Photography by: Jennifer Clasen

THE REINVENTION OF TONY

Tony DiLucia remakes himself in Aspen.

So here it is, the day before the Food & Wine Classic invades town, and Tony DiLucia is at Ajax Tavern, sharing hello kisses with Top Chef judge Gail Simmons, before sitting down at a nearby table for a strawberry-infused vodka and lemonade. But the former general manager of the Hotel Jerome — dressed in a mint-green shirt and jeans, silver aviator sunglasses framing his bald head — isn’t here to talk about grass-fed beef, Barolo, or the battle of pleasing hotel guests during the summer’s first tourist crush.
It’s not at all what DiLucia expected when he moved to town more than two decades ago. His first job was as an apprentice chef at the long-defunct Gordon’s (in the space now occupied by Jimmy’s) while a student at the Culinary Institute of America. He returned to town after graduation and went to work for Dick Butera, a business associate of DiLucia’s real estate developer father. At the time, Butera owned the Hotel Jerome. DiLucia worked in various roles at the hotel, and in 1991 then-owner Jim McManus took him to dinner at Piñons and offered him a job he could hardly refuse: running Aspen’s most historic hotel property.
It was a role DiLucia relished for 19 years, until an ownership change (prompted, in DiLucia’s telling, by an acrimonious battle with the city council over renovation of the landmark property) saw him unceremoniously fired.
“It’s been three years and it’s still hard to talk about,” he says. “I probably would have...

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