Brother Marcellus Hayward Luck IV is the fourth Brother Luck in his family. That helps explain why he counts four as his lucky number, the number he has built his most enduring restaurant around, Four by Brother Luck in Colorado Springs. 

On a busy Thursday night, Luck guides a guest through Four’s many fours: his four-course menu, built on four types of local suppliers, through the four seasons of the year.

Luck has settled with his wife, Tina, into the seasonal rhythms of downtown Colorado Springs, with its grid of streets with names derived from four foreign languages: Spanish (Vermijo, meaning “reddish”); French (Cache la Poudre (meaning, “Stash the (gun)powder”); Ute (Sawatch, meaning “blue-earth spring”), and Mexican (“Tejon” meaning an animal in the raccoon family). 

321 N. Tejon Street is now Luck’s address for providing a roadmap to the culinary diversity of southwest Colorado. He began his restaurant career cooking in the grimy kitchen of a Colorado Springs punk rock bar until a brawl among customers ended in lawsuits. He moved to the peace and security of a standalone restaurant but admits he had no business plan, no concept he could describe. Then, on a business trip to Japan, the concept for a new restaurant occurred to him: Four.

Four by Brother Luck, a block north of downtown Colorado Springs’ Acacia Park, is a fine-dining experience – no brawls, no busted bar chairs – built on the number four: four menus a year reflecting the region’s four distinct seasons; four culinary sources (farmers, fishers, hunters and gatherers); and, of course, the fact that Luck the Fourth is the fourth male to bear that name Brother Luck.

Inside Four, Luck uses stylized petroglyphs, an ancient form of Indigenous art, to portray in frosted glass the four seasons and his four culinary sources – crossed arrows for hunting, a tractor for agriculture, a plant for gathering, and a fish. The menu is, you guessed it, four courses.

Luck attended to every detail of the restaurant’s interior, choosing the opposite of the space’s white walls that reminded him of a cafeteria. “We had to grow into this space, we had to learn this space,” Luck said. The interior is dark and quiet. The tablecloths are black. The earthenware crafted by Mark Wong of Manitou Springs is black and red and both large and small and heavy. Acoustic tiles, rugs and canvases absorb sound.

On his Thursday night restaurant tour, Luck orders for a guest all four items in the first course.

First up is blue cornbread, a native American dish with a Brother Luck twist and the most Colorado item on the menu. There’s convincing evidence that the native American society known as the Hopi grew blue corn before European settlers arrived in the Four Corners region. Luck combines blue cornbread, warm and crisp outside, smooth inside, with Wojapi, a native American berry sauce, adding the kick of Pueblo chile, the sweetness of Black Forest honey and the aroma and mouthfeel of crema. Luck has prepared the dish for other chefs around the nation, to their delight; they’d never had anything like it in Chicago or San Francisco.

Another first-course meal, the jalapeno poppers with the cream cheese center, dissolve on the tongue, and kicks it too, with jalapeno syrup and a jalapeno slice on top. By comparison, the blood orange salad is light and fruity, a mix of red apple, gorgonzola, walnut and blood orange segments, dripping with spiced maple orange vinaigrette. Finally, the lamb albondigas, with a fried quail egg, poblano coulis, cheese aioli spread and crostini, is an addition to the menu from Four’s female Chef de Cuisine, Ashley Brown.

Courses two and three soon follow, featuring another southwest-favored dish: duck green chile. The pork belly with apricot jam, peanut butter mole and crispy tostone (twice-fried green plantain) is Luck’s take on PB&J. Salmon comes with a salsa macha glaze alongside caramelized mushroom and watercress salad. Achiote chicken breast offers Luck the chance to give a history lesson – achiote being the annatto seed (Bixa orellana), with uses beyond spicing his chicken.

“Achiote was used for war paint for native American culture,” he said. “It was used to stain anything originating west of the Mississippi.”

The fourth course – four dessert choices – proves difficult to choose from, after three satisfying courses. The flourless chocolate and cherry cake, with black cherries, rosemary and white chocolate snow, is rich complement to the jalapeno and green chile that came before. Luck said he likes doing research, “digging” for recipes, ingredients, and history that will add excitement to his dishes.

A few years ago he found a survivalist who trained at the Air Force Academy. The man took Luck and his staff on a gathering trip to show them what ingredients they can find locally around Colorado Springs. They came back with wild asparagus, wild raspberries, wild strawberries from near Rampart and Fountain Creek. He introduced them to wild edible weeds, which Luck now uses in his dishes.

Luck keeps his eyes open for local farmers. For a time, he had a local supplier of pork, Mary Miller of Triple M Bar Ranch in Manzanola. “She would pull in the back of my restaurant, in a Subaru with a lamb in the back,” Luck said. Miller has since retired, so Luck keeps digging. He’s had to go beyond Colorado for some items. He ships duck from an Amish farm in Michigan and salmon from the Faro Islands.

Luck likes to build relationships with local gardeners. “I had the coolest deal worked out, two little old ladies, who would grow on plots near 8th street. They would bring me beautiful baskets of all kinds of greens, garlic, herbs and berries. And squash.”

Luck’s longtime mentor, Steve Kander, keeps a garden at his Colorado Springs home. He often stops by Zander’s house to pick squash blossoms in the early morning, and to check-in with an old friend.

The two chefs met when Zander moved to Colorado Springs and joined the staff of Cheyenne Mountain Resort. Zander has walked with Luck through 17 years of emotional highs and lows. Luck has struggled with depression, but tries to use his life to bolster others.

His journey with depression began when Luck lost his father at age 10 and his mother at age 16. Kitchens became his refuge, his way out of poverty, but not his salvation. One of his lowest lows came on national television.

Luck appeared on Bravo network’s Top Chef. He did not win and got cut, then had a second chance to come back, then got cut again. “I walked away feeling like I wasn’t good enough,” he said. Luck hit bottom emotionally, alarming his wife, Zander and other friends. Luck admits he still wrestles with the pain of that public rejection.

At the same time, Luck vows to smile more. He attends a nourishing church. He’s lost 50 pounds. He hasn’t had alcohol for more than six months. Tina surprised him with a renewal of their vows on a Las Vegas weekend in January. There are four chambers in the human heart, and Luck’s heart is full.