On asking a local where to eat lunch

The first time I went to Pueblo, I went with two older colleagues. Besides the difference in age and seniority (significant!), there was also the slightly infantilizing fact that I was sitting in the backseat.

(When you’re not in a taxi or an Uber, it’s hard to resist the child mentality in the backseat.)

When it came time to grab some lunch in Pueblo, my colleagues were clueless—but they knew where the local strip of fast food was.

We ate at Arby’s, and I was left—for years!—with the impression that Pueblo’s culinary scene was in such dire condition that the best it could offer was the fast food chain that has, um, GOT THE MEATS.

I amended history today, on my second trip down to the unloved former steel city.

It was easy: I asked a local.

She directed us, after a moment’s thought, to a new food hall in the heart of Pueblo’s old downtown.

Sure, we could have asked Google or Yelp—but online searches are often an exercise in frustration, catering as they do to eateries that invest in digital marketing. In other words: fast food or chain restaurants along with a scattering of others that may genuinely be worthy of “4.6 stars” or that may simply have a very canny online strategy.

Plus, you have to make the choice yourself. And I get decision fatigue plenty fast.

I’m getting off topic, though.

My point here is less about lunch and how to find it and more about how easily we can let our impression of a place be guided by the opinions of outsiders.

People in the Denver metro area are, frankly, dismissive of other smaller cities in Colorado. This is especially true of Pueblo, whose population and cultural capital have long been on the wane, compared to other cities in the state—Denver, Fort Collins, Greeley, Colorado Springs, Aurora.

Denver area denizens lean on a stereotype of Pueblo as impossibly backwards—poor, economically stagnant, tasteless.

There’s truth to the stereotype if you take the view of a culture critic or economist—but that doesn’t mean that nothing happens in Pueblo.

It doesn’t mean that there aren’t any great locally-owned places to grab lunch.