singers Manuel Turizo and Sebastian Yatra, and Massachusetts-born and Puerto Rican-raised Nick Caminero, known professionally as Nicky Jam. With the wood floors and brick walls, we were surprised that it wasn't too loud in there, especially with all the people in the place when we first got there.
The bar area was interesting in that much of the lounge area was underneath a low ceiling that was actually the floor of an upstairs dining/reception area. I wouldn't have been upset if we were forced to sit at the bar and have a drink while waiting for a table at Bésame. Rena Day is the mixologist behind the bar at Bésame and she features a number of Latin-inspired cocktails on the drink menu including sangria, mojitos and caipirinhas. A full liquor bar is also available for those wishing to have more traditional cocktails.
We got our menus for the evening after we were seated and it wasn't long before we were greeted by our server that evening, a nice young lady by the name of Kat. She talked about the items on the menu - many of which were Spanish-style tapas, or shareable plates. They also had main entrees such as a lamb shank, ancho chile-glazed baby back ribs, and a roasted half-chicken mole. Some of the items on the tapas part of the menu were pretty interesting and I was already zeroing in on a couple of choices.
To start out, I ended up getting a pint of the Russell Kelly Mosaic IPA that they had on tap from the Telluride Brewing Company. (Russell Kelly was a Telluride resident who was friends with the owners from Telluride Brewing Co., as well as many others around the ski resort town. He tragically died in a car wreck in 2004 when he was on his way back home from a three-week kayaking trip to Siberia.) It was a forward hoppy, yet very enjoyable India pale ale.
My wife was in the mood for wine and she ordered a glass of the Vina Sastré Tinto Ribera del Duero Tempranillo, a wonderful wine from Spain we've had a couple times in our home. The only problem was that they were out of it. Kat suggested a Guímaro Ribeira Sacra Mencia instead, a hearty red from the Galicia area of Spain. My wife liked it immensely.
The tapas part of the menu was mouthwatering with a number of interesting things to choose from. Ancho chile-rubbed duck wings, smoked shishito peppers, pork belly with a plantain puree, and patatas bravas - fried potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce. We could have just gone down the list and tried any number of tapas they had on the menu.
My wife thought she better start off with a salad to get her greens in for the evening. She had been on a kick where she felt she needed at least one green food item for dinner each night. There weren't a lot of green vegetables that were part of the tapas plates or the entrees, so she thought the simple greens salad consisting of spinach and lettuce leaves mixed in with chopped cucumbers, cilantro and pickled scallions would do the trick. A combination of lime juice and extra virgin olive oil was drizzled over the salad. She was happy with the taste and structure of the salad.
The first tapas plate that we ordered was the grilled octopus. I talked my wife into this and she was happy that I did. The octopus was chile glazed and came with kalamata olives, garlic, crisped orange and oregano. It wasn't all that big for the price ($20 bucks), but it was damned good. It wasn't rubbery like you get from overcooked octopus. The char from cooking it and the chile glaze gave it a hint of a smoky taste. I would have loved to have gotten a big plate of just the grilled octopus and I would have been happy with that for a full meal.
From there we ended up getting the Camarones ala Plancha - prawns sautéed in garlic, lemon, oregano, smoked paprika, and served in lobster butter. These were fabulous. The prawns were big and meaty, and I wanted to take the lobster butter sauce they were swimming in and drink it. Thankfully, a piece of grilled Cuban bread (it wasn't the same style sweet Cuban bread that I've had in Miami) came with it to dip into the sauce.
And because the sauce was so good and there was only one piece of grilled bread, I ordered up a plate of the grilled Cuban bread from Kat. The bread was spread with a garlic butter concoction along with EVOO before it was grilled. It came with a side of the spicy tomato bravas sauce. Between the bravas sauce and the lobster butter sauce from the prawns, we made short work of the rest of the bread.
We were contemplating what else to get. We were sort of full, but not that full. My wife thought we needed something else. I asked if she was thinking about more tapas, but she seemed to have her eye stuck on the paella. She asked Kat about the portion size of the paella at Bésame and Kat said, "Oh, it's more than enough for two people."
Before she brought out the paella, I ordered a glass of the Bodegas Urbina Crianza Rioja Tempranillo since they didn't have the Vina Sastré Tempranillo. Well, guess what? They were out of that, too! Kat explained to me that they've been having trouble getting Spanish wines lately, probably due to the worldwide pandemic. I asked her if she had the Catena Malbec and she said she knew they had that. I would have liked the Rioja a bit better with paella, but the Catena Malbec is a nice Argentinian wine that we've also had many times over the past few years.
Not long after I got my wine, Kat brought out the bowl of paella. It was definitely enough for two - actually, probably more than enough for two. (They have paella for 8 on the menu at Bésame for family-style Spanish eating. That would have been interesting to see!) It was chock full of chicken, mussels, chorizo, shrimp, and calamari mixed in with saffron, smoked Spanish paprika and Bomba rice from Spain. We had individual plates to scoop the paella onto.
The paella was - in a word - killer. I've had paella before, but this was absolutely stunning in taste. Everything was so fresh and the saffron just helped the ingredients explode on the tongue. It wasn't all that hot as Spanish paprika can be, but it helped zip up the overall taste with every bite.
Now, I have to tell you - I was a little apprehensive seeing that the paella came with chorizo. I got sick on chorizo at a Mexican restaurant a number of years ago - over 20 years ago, actually - and I have shied away from the stuff ever since. It's sort of like with baked or grilled salmon - I got sick on it in France a number of years ago and I can't even begin to be around salmon that's been cooked. (Salmon sushi, I'm OK with. Go figure...) But this chorizo was probably the best chorizo I've ever tasted. It had a bit of a spicy and smoky flavor and the texture was moist and tender. There wasn't anything bad in the paella. But with all the tapas we had before we ordered the paella, it was a little too much for us. We made a significant dent in the serving bowl before we had to throw in the towel.
Kat tried to tempt us with some of their desserts that evening, but we had to pass because we were so full. The Cuban bread pudding sounded especially interesting, as did the lime churros with a chocolate dipping sauce. But, once again, we were just so stuffed from all the great food we had that evening.
As I said, we had Bésame on our list of places to try if we ever got back out to Steamboat Springs. And I have to say that after we did have a chance to go there, it didn't disappoint. Like any restaurant of its ilk in Steamboat, it wasn't cheap in the least. But the food was simply outstanding. The grilled octopus and the prawns in the lobster butter sauce tapas were out of this world, but the paella was some of the best I've ever had. Along with great service from Kat, this was one of the more memorable meals we've had in our travels. We can't recommend a trip to Bésame highly enough if you make it out to Steamboat Springs.