The Meadow Mountain Café in Allenspark has been serving up fresh, homemade food to folks in the Allenspark area for the past seventeen years, and the food on the original menu for years before that. Three St. John siblings, Joe, Ben, and Jenny, took ownership of the iconic café and are carrying on the family tradition that their mother started more than forty years ago.

Joe St. John is the owner of the Meadow Mountain, and the lead chef. He began working at the Meadow Mountain at the age of thirteen and has been working there for fourteen years. Joe now works alongside his older brother Ben, and their older sister Jenny.

“He was thirteen when he started working here,” said Ben, “So, he’s twenty-seven now. Fourteen years.” Joe states that he’s been cooking that whole time. Ben acknowledges this with a little bit of pride mixed in with a good-natured, brotherly ribbing. Ben works in the restaurant, helping with dishes, bussing tables, and whatever needs to be done. The Meadow Mountain café is truly a family business and has been since its inception.

“What kinds of things do you cook?” I asked Joe.

“The menu,” was the response.

This was followed by a hearty laugh from the gathered family. It was a Sunday, a little after two o’clock in the afternoon, and the café had just closed for the day. Stephanie Duell, her daughter Nova, and her husband Taylor, all from Estes Park, sat in the cozy dining room with Ben sharing a table and an after-shift cup of coffee.

“I’ve known him since I was five, for thirty years,” said Taylor, referring to Ben.

They were essentially raised as brothers in the Estes Park area. Their family roots run deep in this area.

Joe is bustling in and out of the kitchen getting it cleaned up while Jennifer seems to be everywhere at once, cleaning and straightening.

“This place has been here since the forties,” said Joe, “while I’ve made up a lot of things… the menu has actually been around since ’46.”

“Our original menu, we have a cookbook from the forties, with a lot of the original recipes,” he said. “A lady named Lily actually owned the place across the street, and her husband built this place. She turned it into a pie shop, and then slowly turned it into more of a restaurant.”

Although the café still shows signs of the original shop, the building had two owners before St. John’s mother took over the café in 2007. According to the two sons she had worked at the shop for between 20 and 30 years before she eventually bought it and started serving home cooked meals to hungry diners. Joe learned how to cook from his mother, watching her cook in the kitchen and learning her recipes. After she passed away, the children decided to carry on what she had started.

Their oldest sister, Jenny, came out from the kitchen and joined the conversation. She is the face of the café, running the front of the house while little brother Joe whips up his creations in the kitchen.

“I would say Joe’s the one in charge of the back, and I run the front,” she said, “then as far as the rest… everything else, the shopping and all that, we do together.”

The family are Colorado natives, born and raised in the Wild Basin area.

“I love it, and I love having my kids here. Being part of this is pretty great,” said Jenny, and continued with a laugh, “as a teenager I hated it.” Jenny has six kids, three of whom are in the Estes Park schools and three in Denver.

Having been born and raised in the area, the family’s roots run deep. “It’s really cool because we know all the locals and are friends with everybody around.”

“It’s friends and family,” added Ben.

They have no plans to change much in the future, having carved out a comfortable niche in the local food scene. “I would say, for the restaurant, keep it small, keep it local just the way it is,” said Jenny, “we’re thinking of expanding it in different areas, but this particular restaurant and area, we’re going to keep it the same.”

The Meadow Mountain was not immune to the effects of the pandemic that ravaged local businesses and communities. They said that although the local community supported them to the best of their abilities, they were forced to close their doors for more than six months, during the winter of 2020.

“Once we came back it was almost like it didn’t happen, everybody came rushing back,” she said. “We’re pretty fortunate.”

Jenny had a message to her loyal customers and friends. “We love and appreciate everyone, if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be here,” she said, “we love what we do, and that helps.”

The Meadow Mountain Café is located at 441 Business Hwy 7, Allenspark, Colorado. The café will be open Friday through Monday, 8 a.m. until 2 p.m., throughout the winter months, and as long as there are customers to feed.