At St Julien Hotel & Spa in downtown Boulder, dining isn’t just an eating experience. It’s an opportunity to connect with the Earth. It’s no secret that the property is proud to focus on cooking its menu items using freshly sourced local ingredients based on sustainable, organic farming practices at Jill’s Restaurant & Bistro (it’s a Colorado green hotel). In addition to sourcing supplies from local farms, the team is known to use local Colorado liquors whenever possible for cocktails at T-Zero.
But what makes this property especially unique compared to other nearby spots is how many of the flavors that go into their signature menu items actually come from ten feet away—via the property’s bountiful on-site garden plot.
Each year, St. Julien’s team propagates and cultivates a robust harvest, with crops including multiple varieties of squash, heirloom zucchini, radish, kale, apples, heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and other tasty goods. They also grow herbs and spices, including basil, rosemary, parsley, mint, and chives. This upcoming year, the team plans to add Italian eggplant, radicchio, and mixed lettuces to the lineup of farm-fresh produce.
Some dishes at Jill’s that feature the garden harvest include basil in the tomato soup and margarita pizza, cherry tomatoes in the white pizza, chopped salad and Niçoise salad, jalapeño in the jalapeño-candied bacon relish on the bison burger, kale in the kale & quinoa salad, and delicate squash in the Verlasso salmon.
The hotel grounds are even home to several bee colonies, which produce the honey that’s used in the daily house-made granola at Jill’s, and in the Hot Toddy T-Zero. It’s the purest way to ensure each sip and bite is as “down to Earth” as possible.
