Inside Soupçon, Chef John Leonardi's Nine-Table Obsession in Crested Butte

By Eric Barton |
Photos by Lauren Storer and Dani Hansen |
Jan. 14, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

One night in Crested Butte, after a shift at Kochevar’s Saloon on Elk Avenue, chef John Leonardi stepped outside feeling restless. Two men sat on the steps behind the restaurant, talking in the afterglow of service. Leonardi had arrived in town on a one-way plan and a vague promise to himself that the next job would mean something. He did not know those men sitting there that night were about to give his plan life.

The restaurant that came out of that moment is Soupçon, a tiny, 28-seat place inside an 1880s mining cabin where the whole point is attention. There is no hiding in a two-room, nine-table dining room with two seatings a night. Leonardi, now the chef-owner, runs it like someone who understands that intimacy is not a vibe. It is a discipline. It is pacing. It is restraint. It is knowing when to talk, when to let a table have its own quiet moment, and when a meal needs a nudge forward.

John Leonardi

Leonardi’s sense of what a table can do started in the Midwest, where the table was less a piece of furniture than a weekly event. “I grew up in Cincinnati, in a family where food was always at the center,” he told me. His father and aunt came to the United States from the small Tuscan town of Molazzana, and Leonardi still talks about his Aunt Lelia as the family’s organizing force. “Being Italian, food was how we connected and how we stayed close, and my aunt Lelia was a huge part of that. She was really the heartbeat of our family.”

Every Sunday, Lelia hosted lunches that ran long and fed everyone within range. “Every Sunday, she hosted these beautiful family lunches with ten-course meals: charcuterie boards, different cuts of meat, fry bread made to order and multiple pasta dishes.” People stayed at the table for hours. Leonardi stayed with the feeling. “Looking back, that rhythm shaped everything I do today.”

Caviar service

At five years old, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which forced him into a kind of competence most kids do not need. He tells it plainly, with the humor of someone who has had to get used to explaining it. “At this point, I joke that I’m basically bionic. I have a mechanical pancreas, but even then, I never let it stop me.” The bigger takeaway, for him, is not the tech. It is the mindset. “It taught me resilience early on. You learn to adapt and to keep going even when things feel uncertain.”

Lobster mushroom risotto

Truffle Risotto

His path into cooking had that same zigzag persistence. He dropped out of the University of Cincinnati, cycled through jobs, enrolled in and left the Midwest Culinary Institute, and worked his way through restaurants around town, including Germano’s, Boca, and The Oceanaire Seafood Room, where he worked as a butcher. Eventually, he admitted to himself that he needed a full reset and a full commitment. “I Googled ‘best culinary school in the U.S.’ and applied to CIA.”

The Culinary Institute of America gave him the structure he’d been missing. “The program is incredibly disciplined; clean shave every day, perfectly pressed uniform, or you’re sent home.” He loved it. “The moment I stepped foot in CIA, I was locked in.” He graduated with a 3.8 GPA and perfect attendance, which reads like the statistics of someone proving something to himself.

Soupçon John Leonardi Truffle Risotto, photo by Dani Hansen

After graduation, without that regimented system guiding his day-to-day, he burned out, drifted back to Cincinnati, and then made a move so impulsive it sounds like fiction. “One day, in the middle of the night, I moved to Ocracoke, North Carolina,” where he worked first as a rickshaw driver and then at a restaurant called The Back Porch, prepping, waiting tables, and helping with specials. Then a hurricane hit and the whole place stopped. Around that time, a friend pointed him west. “If you like it here, you’ll love Crested Butte. Get some skis and go.”

Winter truffles added to risotto

Soupçon Chef John Leonardi Crested Butte Culver Farms Duck Confit

He had never heard of Crested Butte and did not know how to pronounce it. “I kept telling people I was moving to ‘Crested Beauty.’” In 2011, he bought a one-way ticket to Denver, took a Greyhound to Gunnison, and showed up in a ski town that did not care about his plan.

Culver Farms duck donfit

Soupçon

Kochevar’s was his first job. It paid, but wasn’t a fit. Then came the steps behind the restaurant, the late-night talk, and the accidental meeting with chef Jason Vernon, Soupçon’s owner at the time, and sous chef Fletcher Haver. Leonardi mentioned he was a CIA graduate. Vernon was too. “We realized we’d trained under many of the same instructors and approached food in almost identical ways.” Vernon invited him to watch service. “Almost immediately, I knew. I felt like this was where I was supposed to be.” Vernon asked him to prep scallops. The method matched. “He hired me on the spot.” Leonardi started at Soupçon in October 2011.

He stayed with Vernon until 2016, left when the restaurant sold, and nearly moved back to Cincinnati when his wife was pregnant with their first daughter, Nora. The move was signed, scheduled, and packed. His father even flew in to help. The night before they were supposed to leave, Leonardi said the sentence that changed everything again: “I’m not going.” His father responded like a father with a plane ticket and a moving plan. “you couldn’t have told me this before I flew all the way over here, John?”

Grand Marnier soufflé

Leonardi stayed, became executive chef at The Sunflower, and then, not long after, Soupçon came back around. The chef who had purchased the restaurant asked if he would consider becoming a co-owner. He said yes. In August 2019, he officially took over, stepping into a version of responsibility that does not stop when the dining room clears. “Ownership changes everything. Every decision matters. Financially, emotionally, creatively.”

The hits came fast: equipment problems, the pandemic, a shift from two nightly seatings to a single tasting menu. Regulars fell away. He created Miette, a casual concept in the same space, to rebuild rhythm and reach. “No white tablecloths, mason jars for water, a bistro-style menu and a more laid back experience.” He loved the gear-shifting. “One night I’d be making foie gras, the next I’d be grinding meat for burgers.” He misses it. “I miss Miette daily.”

Leonardi

In 2022, the restaurant suffered a major loss, a presence Leonardi describes with the tenderness of someone who knows a place is made by people as much as food. “In 2022 we suffered the loss of Allison Kately, our matriarch of more than 30 years. I still miss her every single day.” He brought Soupçon back toward its earlier shape: à la carte, two seatings, and both three- and six-course options. Through the instability, he leaned on his team. “My general manager Joel Grill, who started as a dishwasher, was right there with me. He’s our glue.”

Running a restaurant this small means the night stays personal. “It’s me and one other cook in the kitchen, and you get to talk to every table.” He likes that. “Guests feel that care, and they respond to it.” His favorite part comes at the end, when the food is done and the human part begins again. “When they leave, we send them off with a postcard and macarons, and that’s when I talk to every table, hear their story and invite them back.”

Recently, an older couple at table six gave him the kind of compliment that lands because it is earned over years. “You just keep surprising us.” Then they asked where he was traveling next, trying to guess what he might cook next, because, as he put it, “I curate the menus around my travels.”

In a town full of people passing through, Leonardi built a life by staying put, paying attention, and taking the steps that were offered—first outside a bar on Elk Avenue, and then back inside, night after night, to make a small room feel like a Sunday table.