Cara Siegel gets recognized on the streets these days. People want to know: What’s her favorite slopper?
Siegel is part of the Visit Pueblo team that has fanned out across southern Colorado during the past month or so, filming behind-the-scenes Instagram reels that show how various local restaurants slap together the messy regional delicacy known as the slopper.
The slopper, broken down into ingredients, is some combination of hamburger, cheese, french fries and green chili. It can be served in a bowl or on a plate, open faced or sandwiched, with shreds or slices of American cheese. It can be, and is, served about three dozen different ways at about three dozen different dining establishments in Pueblo County.
So which one is Siegel’s favorite? She’ll never tell.
But secrecy is not the policy for thousands of other Coloradans that voted in this year’s Slopper Tour. More than 8,000 votes cast over the past three weeks crowned Gray’s Coors Tavern with the county’s top slopper, stripping the Cactus Flower Mexican Restaurant of the title it earned two years in a row. Cactus Flower came in second.
“I think the slopper is synonymous with Pueblo in terms of a food staple,” said Dean Gray, the second generation owner of Gray’s Coors Tavern, the alleged birthplace of the slopper. “Every restaurant that has a hamburger has a slopper.”
“You don’t just have one style of restaurant doing it,” Siegel said. “You have your local pubs, breweries, Mexican restaurants, Italian, Greek. It just shows you how in Pueblo culture, it’s kind of become the identity.”
Sit down and stay awhile
In recent years, Colorado cities have placed big bets on the culinary world to attract more tourists. Denver, Boulder, Aspen and Snowmass, and Vail and Beaver Creek all pitched in something close to $100,000 a piece to be considered for the state’s first Michelin Guide in 2023. The Colorado Tourism Office also committed around $135,000 per year for three years to introduce Michelin to the state.
That investment seems to be paying off, with Michelin expanding to cover all of Colorado this year. About three-quarters of restaurants in the guide reported a bump in business after their inclusion, according to a 2024 survey by the Colorado Restaurant Association, with about 13% of those restaurants seeing a 16% to 20% increase. Chefs told the association that inclusion helped them attract and retain talent, gave them more credibility with traveling diners, grew their lunch and happy hour services and elevated the local dining scene overall.
The menu at Gray’s Coors Tavern in Pueblo does not let you forget its claim on the slopper. (Eric Lubbers, The Colorado Sun)Comparing the Slopper Tour to a Michelin play might feel a little forced, but the idea behind them is the same: get people eating in local restaurants.
“Of course we use this as a tourism marketing piece,” Siegel said. “When tourists come to town, what do they want to do? They want to eat like a local.”
But the campaign is primarily for and about locals, she said. January and February are historically quiet months in Pueblo’s restaurants based on sales tax revenue data, while the summer months consistently draw more people out to dine. Running the slopper tour in March and April strategically pushes people out a little earlier, bridging the seasons.
Last year’s winner, Cactus Flower, sold 948 sloppers over three weeks in March and April, during the run-up to the contest and directly after. “The average slopper goes for around $18,” Siegel said (their current menu sells them for $18.99). “So that means they generated $17,000 just on sloppers in three weeks.”
After the votes are tallied and the top slopper selected, Visit Pueblo and the Chamber of Commerce run “slopper week,” during which visitors can turn in a receipt from any of the top 10 slopper stops to be entered to win $250 cash. Last year they collected 248 receipts, Seigel said. “About $8,000 worth of sloppers.”
From the first slopper to the top slopper
The slopper origin story is a little bit messy — as is the case with most popular dishes, e.g. the cheeseburger — but most people in Pueblo can agree that Gray’s Coors Tavern was the first one to serve it, back when the spot was called Johnnie’s Coors Tavern. It’s no wonder that they got tired of settling for second.
The first mention of the slopper in print came in 1981, buried in an article about cheap lunches for the Colorado State University Pueblo student paper, The Arrow.
“Every Puebloan has tried a Starburger from the Star Bar …” the anonymous student wrote. (The Star Bar is another alleged origin for the slopper, though, as Gray pointed out, the guy who opened the Star Bar first worked at Coors Tavern). “And it’s tough to top a slopper from Johnnie’s Coors Tavern,” the student continued. “A slopper is an open-faced cheeseburger served with Johnnie’s own red chili.”
This year’s top 10 slopper stops are:
Coors Tavern Cactus Flower Gold Dust Sunset Inn Café Murillo Three Sisters Tavern The Pantry Shah’s American Gyro Heart & Soul Grill Mi Ranchito(The famous Pueblo green chile, a key ingredient of today’s sloppers, wasn’t created until about a decade later, though chili peppers have long been a part of the region’s agricultural heritage.)
Two years after the article was written, Dean Gray’s parents and his cousin Donnie bought Coors Tavern from the aforementioned Johnnie. They changed the name but kept most other things the same, including its most notable menu item. Gray grew up working at the bar, and bought it from his cousin Donnie in 2018.
After all these years, does he still enjoy a slopper?
“Oh, absolutely. I had one yesterday,” he said. “Every time I eat one, it’s like, wow, man, that is good. I don’t eat them every day, obviously. I’d probably die. You can’t do that. But I try to eat one once a week or so if possible.”
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