A Spin on the Cubano Sandwich Is the Star at Tula's Tapas Food Truck

In the ’90s, long before he became the owner of Denver-based food truck Tula's Tapas, Gabriel Aragon was studying journalism at the University of Wyoming when he got a job cooking at a microbrewery. "I had a very cool chef there that brought me into the industry," he recalls. "I went from being a line cook to a sous chef. One day she said, 'You know what? You should really think about going to culinary school.'"

Which he did, moving to Scottsdale, Arizona, to pursue his new goal. He also needed a new job. "I showed up to this place thinking that I was a rock star from Laramie as a line cook. They were like, 'Where's your knife kit?' I'm like, 'I don't have anything,'" he says. "'Where's your chef jacket?' 'I don't have any chef jackets.' I had to wait for school to get started to get my knife kit and get some chef jackets, and then I started working at this place. Man, was it a different world. Super fine dining and intricate food."

At the time, Aragon had no idea how valuable that gig would be to his culinary skill development. He'd secured a position at an award-winning restaurant launched by the innovative chef RoxSand Scocos, who was reshaping the Arizona dining landscape.

Scocos had just won the 1999 James Beard Award for Best Chef, Southwest and was the first person to ever be on the cover of Bon Appétit magazine. "I knew nothing about James Beard, I knew nothing about nothing," Aragon admits. "She was an amazing artist and an amazing talent. I started with her, and within three months, I was crying in the bathroom because I was just getting my ass beat down the hotline. ... I pulled through and found the groove. It was just a whole new world, and she taught me everything."
Aragon's grit and determination paid off: He graduated from culinary school and became Scocos's chef de cuisine.

After a couple of years, he moved back home to Colorado and landed a corporate kitchen position with Italian chain Il Fornaio. "I learned business, profit and losses, all that stuff," he says of the experience. "They were sending me everywhere to help with other locations and paying for it. I was getting a free education from each of these different chefs — all native Italians from different regions of Italy."

His first executive-chef gig came about six years later, when was hired at Firenze a Tavola, the fine-dining concept that had recently debuted in the downstairs space at the fast-casual Italian restaurant Parisi. "I got more education there because we went to Italy. ... We went to all these wonderful places and just researched food and got fat and drank wine."

Eventually, a former Il Fornaio chef recruited Aragon for his new restaurant, Venice, where he worked as chef de cuisine for another eight years. "I learned the business through and through," he notes.

During that time, Aragon struck up a friendship with a regular, Craig Jones, who eventually persuaded him to assist in launching Angelo's Taverna in Littleton in 2016. "We opened up that place and built it from the ground up. I built that restaurant with him, which was super fun," says Aragon.

But not long after opening, Aragon began to experience burnout. By then, he had kids and wasn't getting much quality time with them, so he left Angelo's and began working in school nutrition for Mapleton Public Schools. "It was a Monday-through-Friday gig. At first it was cool, but then I started getting really bored because it wasn't that challenging," Aragon explains.

By the time the pandemic hit in 2020, he was working for a local catering company, Eclectic Elegance. His father had recently purchased an old linen truck, and when catering gigs came to a halt, he offered Aragon an opportunity. "He's like, 'I'm going to give this truck to you, and you can do whatever the fuck you want with it. You can sell it if you want,'" he recalls.
With a blank canvas in the form of a free truck, Aragon borrowed funds from his uncle to transform it into a kitchen and launched Tula's Tapas. At the time, breweries were being allowed to open for outdoor sales, but only if they had a food truck on site. "It was super serendipitous, because I booked out May 2020 in like two days and was immediately busy. Then the neighborhood HOAs started organizing all these events, and they were huge. I started making money straight off," says Aragon.

Nearly four years into operation, Aragon loves being his own boss and having the freedom to spend more time with family. He's also managed to expand the catering side of his business, which he really enjoys. "I'm not trying to open a brick-and-mortar. I'm going the opposite way. I'm not trying to kill myself anymore. I'm almost fity years old. This is what I want. This is my wheelhouse," he says.

From sandwiches and shareables to fork-and-knife dishes and even desserts, Tula's Tapas offers a range of choices pulling from global influences. The most popular menu item is the Cono. "It's my Cubano sandwich, and it's fire," Aragon says. "I sold 1,900 fucking Cubanos last year." His version is made with mojo-marinated pork, ham, pepperoni, Swiss cheese, habanero pickles, mustard and lime aioli.

He concludes, "It's just me, and it's all from scratch. It took everything to get here — it's been a twenty-year journey to get here, to be finally happy."

To see the Tula's Tapas full menu and find its schedule, visit tulastapas.com.