“We want to be the leaders in the area.”īeing a part of the casino’s operations also allows Maskovich to defy the economics that face independent restaurateurs. “We’re not small potatoes,” Barbone said. The casino fed about 500,000 people last year, which works out to 1,300 people per day, and this year, it’s on track to feed 600,000

Part of the reason he can do that is because the casino is the biggest grocery buyer in the region and can leverage the best prices, said Bill Barbone, the casino’s executive chef. He said he aims for his menu items to cost about 15 percent less than the Cosmo’s and Ore Houses of the dining scene.

He has built 35 restaurants and bars in his career, including six high-end steakhouses. Maskovich, who grew up in Cortez, is no restaurant amateur. “I would put up steaks in this restaurant against any in the area,” he said. Seven Rivers intends to attract diners from across the Four Corners, even restaurant-heavy Durango, Maskovich said. Both are under the umbrella of the Sky Ute Casino’s massive business operations, a fact that gives the eateries the financial wherewithal to not only raise the culinary bar in Ignacio, but rival other top restaurants in the region. In creating the restaurants, he describes a similar leeway to pursue the best of the best thanks to one not-so-insignificant detail. John Maskovich, the casino’s director of food and beverage services, showed off the kitchen as he strolled through Seven Rivers and its more casual counterpart, Willows Baja Grille. As the executive sous chef of Sky Ute Casino’s newest restaurant, Dagnogo has wide reign to seek out and ship in the best ingredients he can find. Hamadou Dagnogo displayed the ingredients like a proud father. But here they were sitting beside prime-cut beef and an array of sauces in the shiny new kitchen of Seven Rivers steakhouse. Plantains and purple Peruvian potatoes are a rare sight in rural Southwest Colorado.

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