Denver chefs cooking up specialties for Food + Wine Festival

At the Food + Wine Festival, the Grand Tasting is an opportunity to get a taste of some of the city's best cuisine. A total of 50 Denver metro area chefs will be creating small plates for it.

"We're going to be doing two styles of paella. One is going to be more a Arroz con Pollo-type of variation with the seafood of the paella, in the very large pans. Then the other is going to be a straight vegan paella," said Erasmo Casiano, chef and owner of Lucina Eatery & Bar.

A Spanish influenced recipe that capitalizes on seasonal ingredients and can scale up for a crowd.

"We want to make sure that every bite counts for our guests," Casiano told CBS News Colorado.

Casiano opened Lucina a year-and-a-half ago. It is a dream come true.

"I wanted to become a chef growing up because I really enjoyed all my parents' dinner parties. Every Saturday and Sunday, we'd just kind of host a little dinner party where we really didn't know who was coming over, but my Mom and Dad would just start cooking," he explained.

He named Lucina after his mother, and he's made it an exploration of Central and South American foods.

"We wanted to educate the public in a non-traditional way. There is so much more to Latin food," Casiano said. "The nuances are very different. They range from spicy to non-spicy, high acid, non-acid."

Casiano's cuisine is an example of the depth of flavors that are a part of Denver's culinary scene.

LINK: Denver Food + Wine Festival

Denver Food + Wine Festival runs from September 6-9, 2023. The events take place in the Tivoli Quad on the Auraria Campus.