If you know anything about Aspen, Colorado you’ll perhaps have heard of the ancient American Indian curse that was struck upon the Pitkin County valley. The Utes and the Payutes hexed the magnificent terrain to trap anyone who comes to visit, and somehow beguile them so they will never want to leave.

While this didn’t work out quite so well for the original natives, the effect from the curse does show up and has affected many, myself included. More than a few times I’ve gone for a weekend and stayed indeterminately long stretches. This is a common effect on the vacationers and travelers who turned up. Many people will tell you the same.

For example one Jodi Larner. All those years ago Jodi went looking for a change of pace from the predictability of her east coast existence and she forged out west.

Aspen spoke to her and it became her new home nearly immediately. The natural beauty and the mellow flavor of the locals caught Jodi unawares, and as if perhaps affected by the Ute curse, and now coming up on twenty years Jodi is still very firmly in place.

When Jodi first got to town by luck she met Chris Lanter who was another outsider himself, who had also been pinched by the curse. He came and he stayed. By the time they met Chris was two years into running a bistro he had named Cache Cache (yes that is French, and it’s pronounced just how it appears, ‘cash cash’).

This year, 2017, the restaurant will turn twenty and fitting celebrations are already in preparation. This is a major landmark for an industry famously fickle and tricky to manage. But Jodi is not only a perfectionist workaholic she is also well known and well liked. You can drop her name from coast to coast and the response will be identical, “I know her! I love her! And I love Cache Cache!”

Soon after meeting Jodi and Chris were ably running the eatery together. A seamless team, not a romantic entanglement, they operate this restaurant with a great deal of heart and love and the clientele are loyal in return.

Jodi has an amazing work ethic and the truth is Jodi deeply cares and the results are evident.

The main room is a soft white genteel setting and always full and bustling. You’ll need a reservation during the season, for sure. Flawless food and well informed (and noticeably handsome) waitstaff make for a good time every time. The average patron is likely wealthy and won’t mind the vertiginous prices, but a good trick if you need one is to sit and eat at the bar. Twirl on your high stool and consume your yummy meal and banter with the bartenders.

I’ve had many delicious meals here. In my real life I cleave to a spartan diet, which could mean a bag of Cheetos (not puffy), but in a good restaurant, for example Jodi’s, I generally transform into an all out carnivore because the steaks are too good to pass up. Never fear, obviously, there’s something for every palate including vegetarians and the notoriously fussy, all requests obliged within reason, and as is well known the establishment prides itself on an extensive wine cellar.

Jodi and Chris have reaped the rewards of their relentlessly hard work and they have every intention of ticking right along.

Carry on Cache Cache and congratulations for a score of fabulous years and all the best for another twenty to come.

See you at the bar for a round of celebratory clinking of the drinking. A toast to the restaurant and another for the Utes and Payutes, who may themselves be ignominiously gone, have the satisfaction of repeatedly proving they weren’t wrong, because no one wants to leave.

An excellent example of the curse where people ‘just don’t want to leave’, a detail perhaps unknown to Jodi or Chris and which I have no intention of telling them myself, is that the infamously handsome waitstaff engage in wild Greco~Roman wrestling, after hours. Or so I’ve heard.

I hope you get yourself to Aspen, and when you do I hope you find your way to Cache Cache. You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll leave fat and happy and just maybe you’ll find you want to linger a little longer when the Indian curse touches down on your face in a snowflake.

Charlie Bauer is the owner of The Smokin’ Tuna. In a nutshell, more precisely, ‘neath the giant bowers of a cousin of the ficus family, The Smokin’ Tuna is a restaurant typical of Key West. Which means it’s one-of-a-kind, like everything else in this smokin’ hot holiday destination. The setting is a couple of bars under shelter of roofs, much seating in intimate groupings and a spacious dance floor beneath the leafy ficus high as a sky scraper. Dominating the eye is a giant platform of a stage. The eatery is full service lunch and dinner of what you’d expect, fishy things and local pink shrimp and conch fritters but all with their ‘Charlie’s Secret’, which obviously I was not able to pry from the comfortingly professional staff. Taste Bud gave the thumbs up to the food. And then there are the mad scientist drinks. Taste Bud was a good sport and experimented sipping this and that, each a math equation of ingredients amounting to guileful candy and challenging your alcohol tolerance, which is always truly the goal. In other words you get your money’s worth. Taste Bud voted first place to something named Smokin’ Rumrunner, described on the menu as Bacardi Rum with Banana and Blackberry liqueurs, Cranberry, Orange and Pineapple Juices. Was I exaggerating? I think not! That same extemporaneous personality permeates every facet of this world of its own. There’s even a boutique, a cottage with tee shirts and such. Seasonal customers return with regularity, giving them quasi ‘locals’ status, and proudly sport the merchandise. Lunch is kid friendly. Early dinner suggests a hint of things to come when an acoustic set, Charlie does the choosing, plays discreetly yet entertainingly, soothing and sexy and relaxing. The late show guarantees a raucous band who pick up the pace inspiring  people to shake their booties and enjoy themselves. Charlie, an appreciator of music, selects the bands. Twenty-two years ago Charlie Bauer conceived of and continues to operate the beloved Annual Songwriter’s Festival, when the biggest names in the business play in every bar in town. Charlie Bauer makes magic.

The Dangling Salty Digiddy Dog Angler, or whatever it’s called, the new restaurant, as of a year and a bit. The corner of Duval and Amelia has changed names more often than a wanted felon. The turn over was sometimes due to bad management (read: extreme cocaine habits) or the Feds via the Health Department (read: overrun with varmint). Therefore this corner is cursed.

Can the Damned Raggedy Filthy Angling Fisherman, or whatever it’s called, break that curse?

Maybe, via the ritual sacrifice of ice-cream. Here’s the thing, long long ago, when Key West was just a child this corner was home to a homemade ice cream dispensary. Ice cream was the backbone of this enterprise and it’s death has lingered like an angry ghost. Until now.

Who would have thought that a restaurant devoted to smoked meats and smoked fish and smoked cheeses could cozy up to the ghost of ice-cream past. They only have one single desert. Albeit the Mother of all deserts layering liquor and bacon and of course ice cream and molten chocolaty stuff, but only the one desert, which is almost unAmerican.

Meanwhile, they have dozens of combinations of ‘two meats and a rub’ so sayeth Seth, the very well informed bartender.  Segue here: all the staff are a hot young crew of smart stallions and I am suspicious this is no accident. It might have something to do with entertaining Amy, one half of the management team. The cute crew however are not just pretty faces and they’ll smilingly help you make your choices through the menu-scape of interesting versions of way more than the ‘usual suspects’. The menu continually evolves as the bosses dream up ever more daring concoctions. Brian, the other half of the partnership, is a seer of rubs and smokeable meats and fishes. It’s his passion. Best not to press the issue. His madness is to our benefit.

Taste Bud beamed with pleasure when he sipped his Captain’s Delight and Dirty Thinmint Shake and Salty Rumrunner and even slurped down the dregs of the drinks of other patrons.