Family-style dinner at the Slogar, including cocktails, fried chicken, ribs, biscuits, mac 'n' cheese, creamed corn, coleslaw, cottage cheese and tomato chutney.
CRESTED BUTTE * When you scan the list of restaurants set to compete at the upcoming National Fried Chicken Festival in New Orleans, you see a lot of names from that city and others around the South.
And then you spot the Slogar Bar and Restaurant, tucked in the Colorado mountains. Among the nearly 40 competitors, this one is most curious.
"I think we're the only people this far north to get chosen," says Ayla Scott, the restaurant owner alongside her husband, Ian. "Which is amazing."
And also "terrifying," Ian says.
He's the head chef at the Slogar, as the restaurant is simply known by adoring locals. Many know the fried chicken here as the best food in Crested Butte.
But can it compete on a national stage?
"Yeah, we're going against a bunch of fried chicken Southerners," Ian says.
Meanwhile, he calls himself "just a backwoods kid" from Vermont. "For being a Northern boy 40 minutes south of Canada, I love Southern food."
Explaining why he and Ayla have lived a few months out of the year in a small place in New Orleans' French Quarter.
"It was like this little 610-square-foot apartment that no one knew what to do with," Ayla says. "And it was like, All we've known is places like that!"
For their two decades in Crested Butte, all they'd known were places cramped with several roommates -- the life of the ski bum. That's how Ian and Ayla came here, as ski bums. This is the unlikely origin story of the young, tattooed, unlikely owners of a food institution in town.
Inside the Slogar's historic cabin, Ian and Ayla serve the multicourse, family-style fried chicken dinners that have been a staple here for 40 years. The couple took ownership in 2018.
The dinners are said to be better than ever.
Guests sit before a first course of tomato chutney paired with cottage cheese, along with a sweet and tangy coleslaw and a salad of Cajun croutons, strawberries and lemon-almond dressing. Guests should pace themselves; next are the sides of mashed potatoes and gravy, creamed corn and biscuits with honey butter and strawberry preserves.
It's mostly all scratch made by Ian, who takes similar care with the chicken. He adjusted the seasoning of the Slogar's time-honored recipe, just as he tamed the buttermilk pour to prevent a too-cakey coat -- to achieve a more crisp, plump and juicy bite.
The chickens come from a farm outside Denver. Rather than factory cuts, "I butcher the whole bird myself so that I get the pieces I want," Ian says. "I'm down to 16 seconds a bird cut eight ways."
He introduced other main courses to the menu: ribs and a stuffed pepper. And more sides: mac 'n' cheese with sage and gruyere, and braised collard greens with red onion, bacon and a maple vinegar.
And then there's the menu of innovative cocktails. Flavors bounce from sweet and spicy, fruity and herbal. The concoctions are colorful, fittingly eclectic from the creator who calls herself the "cocktail fairy."
The Slogar's bar did not exist before Ayla, a well-traveled mixologist. "The reward is, we have people who just come in for cocktails," Ian says.
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He adds: "We never thought we would own a 200-seat fried chicken restaurant. But if we were going to, I was going to do it as best I can."
That "backwoods kid" from Vermont went on to the New England Culinary Institute, where he was classically trained. He'd go on to fine-dining stops around the East Coast before his wanderlust took him west -- to the Cliff House in Manitou Springs and the now-closed Ritz Grill in downtown Colorado Springs.
Then to Crested Butte for a ski trip with friends.
"Thirteen of us ended up moving out here and living in vans," Ian says.
That was 2004. He'd meet Ayla years later, a similar free spirit who also happened to come to Colorado by way of the Pikes Peak region. She was an outdoor educator in Florissant.
"I ultimately realized (the restaurant industry) is my space, because I got a sailor's mouth a little too strong for children," she says.
She realized Crested Butte was home. "A land of misfit toys," she calls it. "A lot of us come here because we don't really fit in a whole lot of other places."
This was a land of coal miners before it was a land of ski bums. The cabin that is the Slogar has known both demographics. The Slogars were the family that lived in it after 1882, starting a business for thirsty miners. (The building is said to be the second oldest in town housing a business, after Kochevar's Saloon.)
The hippie movement and ski resort were well underway by the time a restaurant moved into the cabin in the mid-1970s, following a long vacancy. The fried chicken dinners are traced to 1983, started by a tuxedo-wearing man.
He saw himself as "the host of the party," Ayla says. Now, two owners later, it's her and Ian hosting the party -- infusing a youthful energy into the historic space with touches modern (velvet seats) and quirky (the dinosaur toy atop a candle stand.)
It was a surprise deal to them. A deal that could be credited to local industry connections they made over the years. And to that free-spirited attitude that brought them to Crested Butte in the first place.
"It was saying yes," Ayla says. "Saying yes to whatever the universe is telling you to do."
Saying yes can be scary -- especially when you're taking over a generationally beloved restaurant. "Unfortunately, we weren't scared at all," Ayla says with a laugh. "We were like 30 and 34 years old. ... We were just stupid."
They were ambitious, yes, a couple with the future in mind. They had "boxes to check," Ayla says.
"But it took us a couple of years to see those boxes checked, because they weren't in our textbook, you know?" Ayla says. "This wasn't, like, the thing I journaled about. But it was definitely the answer I was looking for."
Ayla and Ian said yes to the National Fried Chicken Festival, the competition set for Oct 5-6.
"So intimidating," Ayla says. And so right.
"Who knows where it can take us?"