AURORA | Alfonso Nuñez wears three sets of culinary clothes almost every day.
When the co-owner of Aurora’s La Cueva goes to work early in the morning, he changes into his chef “whites.” That’s what he wears while he preps specials for the day’s business and makes sauces including the eatery’s famous red chile.
Many afternoons he changes into everyday attire for business meetings and his work on the board of directors of the Colorado Restaurant Association.
Most evenings he becomes the congenial host in the front of the house, wearing the regulation white shirt and black pants to greet and seat customers.
(He still has one other uniform, his retired helmet and jacket from his 23-year career as an Aurora fireman that hangs on a wall at La Cueva.)
Since the first day he started working in a restaurant as an 11-year-old, Alfonso has lived the kind of culinary life so many young cooks now so eagerly pursue. He’ll tell you it’s a world away from the fantasies depicted on reality TV food shows.
“I started in the dish room at La Bonita,” he said one recent afternoon at La Cueva. “I liked washing dishes because everybody leaves you alone. It’s the best job in the kitchen.”
His parents, Norma and Nabor Nuñez, met while working at La Bonita in downtown Denver in 1956 and married soon after. The birth of his sister, Molly, came soon after and Alfonso came along in 1961.
He can picture the moment he first saw the location of La Cueva.
“We were living in Aurora. I remember going for a walk with my dad. We were looking for a place for a little restaurant close to our home,” he said. They walked a litle ways on Colfax Avenue and found a small storefront that had been the Cozy Café. (Over the years La Cueva expanded into two adjoining buildings.)
“It was the American dream. You go ahead and take a chance,” he said. “The labor costs were low,” Nuñez added with a big grin, because the whole family worked at La Cueva when it opened at
9742 E. Colfax Ave. in 1974.
It may be hard to imagine now when there are hundreds of diverse Mexican eateries, but at that time there were only a handful of cantinas in the metro area. La Cueva became destination dining for those who needed a chile fix.
Nuñez once again manned the pot-washing station. “I was working every day after school and on the weekends,” he said, but he was already interested in learning how to cook from his dad.
“My father was the chef in the family. We still use his recipes,” he said. Nabor Nuñez learned how to cook in restaurants in his native Guanajuato, one of Mexico’s major culinary capitals. The city and region had a strong Spanish influence on the culture and culinary arts.
“This is home fare — the burritos, the tacos, the red chile — they are definitely from there,” he said. The eatery’s complex mole sauce, on the other hand, comes by way of Nuñez’s grandmother who grew up in central Mexico. “The sauce has animal crackers and tortilla chips, two kinds of dried chiles, Mexican chocolate and the trinity,” he said.
He calls tomatoes, garlic and onions “the holy trinity in Mexican cooking,” similar to the mirepoix — celery, onion and carrots — omnipresent in Creole cooking.
During his middle career, Nuñez was still working at La Cueva while serving as an Aurora firefighter. “I ended up doing a lot of cooking at the firehouse. There were some great cooks in the department and it was very competitive,” he said. That experience prompted him to make an unexpected detour. When he retired he enrolled at Johnson & Wales University to study to become a chef.
“Going to ‘J-Woo” made me appreciate what I didn’t know yet and how good a chef my dad was,” Nuñez said. “He always insisted on making stocks from scratch for the sauces and soups.” Nuñez said he also learned a lot about restaurant management that helped La Cueva weather the recessionary storm of the past decade. “There are so many things you have to be aware of to survive in this business,” he said. He made the dean’s list but never quite graduated because he had to do an internship. He and his sister Molly now co-own La Cueva after their mother retired.
The training also inspired his creativity, especially when it comes to nightly specials. “That’s where I get to mess around,” he said. His “fusion ribs” are marinated in a Hawaiian-inspired mix of soy sauce, brown sugar, beer, onion, tomato, garlic and chile negro before being braised until the meat falls off the bones. A sauce made with tart tomatillos and chile negro adds another layer of flavor.
Where so very many food establishments have come and gone, La Cueva is still serving after 38 years. “There are always peaks and valleys in the business. Everybody struggles,” he said. Owning the buildings helped it weather three recessions but another reason, he said, is that the food is still made the same way every day from scratch.
For Nuñez, consistency is essential. That’s why he’s the one who makes the red chile and mole sauces and oversees the housemade chorizo sausage. “You want everything to taste the same every time a customer comes in,” he said. La Cueva still serves many of the same dishes it had on the menu when the doors opened to at least three generations of regulars.
“I have people who make their first stop at La Cueva after landing at DIA because it makes them feel that they are home,” he said.
Others stop in because they are visiting their parents when they are at University Hospital in Aurora. “The best thing they say is ‘I haven’t been in here for 20 years and it still tastes exactly the same.’ ”
La Cueva helps make The Aurora Arts District a destination! They are creative,have fantastic food and it is a great place for conversation!