Brothers Beau and Dillon Lindborg, owners of Backcountry Gourmet, opened a new food trailer on April 1 called Avalanche Bowl Co. at 11th Street Station.
“This is a new business that’s different from Backcountry Gourmet,” Beau said. “We wanted to create something healthier. We wanted to get away from greasy french fries and all of that.”
Dillon said there is an art to the bowl that he really enjoys.
“I think it’s really cool that we’re bringing something different to 11th Street,” Dillon said. “I enjoy the process of building the bowls, I’m a construction guy, so it works well.”
Avalanche Bowl Co. serves bowls based mostly with different kinds of rice and topped with ingredients that compliment cuisines from all around the world.
For example, Beau said his favorite bowl, the Island Barbecue Bowl, features a bed of coconut black rice topped with items such as a pineapple and purple cabbage slaw, pulled barbecue chicken and a Hawaiian barbecue sauce.
“Our menu kind of goes all over the globe,” Beau said. “I’ve worked for 25 years in all different kinds of restaurants with all different types of cuisine … I thought with this place I could pull from all of those experiences.”
Dillon worked in construction most of his life, and after seeing the plans for 11th Street Station come across his desk, decided to make a career change and buy a food trailer that he passed on his way home.
“That was this food truck actually,” he said. “I bought it and remodeled it and here we are. Beau is talent, he’s a great chef.”
The lower-cost bowls are the vegetarian options, which include a Thai Chili Tofu Bowl and a what’s called the Tree Hugger Bowl at $12. The higher-cost options include the Ahi Poke Bowl at $17 and the Greek Bowl at $16.
In the Tree Hugger Bowl, Avalanche uses locally grown oyster mushrooms from Black Sheep Farms. There are a few other local ingredients in the various bowls, and as the business grows, Beau said he hopes to add more.
“It’s kind of hard using local ingredients, but because we’re using a lot of vegetables, I’m able to get things like local squash and other things without spending all of our money,” he said. “We’re going to try this summer to get as many local farms in the mix as possible without breaking the bank.”
Avalanche’s trailer was the original Backcountry Gourmet trailer. Most recently, Beau and Dillon had it parked at the Union Social House, but when they saw an opportunity to set up at 11th Street Station and start their new business at the same time, they jumped at the opportunity.
“We know how busy this place gets in the summer, and we figured two birds with one stone,” Beau said. “In a month, we redid everything in the trailer. We added twice the refrigeration because we have so many ingredients.”
He said being in the bowl business is a lot of prepwork. Chopping veggies and preparing other bowl ingredients takes a lot of time. The payoff of prep though, he said, is that they can make a bowl very quickly even when they’re busy.
“When we’re so busy in the summer, all the other trucks might be at a half-hour to 45-minute wait, and we’ll be able to just keep jamming it out,” Beau said.
Before June, Avalanche hopes to hire 15 new employees to work at the food trailer. In total for both Backcountry Gourmet and Avalanche, Beau said he’s looking to hire 25 people to gear up for summer.
Avalanche is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday to Thursday, and is open until 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
njohnson@durangoherald.com
