Before doors open, before the night’s ingredients are prepped, before menus are finalized and dishes are sampled, a pop-up dinner begins with a mutual desire to make something that lasts forever.
Despite their impermanence, pop-ups are a way for young, determined cooks to test themselves and showcase their talent. A cohort of Latin chefs and venue owners in Denver are using them to grow their network and dazzle customers through multi-course meals inspired by their heritage.
“I push myself very hard, because I know there’s only one chance,” said chef Carolina Zubiate, who was born and raised in Peru, of the pop-ups. “You just have to make sure to nail every single dish.”
She and Manny Barella, a Mexican chef and contestant in last year’s season of Bravo’s Top Chef, held separate pop-ups this spring at The Regular on 1432 Market St., an event venue hosting a series of dinners by up-and-coming chefs. Another Hispanic chef putting on pop-ups under the name Pinchi Umami, Michael Diaz de Leon, will take over the Regular’s kitchen in July.
Brian De Souza originally opened the Regular as a fine-dining restaurant with his wife Sydney Younggreen. This year, the pair turned the space into a lounge that hosts private events.
His mission: “Find the local up-and-coming talents [and] give them a place to shine,” he said. He enlisted Zubiate, Barella and Diaz de Leon, connecting with Zubiate over their native country of Peru.
The Regular’s pop-ups are sponsored by the Hispanic Restaurant Association, a Colorado-based industry group that encourages and raises the profiles of Hispanic chefs in the metro area. In 2023, Zubiate won the organization’s “Hispanic Top Chef” cooking competition.
“Hispanic owners that have my back, like my food or want to see me succeed is nothing short of a blessing,” said Zubiate, who moved to Denver from the East Coast ten years ago. “It’s not like that everywhere.”
The association hosted a summit at the beginning of the year that drew more than 100 chefs for cooking demonstrations, said president John Jaramillo, whose background is as a Navy Master Training Specialist. Chefs including de Leon and Pablo Aya teach online cooking classes to members that are offered in English and Spanish, he said.
Barella, who held one of the summit’s cooking demos, said he participates in the association as a way to pay it forward to cooks younger than him. His past stints at Bellota and Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder and Uchi in Denver have him prominence before Top Chef led him to a culinary director role at an expanding concept, Jaguar Bolera in Raleigh, N.C.
He was also slated to lead the food program at Camp Pickle, a complex of pickleball courts from the founder of Punch Bowl Social, who scrapped plans for expansion into Colorado earlier this year. Following his TV appearances and without ties to a daily job, Barella knocked on doors and got back into the kitchen. He’s hosted pop-ups as far away as Wisconsin, with another happening May 14 at Four, a Colorado Springs restaurant founded by another Top Chef alum, Brother Luck.
His approach is decidedly less intense than Zubiate’s. He’ll even prepare dishes he’s never eaten before. “You don’t have to do it consistently good, you have to do it good once,” he said.
Barella’s pop-up dinner at the Regular last week mixed elements of his favorites, Mexican and Italian cuisine. One dish did find itself back on the menu, a crepe filled with rice pudding he first whipped up at another special dinner.
Diaz de Leon stepped away from Bruto after it garnered a Michelin star in 2023, intent on opening his own restaurant. He has since brought his Mexican cuisine to an eclectic group of restaurants, collaborating with Sap Sua, GetRights, Noisette and others in his home state of Texas.
Zubiate plans her pop-up events around her day job as a line cook at Yuan Wonton on 2878 Fairfax St., where she and owner Penelope Wong collaborate on a monthly menu of “Chifa” cuisine that developed after waves of Chinese workers came to Peru beginning in the late 1800s.
“We are Chifa, in this sense,” said Zubia of her and her mentor, who is Cantonese. “How can we represent ourselves?”
Like Barella, her pop-ups were a product of building contact with venue owners in person or on social media. Her most recent one was at Convivio Cafe on 4935 W. 38th Ave., a Latin coffee shop hosting a bimonthly “Cena Cultural.” The next “cultural dinner” is with a Honduran chef on June 19.
At the Regular in March, Zubiate created a six-course menu for $150 where each course was dedicated to a woman in her life. Wagyu beef “anticuchos”, or skewers, were dedicated to her sister. Chinese dumplings filled with braised beef like the kind she ate in Peru were dedicated to Wong.
After setting the date, devising a menu, hiring staff and promoting the event, after prepping for two days in the kitchen and seeing more than 400 dishes out the door, Zubiate emerged proud and relieved, shaking hands with the diners who came to see her play.