Steelworkers in Pueblo spoke 42 languages in 1916, earning the city a reputation as the Melting Pot of the West. A century later, that mixing of ethnicities and flavor traditions has given Pueblo a culinary character all its own. Nowhere is that more evident than in its sandwiches.

While most towns are happy to have even one signature sandwich, such as Philadelphia’s cheesesteak or New Orleans’ po’ boy, Pueblo has at least four sandwiches that are unique to the city: the Dutch Lunch, Pass Key Special, Slopper and Bingo Burger.

To eat any of these sandwiches is to experience Pueblo’s history and culture in edible form. Just as citizens from many backgrounds mixed, the city’s cuisine combines Italian, Hispanic and Slavic influences. And the star of local agriculture, the Pueblo green chile, figures prominently in many of these dishes.

Dutch Lunch

Gus’ Place

1201 Elm St.

The Dutch Lunch at Gus’ Place is not a sandwich until customers make it one. The waitstaff delivers a tray of Italian-style meats and cheeses, accompanied by slices of soft bread, along with peppers, sliced tomato and condiments; customers then put it all together any way they want.

The build-your-own sandwich platter was created to feed steelworkers from the old Colorado Fuel & Iron steel mill, whose west gate was located just a few steps away from Gus’ Place when the tavern opened in 1934. In the mill’s heyday, workers packed Gus’ after quitting time for a Dutch Lunch and cold beer. In fact, the men from the mill were so thirsty that in the 1940s, Ripley’s Believe It or Not recognized the tavern as selling more beer per square foot than any other bar in the world.

Pueblo native and firefighter J.C. Reigenborn has been coming to Gus’ for Dutch Lunch since he was a teenager. As a youth, he wondered why his parents would pay to assemble sandwiches they could build at home. Reigenborn quickly learned the answer: People come not just for the Dutch Lunch, but also to meet other people.

Patrons walking into Gus’ are often greeted by name, and strangers seldom remain so for long. On a recent weekday afternoon, two men sitting at the bar with “schooners” of ice-cold beer immediately welcomed a first-timer, asked his name and invited him over to join in their conversation.

Despite the Dutch Lunch’s name, its ingredients are Italian, as were the tavern’s original owner, Gus Masciotra, and most of the early steelworker customers. However, a sizable portion of the clientele were Slovenian steelworkers known as “Bojons,” which means “beautiful people” in their native language. And it was Bojons who came up with the idea for the Dutch Lunch, said Ben Gradishar, the Bojon who recently sold Gus’ Place to its current owners, Andy and Mona Klein.

Gradishar has been coming to Gus’ for as long as he can remember. His father, William, a steelworker union president nicknamed “Snuffy,” started taking him to Gus’ when he was 5 years old. “Dad would tell Mom that he had taken me to the park,” Gradishar said, “but I ate red pistachios from a vending machine at Gus’, and my hands were red from the pistachios. Mom knew we hadn’t gone to the park.”

Some things have changed at Gus’ over the years. The walls have a fresh coat of paint, covering nicotine stains from decades of cigarette smoke in the now-smoke-free bar, and the linoleum worn by generations of steelworkers has been replaced. But the Dutch Lunch remains the star of Gus’ menu, keeping alive one of the tastiest parts of Pueblo’s steel-working legacy.

 

Pass Key Special

Pass Key Restaurant

518 E. Abriendo Ave.

The Pass Key Special is a long-running Pueblo tradition, as customers standing in line for a table will attest. Many locals have developed their own preferred methods of eating the sandwich, which features a seasoned Italian sausage patty, topped with shredded lettuce and mustard on a silky bun from family-owned Banquet Schusters Bakery, just down the street on Abriendo Avenue in historic downtown Pueblo.

Some people will chomp into the Pass Key Special, then take a bite of banana wax pepper, two of which arrive with the sandwich in a wax-paper lined basket. Others prefer to order the sandwich with a strip of roasted Pueblo chile already on it – a delicious mix of Pueblo’s Italian and Hispanic heritage.

Brothers Frank and John Pagano invented the sandwich in 1952, the same year they opened Pass Key Restaurant, whose name is an anglicized version of the Italian name Pasqui. The current Abriendo location opened in 1969 and retains the charm of a mid-century diner, with decor that includes a collection of antique keys above the cashier. Pagano family descendants and relatives now operate four Pass Key locations in Pueblo.

The Abriendo staff blends sausage from Frank’s Meat Market in Pueblo with a carefully guarded recipe of Italian seasonings on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Pass Key kitchen. Longtime customers always know when the sausage patties are freshest.

Pass Key regular Leanna Wallerstedt of Pueblo, who has been ordering the Pass Key Special since 1975, recently stopped by to get a sandwich with her daughter Lisa Meter, who has been a fan of the Special for almost as long. They know of other lunch places that serve similar sandwiches, but they say none are as good as the Pass Key Special. And they both vouched for the banana wax peppers, which they say should never be wasted.

 

Slopper

Gray’s Coors Tavern

515 W. Fourth St.

A handwritten sign inside Gray’s Coors
Tavern informs all who enter that the restaurant’s green chile is “hot!” The exclamation-laden note serves as fair warning to patrons who have yet to experience the historic tavern’s signature sandwich: the Slopper, an open-faced hamburger with two beef patties smothered with green chile, fiery as promised, and chopped white onions.

Many people consider the Slopper to be Pueblo’s culinary claim to fame. The dish can be found on menus across Pueblo, but Gray’s Coors Tavern is where it originated. The restaurant’s odd name dates back to the end of Prohibition, when the Coors Brewing Co. sought to re-establish itself in the local market. Coors partnered with an Italian, Johnnie Greco, in creating Johnnie’s Coors Tavern. Greco later sold the tavern to the Gray family, who have run it ever since.

The Slopper was born around 1950, owner Dean Gray said. It was the brainchild of a regular named Herb Casebeer, who would order a regular burger but tell the cook to “slop it up” with some of the eatery’s red chili con carne. Eventually, as green chile made from locally grown Pueblo chiles gained popularity, green replaced red as the standard Slopper topper.

Though the Slopper is a substantial meal by any metric, Gray’s Coors Tavern also offers a Double Slopper with four beef patties, and a Triple Slopper with six patties. Some choose to eat the dish with fries placed on top. It should go without saying that a sandwich as sloppy as the Slopper is eaten with a fork and not picked up with bare hands.

The tavern is a mile east of 15,000-seat Earl “Dutch” Clark Stadium, Colorado’s largest high school football stadium. Teams and their fans fill Gray’s
after games. Above the bar are helmets of Pueblo’s rival high school teams.

Just as patrons debate which football team is the best, there is a full-contact
rivalry among Pueblo restaurants over who serves the best Slopper in town. The Star Bar has its own long history of serving the sandwich, and the Sunset Inn has been a popular Slopper stop for decades. But while Puebloans are happy to eat Sloppers wherever they may find them, for many, there’s simply no substitute for the original at Gray’s Coors Tavern.

 

Bingo Burger

Bingo Burger

101 Central Plaza

Bingo Burger hamburgers bring the heat: spicy candied bacon, sriracha ketchup, zesty dijonnaise and lots of Pueblo green chiles. Customers get a choice of beef when they order burgers: regular hamburger meat, or “Bingo beef,” which comes with flame-roasted Pueblo chiles mixed directly into the patty. Most folks choose Bingo beef – no surprise in a town as devoted to its chiles as Pueblo.

Before Bingo Burger existed as a restaurant, founder Richard Warner sold hundreds of his chile-blended burgers at Pueblo’s annual Chile and Frijoles Festival. Warner and his wife, Mary Oreskovich, followed that success by opening a brick-and-mortar shop in 2010 at the site of a former corner gas station.

Bingo names its burgers in honor of Pueblo’s steel heritage – among them the Steel City, the Blast Furnace, the Boiler Maker and the Bessemer, named after a Pueblo neighborhood that was itself named after a steel-making process.

The restaurant’s hyperlocal focus includes the food itself. Bingo sources its ingredients from Pueblo businesses: beef from Martino’s Cattle Co., cheese from Springside Artisan, buns from Harvest Moon Baking and chiles from Peppers & Petals.

To bite into a Bingo Burger, or any of the city’s homegrown sandwiches, is to taste the true flavor of Pueblo.


Pueblo Craft Breweries

While most of Pueblo’s iconic sandwiches have been favorites for generations, the city’s craft breweries are putting new traditions on tap.

 

Walter Brewing Co.

126 Oneida St.

For most of the 20th century, Walter’s Beer was Pueblo’s drink of choice, helping bring together steelworkers of many nationalities for post-shift beers. The original Walter Brewing Co. opened in 1898 and, save for a hiatus during Prohibition, brewed its signature lager until the brewery closed in 1975. In 2014, a group of Puebloans relaunched Walter’s as a craft brewery and taproom. The new brewery uses the Walter family’s original, pre-Prohibition lager recipe, while also introducing new beers made with local ingredients, such as Pueblo Chile Lager and Red Chile Lime.

 

Shamrock Brewing Co.

108 W. Third St.

Pueblo’s current longest-running brewery is Shamrock Brewing Co. The Irish pub opened in 1940 as the Shamrock Cafe. The addition of a small craft brewery in 2005 made the Shamrock the city’s first brewpub. Many of the brewery’s beers have an Irish theme, but there is also plenty of Pueblo pride on the tap list. A golden ale called Steel City Gold is one of the Shamrock’s best-selling brews, while the Pueblo American Pale Ale, or PAPA, puts a local twist on the popular pale ale style.

 

Brues Alehouse Brewing Co.

120 Riverwalk Place

Prominently located along the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk of Pueblo is Brues Alehouse, the most recent addition to the city’s craft brewing scene. Besides brewing and serving German-inspired beers, the large alehouse is one of Pueblo’s most popular events and live music venues. Many of Brues’ brews are aged in former whiskey or wine barrels; at any given moment, there may be 30 or more barrels of beer aging in the alehouse’s cellar.