Wicked bites
NSFW Sandos wants to get naughty with you; Gunslinger Brewing opens; in the kitchen with Chef Eric Brenner; five questions with Hold Fast Coffee's Vinnie Snyder + more food & drink news
Depending on what ads you want following you around the internet for the next few weeks, you may not want to Google the business I’m about to tell you about. That’s your warning.
“Yeah, it has been challenging learning how the algorithms work with our name,” concedes co-owner Mitch Moros, of NSFW Sando Co., whose Facebook profile photo features a spiked leash around a baguette. Taglines: “Filthy naughty sandos” and “Gourmet Sandwiches made by a foul mouthed idiot in Colorado Springs.”
Admit it: They have your attention. And though they may sound unserious in some way, Moros is actually coming from a deep and diverse industry background in the Springs over the past decade. Among postings, he’s bartended and worked in kitchens, a bakery and a few breweries (Bristol, Pikes Peak and Trinity) and attended the Siebel Institute of Technology to learn the beermaking craft.
Moros says that career’s behind him for now, as he’s been sober the past two years and would likely only return to brew N/A beer. “I’m going to stick to sandwiches for now,” he says. “I’ve actually found quite a passion in returning to the kitchen.”
Late last year he filed for his LLC and in early June NSFW had taken shape. It’s a collaborative project between him and his partner and co-owner Selene Obscene. That’s their burlesque performance name and what they prefer to go by. They’re a featured dancer at La Burla Bee, and Moros says he too is now studying the craft as he immerses himself in the cabaret lifestyle. “We like being on the wild side, pushing limits and to take who we are and put that into the company,” he says.
Part of that is being proudly LGBTQ+ and indigenous-owned. Selene Obscene has Choctaw heritage, which might be expressed with future offerings like fry bread at farmers markets. “We want to express who we are,” Moros says, “with the convergence of art and food.”
So what’s their approach to the art of a good sandwich? As with proper brewing and all culinary craft, it starts with the foundational elements. Like sourcing a good bread in this case. NSFW works exclusively with the Sourdough Boulangerie, as well as Outside the Breadbox for a gluten-free option. “Shawn [Saunders, owner of the Boulangerie] has been integral to the success we’re seeing lately,” Moros says.
Rather than keep a core lineup, he says they regularly rotate through many Sourdough Boulangerie styles, not just classics like a wheat, rye or white. For example, at a recent gig at ICONS, they built sandwiches utilizing the white cheddar Pueblo Chile bread. At the event I caught them at outside of Cocktails After Dusk, a sandwich they named You’d Fold in Prison featured blueberry-lemon-honey sourdough with Muenster, white cheddar and hot honey. From day to day everything changes up. For meats and cheeses, they’ve tasted through and selected products from Shamrock.
Some days NSFW will build custom menus, and other days they’ll run totally build-your-own, or some hybrid of the two. Typically there’s both hot and cold options available. “We might evolve into some flagships as we figure out what people like and design recipes off of that,” Moros says, adding he’s happy to help guide people and “make you what I think you’ll like.”
Lately he’s been selling a lot of spicy BLT’s, which highlight his house spicy chile mayo, which he makes truly hot. “When I go out to eat, they never make it hot enough,” he says. (Side Dish’s Ryan Hannigan, a spice freak, has praised the sauce.) Moros describes starting his own sauce program soon, perhaps offering his hot sauce and various mayos, like a pesto or curry mayo, for sale.
When you’re ready to check NSFW out, head to JAKS Brewing’s Amelia Street location (off E. Platte Ave., near where Rocky Mountain Brewery used to exist) on a Wednesday from 5-8 p.m., and keep an eye on their socials for postings elsewhere.
Then again, that would require typing NSFW into a search engine, so launch a private browser or maybe skip doing it on a work device. Unless your boss likes sandwiches.
Sip with Schnip at Red Gravy
To whet your palate ahead of tomorrow’s Sip with Schnip at Red Gravy, check out this seven-minute short that Ryan Hannigan and I filmed with Chef Eric Brenner. (Credit to Ryan on all cinematography, editing and production.) We touch on Brenner’s culinary ethos and approach to his menu creation, as well as the exhaustive daily prep that his team does to make it all happen. And we go back in the kitchen with Brenner and tour through the making of several popular items.
Pictured above is the new Calabrian Deluxe with pepperoni, Mortadella, Calabrian chiles, Provel cheese mix, ricotta, arugula and hot honey. If you’ve never tried Red Gravy’s St. Louis-style pizzas, they’re known for their cracker-y crust in particular. This pie builds off of that with sensational flavors, making for a great entry point.
Join us tomorrow, Thursday, Aug. 28, from 5-8 p.m. for Sip with Schnip at Red Gravy. Enjoy extended happy hours and samples of new menu items, including the Mortadella and Provolone sandwich. (Bourdain’s favorite!) And we’re celebrating the reopening of Tejon Street in front of Red Gravy, with wider sidewalks, new benches and a more pedestrian-forward design.
Gunslinger Brewing opens this weekend
Gunslinger Brewing will open at noon, Friday, Aug. 29 in the former Brass Brewing Co. spot on Colorado Avenue, downtown.
If you missed my early July Q&A with co-owner and brewer Dan Hays, check that out for the business’ in-depth backstory. They’ve done a nice job converting Brass’ military theme into a Wild West one, assisted greatly by a badass-cool gunslinger mural in the entry hallway by local muralist Molly McClure. Behind the bar, she also painted a Western landscape that faces tap handles that spell out “gunslinger.” It’s all tasteful, not campy or overdone, and Gunslinger’s merch looks cool.
I was able to attend a small family and friends gathering last week and sample from the first lineup of 12 beers. I grabbed a tasting paddle — shaped like a six-shooter revolver chamber — and selected four brews: the Pale Rider Rice Lager (a sessionable 3.8 percent ABV, crisp and super light); the Old School Outlaw West Coast IPA (true to style); RedVolver Red Rye IPA (lightly malty with a faint rye bite and very food friendly); and a Belgian Pale Ale collaboration beer with Urban Animal (floral with a hint of citrus and surprising notes of banana, as if it were a hefeweizen).
On the whole the beers were on point and enjoyable. If you feel there’s a consistency from what you remember of Brass Brewing, there’s a valid reason why. Brass’ Head Brewer for three and half years, Sean Fickle, was retained by the incoming owners and now he and Hays collaborate in the brewhouse. Though he mostly had carte blanche to brew as he pleased prior, he says “we’re turning a page and doing our own thing with Gunslinger… Dan’s been working on this for five years.”
The opening tap lineup is equal parts Sean and Dan down the list, Fickle says, in terms of who instigated each brew. One central change thanks to Dan’s influence is more of a focus on lagers, which indeed compose half a dozen of the opening beers.
Whereas Brass’ bestsellers were a blood orange Belgian and strawberry Blonde, the sole fruit influence on the opening menu comes via a huckleberry lemonade seltzer slushie. And even though we aren’t into cold months yet, there’s an American Stout available; Fickle says to always expect at least one dark style beer on tap.
As for flagships, they haven’t decided yet and want to glean early input from customers, but Fickle’s pretty sure the Red Rye IPA and West Coast IPA will stick around, as well as the Lever-Action Pale Lager that has top placement on the menu.
For opening weekend, a collaboration Czech Pilsner will hit taps courtesy Phantom Canyon. Dan tells me he and Phantom’s brewer Brian Koch were Lieutenants together 20 years ago in the Air Force. So when Brian heard Dan was opening Gunslinger, he reached out to help stock the initial lineup.
Fickle, also a military veteran, teases one more beer that he knows is ahead. It continues a tradition started with Brass, who teamed up with Denver’s LUKI Brewery to make a special Veterans Day release. This year, that will be a Bière de Garde, hitting taps on the holiday.
Five questions with Hold Fast Coffee Co's Roaster and Operations Manager Vinnie Snyder
1) When we last spoke, we talked about what comes after third wave coffee. When craft service seems to have peaked, what’s left to elevate and innovate? I presume the answer evolves over time. What’s exciting to you in the industry right now?
Right now a lot of the innovation is happening at the farm/producer level. You’re totally right that we’ve hit a bit of a ceiling in terms of service and equipment technology. There’s still progress, but not the huge leaps forward we saw over the past 10 years. What has changed a lot is producers experimenting with different fermentation techniques, adding ingredients to the fermentation process and experimenting with anaerobic fermentation as well. I’m still a little skeptical about where some of this growth is heading, but it’s fun to ride the wave for now and see where the dust settles.
On the café side, the seasonal beverage approach has also grown a ton. Drinks like the pumpkin spice latte have become standard. As a result, baristas have been pushing the expectations of what a seasonal menu can look like in specialty coffee. It’s pretty common to see craft cocktail techniques making their way into café menus. One of our best-selling summer drinks is our cold brew limeade. I appreciate that customers have become more adventurous with their approach to coffee as an interesting ingredient that can be expressed in so many different ways.
2) When Hold Fast was celebrating its 10th anniversary in late 2023, you gave me a bag of a special Tiki blend you’d roasted that was pretty spectacular. I see you’re offering a summer blend right now. Outside of your roasting lineup of flagship labels like City Slicker and your house blend, what’s your goal when you get to play?
We still talk about that Tiki coffee to this day! We try our best to have a coffee for everyone in our flagship offerings. That is also where we are really conscious of price and work hard to keep things as approachable as we can. When it comes to our non-flagship offerings, we try to operate with almost no rules. We’re constantly sampling things and waiting for that right coffee that just stops you in your tracks. Sometimes it’s funky and really adventurous, and other times it’s just the perfect expression of what you want a coffee from a specific region to taste like. It also gives us a chance to highlight really interesting projects happening at origin that we feel aren’t talked about enough. We are generally only buying less than 150 pounds of a coffee like that and carrying it for a few weeks, so we warn our customers to never get too attached.
3) This may be a softball question, but what makes a good blend, and how do you develop it? And philosophically or practically, do you think the best blends achieve what single origins can’t?
I feel like the conversations around blends have really started to grow past what they’ve been for a long time. In specialty coffee, blends were generally looked at as a lesser-quality option, but a necessary process to create things that were more familiar for your customer base, which might not embrace some of the unique flavors in lighter roasted coffees. Now some of the most unique coffees I’ve had this year have been blends. Black & White Coffee right now has a “Hazy Juicy IPA” blend that tastes so much like a hazy IPA it’s almost disorienting. It’s made of five different coffees with really unique processing methods, and I think it’s a great example of how blends have moved from boring and affordable to a way to play with different coffees to build a cup similar to how a bartender would approach making a cocktail. That’s something that single origins just can’t, and don’t try, to do.
When it comes to making a good standard blend, balance is always key. You want to find some kind of harmony in the coffees you are mixing regardless of the blend’s purpose. Some coffees have a flavor that is so special, but may not find that balance on their own. We’ve tried so many coffees that have such a nice acidity to them, but as they cool they can turn sour or lose some of their beauty. Once you blend them with a coffee that complements them, you can achieve that perfect balance that fits just right.
4) What’s challenging right now in the industry? We’ve been warned for some time that coffee prices will rise due to everything from climate change and disasters (creating scarcity/supply issues) to tariffs, which have arrived. What are you seeing, how are you adapting, and what’s it mean for Hold Fast’s pricing, as just one example locally?
The biggest challenge we are facing at the moment is the rising cost of green coffee. The weather in Brazil and Vietnam, coupled with the ever-changing tariff landscape, has made things more difficult than they’ve ever been. We have been taking every cost-cutting measure in terms of our packaging and shipping and getting as creative as possible to maintain our coffee quality. We’ve also become very picky about which coffees we buy. The process of finding a high-quality coffee at a price you feel good about asking your customers to pay has gotten so much more difficult, but it’s what we love to do, and we refuse to quit that search. We often talk about how we hope coffee prices find a more sustainable level for everyone in the supply chain, but we’re trying to focus as much as we can on what we can control on our end. We’re really grateful that our customers have continued to support us and other roasters as we’ve all had to pass some of our price increases onto our supporters.
5) Years ago, you and I learned we are kindred spirits in that we became caffeine sensitive in — let’s call it early-middle age. So we’re primarily decaf drinkers day-to-day. I still take heat for that when I share it with people. I’m not sure why caffeine consumption is so intertwined with machismo, and why folks are so quick to bully my beans. Help me out: What do you say in defense of decaf?
The world of decaf coffee has changed SO MUCH in the past few years. I think people, especially our Gen Z friends, have become a lot more conscious about their caffeine and alcohol consumption, and the desire for healthier options has really taken off. Alongside that, there has been so much innovation in low- to no-caffeine coffee processing. Believe it or not, the 2024 United States Brewers Cup Championship was won by a decaffeinated coffee served by Weihong Zhang. That is truly the highest level of coffee competition we have.
I often argue that decaf coffee is for those who truly love coffee. Some drink it for practical reasons, but those of us who drink coffee without the caffeine are here for the love of the game. Our current Mexico decaf is one of my favorite parts of the day, and I hope all roasters accept the challenge to source and roast an excellent decaf rather than treat it as an afterthought. If you want to get even more excited about decaf, there is a lot of work being done to test planting coffee trees that naturally grow without caffeine, which would eliminate the parts of the process that affect flavor. Hopefully we can do away with the “death before decaf” saying any day now.
Bites & Bits
• Fiddles, Vittles & Vino, set to take place Sept. 14 at Rock Ledge Ranch, has been cancelled. Event organizers posted to say, “Our participating restaurants and wine vendors are stretched thinner than ever this season, and asking them to take on an additional festival proved too big of a lift in 2025.” Despite this, they say they do plan to bring the festival back in 2026.
• SoCo Still Fest, slated for Sept. 13 at The Alexander, has also been cancelled. Organizers cited no reason for the cancellation, but called it “a difficult decision.”
• China Village has reopened at 203 N. Union Blvd., after closing a couple months back — much to the dismay of fans, including members of the Crazy Hungry Asians of Colorado Facebook group. Reddit commenters have noted new ownership and reported that the back of house staff was retained, and even the same delivery man. “Still not the friendliest guy, but he brought our food, so we were psyched,” one person wrote (much to my amusement).
• The UTE at CityROCK climbing gym announced this week that it is rebranding to become Commonfork Bites & Brews. From their newsletter: “Along with the name change, this revamp will include new menu items, an expanded drink selection, a dining room refresh, additional hours, and a trivia revival!” (As of Sept. 13, Commonfork will host Saturday night pub quizzes with Geeks Who Drink, weekly at 7 p.m.) While the craft beer selection will remain intact (with one of the best curated tap lists in town, with less-common brews by intention), the newly focused spot will start serving batched cocktails as well.
• Springs Magazine detailed the opening of the new downtown karaoke bar, Liquid Courage. It’s located in the former Bell Brothers Brewing spot, and belongs to the same restaurant group as The Rabbit Hole, Crooked Cue and multiple other businesses co-owned by restaurateur Joe Campana.
• MB’s Something Sweet recently opened off Voyager Parkway on Spectrum Loop. It’s a local, veteran-owned shop serving rolled ice creams.
• The Gazette reported on the opening of a new distillery on the Southeast side, named Pure Distilling. It’s been launched by some Army veterans, and has an eye on local sourcing where possible and avoiding the use of plastics as much as possible according to the article.
• Pin-Txi-Wey is making good progress towards opening soon, as seen in this teaser post on Instagram. You’ll recall from my early July reporting that it’s the next venture for Chef Fernando Trancoso of Tepex (and Inefable, briefly).
Upcoming events
Aug. 28: Sip with Schnip at Red Gravy. 5-8 p.m. Extended happy hour; samples of new menu items, including the Mortadella and Provolone sandwich. (Bourdain’s favorite!)
Sept. 5-6: COATI food hall’s 5th Birthday Carnival.
Sept. 13: Holes & Hops Cornhole & Brewfest Fundraiser at Weidner Field. 2-6 p.m.; benefits Colorado Youth Outdoors.
Sept. 13: Sober Soiree at the Meanwhile Block. 6:30-9 p.m.; $125 benefits Homeward Pikes Peak.
Sept. 14: Hillside Garlic Festival at Hillside Gardens, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Sept. 19-21: Pueblo Chile & Frijole Festival.
Sept. 19: Angelo Cellars Winemaker Dinner at The Carter Payne. 6 p.m.; six courses, $125.
Sept. 20: Korean Festival Colorado at Acacia Park. Traditional food and street snacks, K-pop performances, cultural games and local artists and vendors. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; free.
Parting shot(s)
After being flight delayed several times — rerouted around the haboob that hit Phoenix, it turns out — we ended up spending an unplanned evening in Las Vegas on Monday. We were on the way home from a long-weekend getaway to L.A. to see friends.
I found a screamin’ good day-of deal for the The Palazzo at The Venetian Resort, and we did what food adventuring we could with little time and low energy. Most notably, we hit Miami-born CHICA, an upscale Mexican spot from Chef Lorena Garcia.
In brief: we enjoyed the hell out of two cocktails, one a mezcal, Luxardo Maraschino and passionfruit drink and the other a blanco tequila, strawberry and chile de arbol sipper. Craving light food, we opted for a quinoa salad with roasted corn, black beans, avocado and Meyer lemon dressing plus garnishing crispy tortilla pieces. Then a scallops entrée with miso-pecan salsa macha and squid ink tapioca crisps. Fantastic.
The other highlight for me came in the morning from Bouchon Bakery, a Thomas Keller brand. I got an everything bagel croissant that was everything I hoped it would be. Lovely pastry, spot-on seasoning and a fun creamy dollop in the center to be incorporated into bites like a cream cheese smear. Kick-ass.
