Toasted Bistro: A story of survival
The story of Manitou’s Toasted Bistro is a story of survival.
Jamie Young and Alisa Turtletaub-Young, a couple of Grateful Deadheads, survived a marriage and an apparently successful divorce. (“We get along a lot better now,” he says with a wink.)
They each survived about 40 years in the often brutal restaurant business.
They survived a fire in 2022 that destroyed the first iteration of Toasted. They moved next door and barely survived several months serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“We were working 80 to 90 hours a week,” Jamie says. “It was exhausting.”
Even these days, after they’ve gotten through the dinner hours, it’s hard to sit down with the couple for an interview. Two set interviews end up getting scuttled by rushes of unexpected late breakfast or lunch customers, and the two couldn’t get away from the kitchen.
Watching Jamie and Alisa work the line is to watch a symphony of movement, each wordlessly anticipating the other’s movements, their hands nearly a blur as they flip burgers, toss salads, add the final spices to an avocado toast before placing it on the pass-through window with a “service please!”
When Toasted started, it served breakfast with some unexpected twists. One of the breakfast specialties, which has remained on the menu, is Shakshuka, a Mediterranean egg dish with tomatoes and slightly spicy red pepper sauce that harkens back to their Israeli heritage. (His mom’s banana bread and coleslaw recipes have proved standouts as well.)
Everything we make, we make with love. – Alisa Turtletaub-Young
They also specialized in homemade Manitou lemonades, with mildly effervescent water from the nearby Seven Minute Springs.
After the fire in 2023, three days before the cafe’s one-year anniversary, they moved to the larger space next door, vacated by the Heart of Jerusalem. Expanding to serve dinner, and changing the name to Toasted Bistro, tapped into Jamie and Alisa’s expertise.
After all, Jamie was classically trained in Johnson & Wales’ culinary program and ran an acclaimed high-end restaurant’s kitchen in Lake Tahoe, and Alisa ran an upscale restaurant near Santa Fe that won a Wine Spectator Award for wine and food.
“Really, the bulk of our experience has been in plated dinners,” he says.
Their dinner menu featured such high-end entrees as a ribeye chop, fresh halibut, poblano chicken fettuccine, miso-glazed salmon, Rocky Mountain trout, and artisan pizza.
But after a few months, they found themselves burned out and scaled back to just breakfast and lunch, though their lunch often goes till 4 p.m.
Alisa shrugs, as if to say, “What are you gonna do?” She hates turning people away.
Through all these changes, Alisa says one thing hasn’t and will not change.
“Everything we make, we make with love.”
IF YOU GO
Toasted Bistro
718 Manitou Ave.
8 a.m. – 4 p.m. subject to change
Information: 719-820-0021
Starving Colorado: a one-of-a-kind ice cream creperie
When Rafael Shlomo tells you he wanted to do something different in Manitou, you look around and shake your head. He must be kidding. He’s opened Starving Colorado, a crepe shop in a space that was once a crepe shop, and he’s serving ice cream in a town packed with more ice cream shops than Le Mars, Iowa (“Ice Cream Capital of the World”).
He gives you a look that says, “I’m serious.”
OK, once you look around, it’s easy to see what he means. He may have an ice cream shop, but he’s serving flavors you’ve probably never encountered: whiskey pistachio, basil and blackberry swirl, Earl Grey and shortbread, brown sugar cinnamon. For toppings, he has the usual sprinkles and nuts, but also has some you might not expect: churro bites, Chips Ahoy, and gummy bears.
And his crepes also reach for the extraordinary. For his crepe brulee, he folds the crepe into a cone, fills it with Nutella, banana, cornflakes, strawberries and vanilla ice cream, and custard, then fires the top with a torch. He says it’s all about exciting the senses.
He also serves a variety of savory crepes: Italian, Mexican, Greek.
Although he buys his ice cream from Denver’s popular Little Man creamy in Denver, he proudly makes just about everything else from scratch.
“All the ingredients, I make myself,” he said. “I buy nothing.”
For Shlomo, an Israeli-born numbers guy, opening up this cheery ice cream creperie on the east side of Manitou is all about different.
“I spent more than 25 years as an accountant and decided to do something else with my life,” he said.
Shlomo and his family have traveled the world extensively, especially throughout Europe and the Middle East, and he thinks he can bring to Manitou foods and flavors that folks here haven’t experienced.
In the winter, for instance, he plans to do unusual soups, hot chocolates and even sachlav, a hot Israeli custard.
OK, but what about the name?
Starving Colorado? Sounds like a new food rescue organization.
“I have friends who say, ‘You know, starving isn’t good. It’s (he makes a sour face) suffering,'” he said. “But I’m … I’m starving for this. I’m starving for good food. Something that’s different.”
Judging from the lines out the door and the rave reviews on Google, he’s not alone.
But news about several recent closing of Springs-area restaurants, including The Well food hall, underscores the risks in the business. The National Restaurant Association reports that more than half of all restaurants in the U.S. fail in their first year of operation.
Manitou Springs certainly seems to exceed the national average, boasting many restaurants that have survived for decades (including The Loop, The Townhouse, Mona Lisa, The Cliff House, Adam’s Mountain Cafe, The Keg.) But the east side of the Manitou Avenue, the main entrance to the historic downtown, seems to be a bit more volatile than the rest, as the longtime anchor The Stagecoach recently changed hands and names (to The Eatery), and now houses Aurathentic, a new-age healing center. Toasted, a breakfast and lunch place, had a fire in 2023 that prompted a move next door to the space recently vacated by the Heart of Jerusalem.
Enter the new kid on the block – Rafael Shlomo, brother of the landlord, Shemi Shlomo, who owns several properties in Manitou.
His recent opening was boosted by temps in the 90s, and tourists were certainly starving for ice cream. The continued summer heatwaves that are predicted certainly will help the new business, as will plans for local discounts. With Toasted finding its footing next door, and Starving offering fun variations of popular treats, the east end of Manitou’s downtown might just become as stable as the rest of town.
IF YOU GO
Starving Colorado
720 Manitou Ave.
10:30 a.m.- 8 p.m., subject to change
Information: 719-920-6161
