Wanted at cooking school: One 'Fat Boy'

By John Colson

Aspen Times Staff Writer

Calling all cars, calling all cars: Be on the lookout for a small, rather rotund, inanimate figurine that resembles a diminutive French chef.

If apprehended, treat with caution; its safe return might be worth a free and very tasty meal.

In yet another of the area's occasional cases of mascot mischief, one of the "Fat Boys" has gone missing from the front of the Cooking School of Aspen and Fine Food Market on the Hyman Avenue mall.

The Fat Boys, school Director John Klonowski said, came to the school nine years ago from "some exclusive French chef shop" in Paris. The owners planted the small figurines, which resemble a pair of chefs in full kitchen regalia, in front of the school, and they have graced that spot ever since.

Until Friday, when someone nabbed one a day after a school staffer took one of them down from its perch on a wall-mounted planter, where it was temporarily set for the winter, and placed it on the ground. The case of the runaway Fat Boy was not discovered until Saturday morning, when the shop opened for business.

"I can't believe it," Klonowski said in tone of mild outrage. "Somebody stole one of the Fat Boys."

He called the missing figure "irreplaceable," adding that "with shipping, they're probably worth, oh, I don't know, $175. Apiece!"

He said he would be contacting the Aspen Police Department on Monday, but "we haven't put out an all-points bulletin ... we just wanted to get the word out."

There is a reward for the Fat Boy's return - one free "entertainment dining experience" at the cooking school, estimated to be worth between $130 and $170. The school can be reached at 920-1879.

This is not the first time a local business has lost its mascot to a bit of chicanery.

Back in the last century someone pilfered the pig that stands guard over the door to the Woody Creek Tavern, prompting a "rescue mission" by Gaylord Guenin, who at the time was the "mayor of Woody Creek," and a band of local mercenaries.

Guenin, whose best guess was that the incident happened "some time in the 1980s," recalled this week that he called the culprits at the Hickory House restaurant, where the pig had been posted over the front door, to warn them of the impending rescue. He said the Hick House staff put a ladder up to the roof to facilitate the rescue.

It wasn't too many years later that the snarling grizzly bear above the same door at the Hickory House, which someone donated to the restaurant in response to the pig incident, was itself stolen.

The bear was held for weeks before being returned by its abductor, Tim Dudley, believed at the time to have been longtime resident character Shady Lane.

John Colson's e-mail address is jcolson@aspentimes.com