The King’s Chef Diner has been around since the late 1950s serving its own style of comfort food diner-style. Gary Geiser, owner of King’s Chef Diner understands his customers, embracing both old-school dishes like The Thing with new customer-influenced dishes like Grub, all overflowing with hash browns, their famous green chili, and just a tad of attitude.
“So, this diner has a history!” Geiser explains. In the mid-‘50s, it was created by the original owner, Sam Johnson, who owned it for 30-plus years and created a culture that, Geiser believes, still lives on today. “His customers have brought their kids in and now, it’s their kids’ kids. It’s ongoing.”
Geiser says he really wishes he could say he had a hand in the whole vibe of the diner, “But I think it’s more collective than anything,” he laughs. The menu, he adds, is kind of that way too.
Geiser was just shy of 30 years old when he bought the diner. He is an East Coast transplant from the Beltway in the Washington D.C. area. He came to Durango for college looking for a different, less hectic kind of lifestyle. After college, he was looking for an approach to suit that thought process. Colorado Springs had the perfect vibe, he says. King’s Chef just happened to be the right venue.
“The diner was bankrupt at the time, and it was super cheap, so I jumped all in.” Geiser jokes that, with his novice skill set, he did change some elements, which he hoped would allow people to experience what was already great at King’s Chef but in a better fashion. He did this by expanding the footprint into a larger facility.
He expanded the menu but kept a lot of the original items. He tweaked some recipes to make some more non-GMO, vegan, and gluten-free, including their famous green chili.
Legacy Items (and Customers) Drive the Menu at King’s Chef Diner
In speaking of some of the menu items, Geiser shows these adjustments while keeping true to the diner’s roots. “The very first item on our breakfast menu is called The Thing. It’s been on the menu since the ‘50s.” Geiser explains that original operators Sam Johnson and Merl Moore had it on their menu. The Thing is a traditional item that starts with two pieces of Texas toast buttered and grilled. Protein is put on top of that – a choice of bacon, sausage, or ham stacked on high, and then layered with crispy golden hash browns. That is topped with a couple of eggs, shredded cheese, and their homemade Colorado green chili. Geiser says that is one of the historical items that they could never touch. “That is traditional and, on the menu, and is still sold to this day.”
While a dish like The Thing was kept purely as it was, some Geiser tweaked. The Merl scramble was put on the menu by Merl Moore and was diced home-fried potatoes topped with grilled red onions, grilled green peppers, and (originally) scrambled eggs. “Now we add shredded cheese and top it with some eggs, country gravy, and green chili. That is a fan favorite, but one we tweaked a little.”
Geiser also developed a breakfast menu item of his own called The Grump with another gentleman who was working with him at the time. “We were having breakfast one morning, and we’re talking about our favorite meals that we’d had in our young life, at the time. And this one item came to mind.”
It was a layer of hash browns, with some grilled ham, onions, and cheese on top. And then another layer of hash browns sandwiching it together, all smothered with country gravy. “We kind of took that idea and turned it into what today is known as our Grump. It’s an amazing dish that’s huge,” Geiser says.
Although breakfast is a big thing, that same vibe continues into lunch. The Sam Special Burger at lunch, Geiser says, was a happy accident. Four or five years ago, one of their old-school customers came in and said to Geiser, “Hey, I want a Sam Special.” Geiser replied, “Great! What the hell is a Sam Special?” Geiser says the guy says, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!” to which Geiser said, “I can do that!”
The Sam Special is a burger topped with Black Forest ham and cheddar cheese. Geiser says it reminded him of the types of burgers he used to have at the Roy Rogers chain as a kid. In other words, it was another perfect menu item for the King’s Chef.
Keeping the Diner Old-School and Yet Fun
Geiser says it is these old-school customers that keep the diner in line, keeping it authentic, while their successful green chili business has given them fans far and wide. “Those old-school customers bring us back [to our roots]. They’re like a rolling board of directors for us, right?”
Geiser says it is important to listen to customers, but jokes that the customer is not always right, because he laughs, and many times they’re not. “But if you listen to them and try to hear them, they actually might have a bit of validity in some sense that helps the business,” Geiser says that this revolves around what a diner is.
“[People sometimes forget that] a diner is like your damn kitchen table, right? You’re not in a restaurant, you’re in a diner and you’re going to be treated like you’re at home. That means sometimes you might get scolded. Like if you’re not behaving right as a kid, your mom is going to smack you. She’s still going to give you a plate of bacon and eggs. But that’s really what a diner is.”
But a diner is also a place where memories are made. The legacy customers that have been coming to King’s Chef for decades drive the experience. “We work on those relationships,” he says. “We get their names, try to use their names, and we try to remember their names. We have a lot of regulars that come in frequently during the week, and we know what they eat, whether they remember it or not.”
On top of that, Geiser says if a customer eats all their food – “and we serve a large amount of food” – they reward the customer with a “Clean Plate Club” sticker. “They get validation that they did a good job. And, usually, it’s a very fun thing. But if they don’t eat all their food, they get a ration of crap sometimes, not only from the staff but also from their tablemates.”
He offers an example: “l have this big oil rig guy from Texas visiting and he can’t finish his burrito, but his girlfriend next to him who weighs a buck nothing, crushes it along with two slices of French toast, gets a sticker on her shoulder and gives him a smirk like, “Uh-huh.” Geiser loves that angle of the diner. “We can see all kinds of ways to create a dynamic, building relationships” while serving a boatload of food to waiting customers.
