Big Game's Leo Harvey on pork belly (it's just bacon!), Denver's obsession with green chile and his own obsession with chicken stock

Lori Midson

Leo Harvey
Big Game Restaurant & Lounge
1631 Wazee Street
303-623-1630

This is part one of Lori Midson's interview with Leo Harvey, exec chef of Big Game Restaurant & Lounge. To read part two of that interview, check back here tomorrow.

Leo Harvey is shaking his head, bewildered and befuddled by Denver's obsession with green chile. "The biggest challenge for me since moving to Denver in February has been getting that damn green chile right," confesses Harvey, the executive chef of Big Game, the big media lounge, restaurant and upscale sports bar that opened in May under the direction of restaurateurs Dan Smith and Zach and Jeffrey Chodorow. "For three weeks straight, we went from restaurant to restaurant trying to figure out which green chile was the best, and we finally had to step back, admit that we could sit here all day long and try to mimic what everyone thinks is the best green chile, or just do our own, which we finally did in the end - and it's a good one."

So, too, apparently, is the restaurant's matzoh ball soup, at least judging from one Jewish woman who stops in periodically to get her fix. "The first time she came in and ordered it, she was nearly turning the bowl upside down and licking it, which is a pretty amazing compliment for a guy who's never made matzoh ball soup before," says Harvey, laughing.

Born in Japan, the 27-year-old classically trained chef, who lived in South Korea, Germany and the Philippines before moving to the States when he was ten, hooked up with Smith and the Chodorows while living in Atlanta. "I had just gotten laid off from a restaurant and was offered a junior sous position at a steakhouse that the guys were working on, and from there, things just really took off," remembers Harvey, who went on to become the exec sous chef at El Scorpion, a Mexican concept that's also part of the Chodorow empire of restaurants, before eventually snagging the exec chef gig at Big Game.

"I love the freedom that I get from working for such a small company that's not uber-corporate," says Harvey, who graduated magna cum laude from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Atlanta. "And I love food, cooking, experimenting and watching a guest's head bob up and down in approval. That's the best kind of confirmation you can get as a chef."

In the following interview, Harvey talks about the new restaurant, his most embarrassing moment in the kitchen, why pork belly is overrated (blasphemy!), trashy white cheese dip, his passion for cooking and how he nurtured a knife back to life.