Michael Erickson

Michael Erickson is Executive Chef at Hotel Boulderado in Boulder, United States. His work is shaped by hotel service, Colorado kitchens, and a line of Italian Tuscan cooking, with seasonality and daily demands guiding the plate more than ornament. In a hotel kitchen, the role extends beyond menu authorship to continuity, volume, occasion, and the dining identity that must hold across many kinds of guests. His path reflects a range of pressures and responsibilities. He was chef at Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta, Georgia, where polish and repeatability are part of the standard. He was chef at Restaurant Eugene, then served as sous chef at Table Mountain Inn in Golden, Colorado. He also worked as chef at Hotel Boulderado and Spruce Farm & Fish in Boulder, Colorado, before later returning to Table Mountain Inn in Golden as chef, running the kitchen there. That sequence shows formal hotel service, restaurant work, Colorado dining rooms, and leadership roles where craft is measured in daily execution. The throughline is practical fluency in menus, teams, timing, standards, and the ability to make food fit the room it is served in. Today, Michael holds two hospitality roles: Executive Chef at Hotel Boulderado and Private Chef of Take a Chef. The public hotel setting and the customized private format require different approaches, but both depend on the same discipline. The work is about reading the occasion, controlling the plate, and making the food coherent for the guest in front of it. At Hotel Boulderado, the executive chef role carries responsibility beyond individual dishes. It implies menu direction, service standards, kitchen culture, and the organization needed to keep a dining program functioning. In Boulder, the cooking is described through freshness, locality, and expressive restraint. The emphasis is not spectacle, but food that can be generous without being heavy, composed without becoming fussy, and local without losing structure. Michael’s signature dishes include Whipped Brie, Pumpkin + Burrata, and Duck Confit Cassoulet. Together they point to familiar ingredients handled through texture, season, and depth. Whipped Brie suggests aerated richness. Pumpkin + Burrata pairs squash and dairy in a way that favors balance and softness. Duck Confit Cassoulet brings the slow-built comfort of a classic composed dish. These signatures sit between accessibility and technique, built from recognizable materials rather than abstraction, and shaped by a chef whose background includes both hotel discipline and restaurant focus. His path into cooking was a practical redirection. He went to the normal college, tried the normal path, and could not get the grasp of it. He changed his major after a friend talked to him about culinary school. That account frames cooking not as mythology, but as a course change that led into the steady work of learning inside kitchens. The clearest recognition named for Michael Erickson is his current title as Executive Chef at Hotel Boulderado. It places his work in a setting where ingredients carry the argument and the chef’s hand is measured by clarity rather than excess.