The St Regis Aspen is two blocks from the base of the Silver Queen Gondola, which makes Velvet Buck — the property’s signature restaurant — the most logistically convenient breakfast room in a town where logistics matter. The lift to Ajax opens at nine. The walk from Velvet Buck to the base, in ski boots, is about four minutes. Seven-thirty service at the restaurant puts you on the gondola before the queue forms.
This is a dispatch from one such morning, after a six-inch overnight in early March.
The walk down
The St Regis lobby on a powder morning is a particular thing. It is also a particular hour. By seven-fifteen the first wave of guests is in the lobby in their hardshells, with skis already laid out on the rack by the door, waiting for the boot warmer at the concierge desk to release a final pair. The hotel’s ski concierge — a long counter to the right of the entrance, run by the local Four Mountain Sports team in partnership with the hotel — has been open since six. Skis have already been waxed and tuned overnight. Bindings have been checked. Boots have been warmed.
I came down at seven-twenty in ski pants and a cashmere sweater, boots in hand. The concierge nodded, set my boots in the warmer, and told me they would be at the door in seven minutes. The walk through the lobby to Velvet Buck takes about thirty seconds. The dining room is on the ground floor, off a short corridor lined with framed black-and-white photographs of historic Aspen — the original silver-mining camp, the early ski-club years, the founding of the Aspen Institute.
The room
The Velvet Buck dining room is a single rectangle, perhaps twenty meters by twelve, with a long banquette running the back wall, a row of two-tops along the windows, and a centerpiece communal table with twelve seats running down the middle. The design palette is more contemporary than the typical American mountain-lodge room — pale oak floors, a charcoal wool wall covering, brass fixtures, and a single large painting at the back wall of a stylized mule deer in profile.
The room’s name is a reference to the velvet fur that covers a male deer’s antlers during their summer growth, and the whole restaurant is built around a quiet hunting-lodge metaphor: the framed antlers above the host stand, the small bronze deer sculpture at the bar, the deer-print on the menu cards. The metaphor is restrained. The room does not lean into kitsch.
I asked for a two-top by the window. The hostess — a young woman in the restaurant’s quiet uniform — sat me at a table on the north side of the room with a view through the window of the snow on the courtyard pines.
The menu
The breakfast menu at Velvet Buck is short by American hotel standards — about a dozen savory items, half a dozen sweet, a small juice and coffee program, and a single section labeled “From the Mountain” that gathers the chef’s mountain-inspired dishes.
Coffee came first. The St Regis uses a small Colorado roastery for its in-house program, and the cup at Velvet Buck is darker and oilier than the lighter West Coast roasts that have come to define hotel breakfast coffee — closer to a Parisian style. A small cream pitcher arrived alongside.
I ordered: the cinnamon quinoa waffles to start, the bison tataki as the main, and a side of two soft-poached eggs.
The food
The waffles arrived first. The quinoa waffle at Velvet Buck is the kitchen’s signature breakfast move — a Belgian-style waffle made with cooked quinoa folded into the batter, which gives the waffle a denser interior and a slightly nuttier finish than the standard hotel buttermilk version. The waffle was served with a small pour of Vermont maple syrup, a Chantilly cream piped at the center, and a scatter of fresh berries. The cinnamon was understated; the kitchen has resisted the temptation to over-sweeten.
The bison tataki was the dish I had come for. The kitchen takes a small Colorado-raised bison tenderloin, sears the outer surface, and serves it sliced thin and rare with a duck egg on top, a slice of toasted brioche underneath, and a small drizzle of a soy-balsamic reduction. The duck egg is sourced from a farm in Paonia, about three hours west of Aspen. The egg yolk on a duck egg is denser, oranger, and richer than the standard chicken egg; against the bison and the brioche it is the dish’s structural element.
The portion is small, which is the right call. Velvet Buck has resisted the trend of oversized American hotel breakfasts. Three thin slices of bison, one egg, two small wedges of brioche, a small mound of pickled red onion. You finish the plate and you are ready to ski.
The poached eggs on the side came in a small clay cup with two slices of buttered sourdough beside. The eggs were poached to the correct soft point — the white set, the yolk still loose — and the seasoning was minimal. The kitchen at this hour is sending out the dishes that are designed to be eaten and finished, not lingered over.
The room at eight
By eight the dining room was full. The communal table down the center had filled with a group of eight on a ski trip — friends from New York, by accent, all in ski layers, ordering coffee in volume. The window tables were a mix of couples and small families. A pair of Aspen locals — recognizable as such by the practiced ease with which they walked in without being seated and went to specific seats at the bar — were on a second coffee.
The room’s noise level was at the comfortable buzz of a mountain breakfast room. Cutlery on porcelain. Low conversation. The slight scuff of ski boots in the corridor outside. The hostess was handling a small queue at the door of guests who had not booked.
The window at eight gave a view of the courtyard pines with the night’s snow still on the branches, the morning sun just hitting the top of the trees. The temperature outside, by the dining-room thermometer on the wall, was 22 degrees. The forecast was calling for it to top out at 32 by midday.
The walk to the gondola
I finished breakfast at quarter to nine, paid the room charge, and went back through the lobby. The boots were warm at the door. The skis were on the rack. The concierge handed me my pass and pointed at the door.
The walk from the St Regis to the base of the gondola is two blocks east along Dean Street and one block north on Galena. The St Regis sits at the corner of Dean and Monarch; the gondola base is at Galena and Durant. The total distance is perhaps three hundred meters. In ski boots, on a clear morning with the night’s snow still on the streets, it is the right length of walk to settle the breakfast.
The Silver Queen Gondola opens at nine. I was at the base at quarter to. The queue was twelve deep. By the time the first chair released at nine I was on the third gondola up. Ajax was visible above, the new snow showing white on the upper bowls, the lift line still empty.
What the breakfast is doing
The St Regis Aspen has built Velvet Buck as a serious restaurant in a town that has not historically demanded one of its hotels. Aspen’s dining culture is centered on the small independent restaurants — Element 47 at the Little Nell, Cache Cache, Casa Tua, the long-running Pinons — and the hotel restaurants have generally played a supporting role. Velvet Buck does not. The breakfast program is the most considered at any Aspen hotel, and the dinner program — Chef Pillard’s main work — is in the same conversation.
But the breakfast is the meal that matters in Aspen. The town is built around the lift schedule. The breakfast room that gets the seven-thirty diner to the nine o’clock gondola is doing more for the stay than the room that serves the long dinner the night before. Velvet Buck has figured this out.
By nine-fifteen I was off the gondola at the top of Ajax with the new snow underfoot, the day cleanly begun. The breakfast had done its work and was already starting to fade into the morning of skiing it had been designed to set up. That is, in the end, the right ambition for a hotel breakfast room in a ski town.
Standing Questions
- Where is Velvet Buck?
- Velvet Buck is the signature restaurant of The St. Regis Aspen Resort, located at 315 East Dean Street in downtown Aspen, two blocks from the Silver Queen Gondola at the base of Aspen Mountain. The restaurant serves breakfast, dinner, and a Sunday brunch.
- What is the breakfast menu known for?
- The breakfast menu is built around mountain-inspired American dishes. House specialties include the chocolate-ganache pancakes with maple syrup and Chantilly cream, the cinnamon quinoa waffles, and a bison-tenderloin tataki served as a high-end take on steak and eggs.
- Who is the chef?
- The kitchen at Velvet Buck has been led in recent seasons by Chef Laurent Pillard, who oversees the breakfast, dinner, and brunch programs. The restaurant pays homage to the mountain men and women who settled the Rocky Mountain West in the 1800s.
- What are the breakfast hours?
- Breakfast service runs 7am to 11am most days. Sunday brunch is served in two seatings at 11:30am and 1:30pm. In peak season the restaurant takes reservations through OpenTable; walk-ins are accommodated subject to availability.
