Mountain Village's "9545" hosts Telluride Wine Fest dinner

It’s common knowledge among the “Sideways” crowd: There are two fundamental considerations when matching food and wine: find a good match based on similar taste or a match based on contrasts. A look at Chef Omar Collazo’s menu for his Telluride Wine Festival dinner suggests he goes on instinct.

Located in the Mountain Village, 9545 at the Inn at Lost Creek is hosting one of a number of special dinners held throughout the long Telluride Wine Festival weekend.

Chef Omar’s theme, “Taste of South America,” is in keeping with his restaurant’s latest incarnation as a Southwest-stye bistro. But many of the wines on the menu for this special evening, Friday, June 25, were grown mas o menos in Telluride’s backyard, coming from all over Colorado. For starters, an ancho chili seafood consomme with a red pepper herb salad is paired with a dry Reisling from Guy Drew Vineyards. An adobe braised beef brisket with chipotle hollandaise and yucca red pepper is paired with Reeder Mesa Land’s End Red. And so on.

Chef Omar went literally from a dirty frying pan into the fire, when at 16, while working as a dishwasher in a restaurant, he unexpectedly found himself cooking on a very busy night when one of the staff did not show-up. Raised in a family where food is as much about celebration and gathering as it is about nutrition, he was immediately at home behind the stove and never looked back. Collazo went on to attend Le Cordon Blu culinary school in Orlando, Florida. graduating with a degree in food science in 2002. He followed his mentor, Chef Kenny Gilbert, from Florida to Telluride to help open the newest Capella Hotel in 2008. He became head chef at the Inn at Lost Creek’s 9545 in 2010.