Cuisines from global conflict zones are typically spread out across metro areas, requiring a bit of research to compile the best food from diverse, under-siege cultures around the world.
Read more Trump floats renaming Lake Ontario as ‘Lake America’ as trade war with Canada escalates
They’re easy to find at Mango House, an immigrant-services provider that also concentrates a half dozen international food stalls into a former JCPenney store in Aurora. Cooks get discounted leases and the support of a rich, diverse community that exists nowhere else in Colorado.
But it’s not the refugee status of the cooks that makes their food popular with local diners — especially when those diners don’t come from that community, said Joanne Valcime, owner of the Haitian-focused 509 Cuisine.
Rather, it’s the family recipes, authentic ingredients and overall passion that shines through when diners taste the creations: bright, unadulterated flavors that will challenge some and comfort others. They’ve increasingly proven Mango House’s food experiment to be a smashing success.
At the moment, the food hall hosts arguably the most unique single-site combo of cuisines in Colorado, with Jasmine Syrian, Natoli Ethiopian Cafe, Nepali Spice, Tata and Nono Sudanese Kitchen, and Urban Burma sharing walls. Their customers are a mix of folks from those countries and, well, everyone else imaginable, Valcime said.
“A lot of Haitian people come by, because there’s only one other Haitian restaurant here that I know of,” she said, noting Mama Josie Café Creole in Aurora. “But so many non-Haitian people also come to try the food. It just expands the culture of Haiti beyond Haiti itself.”
Valcime was a child when she began to cook Haitian dishes in Florida, where she lived before moving to Colorado in 2017. After cooking for friends and family, she gradually became a chef and, a little over a year ago, opened her current food stall at Mango House.
“Business has been amazing, surprisingly,” she said. “I expected it to be slow, and some days it is a little bit slower, but we’ve been doing nonprofit pop-ups and catering weddings and parties and graduations. I’d love to expand, but I’m in no rush. I want God to take his time and make me do it right.”
Mango House opened in 2014 as a nonprofit immigrant-care center with free medical, dental, and pharmacy services for people in Aurora and the surrounding area. While that’s still the main event, the food stalls that joined in 2019 have spread their renown far and wide, said owner and founder Dr. P.J. Parmar, a University of Colorado School of Medicine alumnus.
Read more Trump’s trade war with Canada could rattle economies in states with key Senate races
Those stalls, along with the handful of shops and boutiques that sell traditional African, Middle Eastern and other wares, are part of an ecosystem that provides essential support, religious services, and overall community to people who can’t find it elsewhere, Parmar said. His Ardas Family Medicine sits at the center of it all.
“Some people have called us an incubator, but our goal is to have restaurants that provide community for both those cultures and people who are not from those cultures,” Parmar said. “It’s not to hatch restaurants and have them graduate. It’s to have stable businesses.”
The half-dozen stalls at Mango House have hosted many concepts, but lately, none of them have turned over, Parmar said, and places like Urban Burma have been there since the start. There’s a long list of cooks waiting to hear about any opening, but so far the restaurateurs have no reason to change things up, given the steady business.
“All the restaurants used to come from communities that have large populations (in Aurora), but now that’s not true,” Parmar said. “Our patient population in the last few years has been Venezuelan and Nicaraguan and others with temporary protected status, but our restaurants have brought in a ton of other customers who want to try new things, and that’s been really fun to watch.”
Those customers enjoy rapid to-go service and quick turns for lunch diners, with plenty of tables and chairs spread out in the cavernous main room. Talking to chefs and cooks can fine-tune your comfort zone, but don’t be afraid to try new things. Health, it seems, is also an overarching theme.
“Most of our restaurants have a surprising amount of flexible food for people who are vegan or gluten-free or whatever restrictions you have,” Parmar said. “But people in general will come to eat at one specific restaurant they heard of, and then they realize it’s a whole food court.”
10180 E. Colfax Ave. in Aurora (enter on south side only). Visit ardasclinic.com/mangohouse.htm for more information.
Subscribe to our new food newsletter, Stuffed, to get Denver food and drink news sent straight to your inbox.
Read more Paris, anyone? United Airlines to add nonstop flights from Denver.
