Not-too-fast casual restaurant turns out pizzas-plus in Colorado’s highest city
High Mountain Pies, located in a cheery blue building just off Leadville’s main drag, serves generously topped pies (or filled calzones), excellent sandwiches, ribs and wings. What it doesn’t serve is alcohol, so if you like a beer or wine with your food, B.Y.O. This does keep your total tab reasonable, but you do have to plan in advance. The closest place that sells adult beverages is the drug store around the corner and a couple of blocks up on Main Street, but its hours are limited. There’s a liquor store near the Safeway off Highway 91, north of town.
High Mountain appears to do a good take-out and delivery business (especially, I’m sure, on a stormy winter evening when all but the hardiest Leadvillians stay home). But what a good setting on a fine summer day. Then, grab a table on the shady patio on the west side of the building or a picnic table in the backyard. In one corner of the lawn is a climbing tower and slide for children, so this a popular family spot. Go inside to place your order, and it will be brought out to you. Eventually. HMP is casual, but not necessarily fast.
The food is surprisingly good and provides an alternative to the ubiquitous Mexican and Tex-Mex fare that we usually associate with Leadville eating. In addition to a handful of picnic tables, the back boasts a rack of canoes, a plastic climbing structure and slide for small children and a couple of holes of Frisbee golf for big ones.
Low evening light is photographic challenge. This is the back yard.
This is a half-sandwich (!!!), available with chips or salad.
Deluxe pizza, one of 10 on the menu -- or create your own.
Price check: Salads, $4.50 small and $8 large; pizza, $11.50-$14 for small to $17.50-$21.75 large; create your own pizza and calzone, priced by the size and number of toppings; submarine sandwiches with side salad or chips, $8 half and $10.75 large; pork ribs, $14 half rack and $24 full rack; chicken wings, $6-$12; cookies and brownies, $1.50 and $2.50.
Vicki Koch, who with her husband Tim owns High Mountain, sent the Email below and gave me permission to add it as a comment here: “Thanks for the compliments and the nice photos. We do the majority of our business in the summer, so tend to be a bit speedier in the winter. Tim and I have owned and run the business for almost 8 years. We find that a family oriented pizza business is the perfect way to earn a living (in an otherwise economically challenged town), raise our own three boys, and find a little time for skiing and canoeing. Come back and visit us again.
Vicki Koch, co-owner”
Excellent pizza and sandwiches. I don’t know if this is still the case, but if you wanted a beer with your pizza you could carry it in to the Silver Dollar bar a half-block away.