Eats & Beats: Mile High Asian Food Week

(The following interview excerpts have been edited for length and clarity)

Mile High Asian Food Week is in its third year of elevating and supporting AANHPI-owned food and beverage makers. Founded by foodies for foodies, the community is invited to experience these different cuisines in CO from April 27 to May 3 through special menus and offerings excusive to this food week. For Chea Franz, who does the PR, it brings her back to her own childhood growing up in the kitchens of her family's restaurants.

"I'm born and raised in Colorado, and so my parents both at one point owned multiple Chinese restaurants throughout Colorado. Those restaurants have since closed, so it's been kind of a full circle moment for me to participate in this food week because I'm working alongside some restaurants that I'm sort of seeing these awesome parallels of like, oh, that's like my parents! They were hustling and they have a kid and they're trying to do this thing."

She was one of the women brought on board to make this idea a reality back in 2023.

"Mile High Asian Food Week was started by just a group of foodies like myself. We all happen to be Asian women as well - It is a very grassroots, homegrown effort. So, the founder, Joanne (Liu), who you spoke with, she reached out to some folks, with some restaurant friends, and was like, 'Hey, what if we did an Asian Food Week?' And so, we had some early adopters at that time. I kind of got thrown into this email thread and then I think that was maybe in January 2023. We decided to launch this in February 2023 at that time. And so, we had, I want to say a month or a month and a half to pull this all together. In that first year we had maybe two dozen participating vendors and we had nothing to compare it to. Obviously, we weren't trying to achieve any level like Denver Restaurant Week, but we were just really surprised and humbled by the outpouring of love that we were even shown in year one. And a lot of that was from the community and the restaurants themselves, folks just saying that it gave chefs the ability to collaborate with other chefs or just sort of be part of this community that we didn't anticipate. So, then in the second year, last year, we actually, I think doubled our vendors and we just streamlined things a lot more. We moved it to the last week of April last year to kick off AANHPI Heritage Month, and yeah, now here we are in year three and we're just really encouraged by still the continuous support from our community. It really does show us that there is a demand and a need and desire for this food week."

Now with 80 participating restaurants and markets, Mile High Asian Food Week continues to celebrate AANHPI culture as a whole. The elevation of unique fusions brought forth by third-culture experiences (folks that were raised in a different culture than their parents and maybe therefore have a blend of influences) broaden the flavors possible, something some chefs are bringing into their menu concepts.

"I do want to point out that there's a lot of conversation about Asian food with terms like 'traditional' or 'authentic,' and I think those terms are just so subjective and what that means to one chef may differ to another. And so, one thing we did want to do in year three is refine our mission. Our mission has always been to elevate these Asian owned participating businesses, restaurants, but we really wanted to celebrate the breadth and diversity of their culture and inspire these chefs to showcase their unique identities through food. So that can mean their third culture experience. That can mean whatever that might be. We're not saying that in order to participate in this food week, you have to put Pan Dan in your dish or anything like that. We really wanted to make this as inclusive as possible. So of course we have vendors like Noisette, they do French food, but they decided to do a Korean menu. And so, things like that. We have GetRight’s, which is a bakery in Wheatridge - Matt over there, he definitely is bringing some third-culture experience. I believe he might be doing a Hawaiian-inspired menu. Yuan Wonton, I want to shout out Penelope over there. Her dad had a Cantonese restaurant in Denver, so she's doing a brand-new menu featuring a lot of the dishes that sort of pay homage to her dad's restaurant. So, I think that's really cool as well. But yeah, I would encourage people to go to the website to see all the different offerings."

Restaurant-goers can plan their route at Mile High Asian Food Week. All participating restaurants are listed with descriptions and their special offerings. There is also the ability to filter by diet restriction and location to further customize your experience.