Besides the entry door being moved along the west side of the building and an expansion, not a lot has changed at The Village Smithy over the past 50 years. You can still order bottomless coffee and hang around from opening to close, if you wish.
And it all started with Chris and Terry Chacos, who met at a physical therapist convention in Denver. Chris’ dad immigrated from Greece and later settled in Oklahoma, where Chris was born. Terry was born and raised in the Mile High City.
Shortly after meeting, and during the Vietnam War, Chris signed up with a Quaker group to provide physical therapy services to the Vietnamese people. Terry, cut from the same cloth, decided to join. “Just from that brief introduction, she chase[d] him halfway across the world,” their son, Charlie, told The Sopris Sun.
There, they happened to meet Paul Lappala of Carbondale. Among other properties, in Carbondale, such as 689 Main Street and the old Post Office (Beer Works), Lappala owned what is now The Village Smithy — and what was then the largest tropical fish store on the Western Slope and once the forge of blacksmithing brothers Roy and Hugh Pattison.
Upon their return, the Chacos moved to the Valley. Chris did construction work for Peter Dahl, on top of working at The Crystal Palace. Terry put her physical therapy degree to use. After helping a buddy start a restaurant in Ouray, Chris was struck with the idea to do the same in Carbondale — a town of about 700 in 1975 with a dirt Main Street. Lappala suggested using his building on 3rd and Main, and the rest is history…
Opening The Smithy
Starting out, the new restaurant served three meals a day. Terry did the books and Chris hardly left the restaurant. “He would get up at 5am [and] close up at midnight,” Charlie said.
“Unless it was a snow day,” HP Hansen, a longtime patron and friend of the Chacos, cut in. After Doug Worline got his hand caught in his snowblower, Chris stepped in to voluntarily move snow on the sidewalks along a good portion of Main Street. “We haven’t had another force like Chris since,” said Hansen. Chris would also shovel a path from their home on Garfield Avenue clear to the restaurant.
Terry made all of the tablecloths and would take them home regularly, along with the aprons, bar towels and anything else that needed washing. Despite a brain tumor that left her paralyzed on one side of her body in the late ‘80s, Terry continued to do the books for another decade. She had to learn to write with her left hand and communicate without the power of speech. “She never slowed down,” said Hansen.
“She was the trunk of the tree,” added Catherine Zimney.
Zimney started as a part-time dishwasher in 1977, and with encouragement from Terry moved up to manage the soups, desserts, daily specials and cold-lunch menu. When Charlie would come to the restaurant after school, Zimney would set him up “with little pots and pans, and give him things to chop — I think that’s where his career was born,” she said.
Charlie and his brother, Eric, were toddlers at the time of opening day — Cinco de Mayo, 1975. “I always loved the kitchen,” echoed Charlie.
Walking into the Smithy in those days, one was met with a large community table. Workers of various trades came and went every morning, and returned the next. Pat Noel, the founding editor of the Valley Journal, was known to put in lots of work hours there. Many friendships, relationships and even offspring, added Zimney, were a result of The Smithy.
Zimney was tasked with helping open The Smithy Two — a four-year endeavor in Glenwood Springs, next to the old Rite Aid (Walgreens) —which also attracted lots of folks. “On Saturdays and Sundays we were doing 400 breakfasts,” she said of the satellite restaurant.
The menu
Each of the “Legends,” still included on the menu today, has a backstory. Take the McGurks, for instance. Pat McGurk was a dishwasher and every morning would have a plate of “loaded” hash browns, which all of the other employees started to really like as well, so they put it on the menu. Later they combined the McGurks and Huevos Rancheros, and voilà, the McHuevos were born.
The salsa that’s still served today is Terry’s original recipe, and was so popular they would can and sell it to go. The hollandaise, sold only on the weekends with eggs benedict, has likewise always been made from scratch.
Special menu options have changed over the years. Zimney mentioned the seven-layered “Kiss Me Cake” she made every Valentine’s Day. Not only did it come with a slice, but was delivered to the table by Zimney who would sit on the patron’s lap and sing Bing Crosby’s “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”
“At some point, it was almost a curriculum at the high school that you had to work at least one shift at The Smithy,”
Jared Ettelson
The later days
Charlie stepped in to take over in 1999 and was mentored by his dad, who technically stepped away in the early 2000s but always maintained a presence. Charlie started working in restaurants in Aspen from the time he could drive. Later, he would come home from college in the summers to cook at The Smithy.
His parents had put the restaurant on the market for a couple of years, so The Smithy could have changed as we know it if it hadn’t been for Charlie. It was halfway through hiking the Colorado Trail with his girlfriend (now wife), Andrea, when they decided they’d move to Carbondale and take on the family business.
“He had dishwasher experience, and that’s the beginning of anybody’s career in the kitchen,” quipped Zimney, who, in all seriousness, added that’s where everyone should start.
Co-owner, and the restaurant’s current operator, Jared Ettelson started working there — as a dishwasher — at 14. “At some point, it was almost a curriculum at the high school that you had to work at least one shift at The Smithy,” he said, only half joking. In 2008, he came back full circle to The Smithy buying in as a partner. “Almost 17 years later, here we are,” he said.
And it’s still a family-run business. Ettelson’s daughters, Reece and Kira, have worked there 10 and eight years, respectively. “And they’re a force,” Hansen said of the duo.
Many people who came through the doors to work there stayed put for a long time. Steve “Blue Eyes” Inverso pulled up to The Smithy Two from New Jersey in a clunker when Zimney offered him a job as a dishwasher and went on to be one of “the best” fry cooks around. Leti Gomez worked there for 17 years, and for the last eight has been at Bonfire Coffee — which Charlie and Ettelson also co-own. Anne Keller has been baking there for 30 years, and is still going strong. And these are but a few examples.
Speaking to The Smithy’s mantra, “Real food, real people,” Hansen said, “For 50 years you’ve maintained that same atmosphere that you started with, the very same. If someone asked me what’s different, I’d say nothing,” and that’s just the way it should be.
“If I ever get a complaint, it’s because they know better than we do,” Ettelson chimed in. “That’s the way we keep things consistent, is by the 50-year locals and regulars who come in and hold us accountable.”
“It’s hard not to equate The Smithy with happiness,” Zimney concluded. “We [are] a family.”
The Village Smithy will cater the Cinco de Smithy anniversary event (May 5, 5:30 to 8pm) themselves, of course, and invite one and all to celebrate 50 years of community.