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.