It took about a year for the bison heart to complete its journey from pumping blood through the hulking grazer of the plains to being microplaned over a bed of grains, cherries and beets at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Denver.
More than a month curing in a wet brine. Around eight months of dry-aging at a controlled temperature. A dehydration process.
Then, the grand reveal — as guests dining at Bruto were treated to a tableside bison-heart grating.
“The dish was fruity,” said Bruto Chef Byron Gomez. “It had a lot of fermentation. It was creamy and then it was earthy, but also sweet from the beets, and then you have this smoky, almost jerky-like texture and taste of the bison heart that would be snowed on top of everything. When you eat it, it’s like comforting, warm, refreshing, sweet, earthy notes to every bite.”
Bison. It’s what’s for dinner.
William Bent’s buffalo filet mignon au poivre is pictured at the Fort Restaurant in Morrison, Colorado, on May 27, 2025. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
From fast casual to fine dining, bison is increasingly a Colorado menu staple. The hearty creatures, once systemically slaughtered by European settlers to the detriment of Native American tribes, are now grazing their way back from the brink of extinction.
“Colorado is ground zero for the bison industry,” said Jim Matheson, executive director of the Denver-based trade organization National Bison Association.
Colorado at the forefront
Colorado acts as the nation’s hub for bison processing and marketing, Matheson said. The state is home to the largest bison processor in the world, Great Range Premium Bison.
In comparison to beef, bison is a small sector of the agriculture industry, Matheson said. In addition to the big processors, there are dedicated small and mid-size bison processors that contribute to the state’s reputation as a bison meat haven.
“The bison industry in Colorado is at the forefront,” said Rex Moore, owner of local bison ranch Rock River Ranches.
The National Bison Association is headquartered in Westminster. The National Western Stock Show brings bison and ranchers to the area. Demand for bison products is on the rise, Moore said.
“The more people that we can get to try bison and eat bison, the more we can help grow the national herd,” Moore said. “We have a slogan in the bison industry: We eat bison to restore bison… My passion today is to be a bison mentor and teach other bison ranchers how to do it.”
Tens of millions of bison once roamed across North America. The hearty animals were a crucial part of Native American culture, providing food and other resources.
Bison were wiped out as European settlers encroached on Native lands in the 1800s. The U.S. Army “began a campaign to remove Native American tribes from the landscape by taking away their main food source: bison,” according to the National Park Service. Hundreds of thousands of bison were killed by U.S. soldiers and hunters, and by the 1880s, bison were nearly extinct.
Federal and state governments, conservation partners and tribal nations have worked to restore bison herds. Now, about 20,500 plains bison make up conservation herds, and 420,000 are in commercial herds, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Rock River Ranches supplies around 50 local restaurants throughout the Front Range with bison. If you’re eating the braised shredded bison or bison ribs at Denver’s Tocabe American Indian Eatery, the bacon-wrapped buffalo filet at Simms Steakhouse in Lakewood, or Bruto’s bison tenderloin, you’ve chowed down on Rock River Ranches’ wares.
Contrary to popular belief, Moore said bison is typically not gamey. The rancher compared the meat to a beef steak or a burger with a more robust flavor.
Rancher Rex Moore fixes fencing after moving part of his bison herd to their summer pasture in Hudson, Colorado, on May 15, 2025. Moore leases land in Hudson for a small herd of bison and hosts educational visits for restaurateurs to see the animals and learn about cooking with bison. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
It’s important to Moore to use as much of the whole animal as possible, so he finds creative ways to employ bison marrow bones, kneecaps, tongues, hearts, scapulas and femurs.
Knuckle bones are added to soup stocks. Moore crafted a “cave man burger” using ground bison hearts, tongues and liver, “and a lot of good vitamins and nutrition and minerals,” that he hopes succeeds with the keto and paleo diet crowd.
Bruto’s Chef Gomez is asking Moore for bison horns to see if they can construct serving spoons and other utensils out of them.
“It’s my job to get into the nitty gritty of what cut of meats we could use to be sustainable to put a few bucks back with the farmer and educate the guest,” Gomez said.
Bruto’s bison offerings include a bison tenderloin marinated in a thyme shio koji — a Japanese fermented condiment. Gomez also created a sunchoke and bison sweetbreads dish called the Birth of Spring, in which he roasts sunchokes in a hearth, purees them and makes a sunchoke crumble that looks like soil. Then, the whole dish — married with bison sweetbreads — is roasted and presented in a clear bowl to resemble an arboretum.
“Bison is such a majestic animal that is so unique to this part of the region that it just makes sense to me,” Gomez said. “This was an animal that was almost extinct at one point… How do we preserve something like this?”
Herd it here first
The Fort Restaurant in Morrison, an adobe replica of the famous fur-trading post Bent’s Old Fort on the Santa Fe Trail, was originally commissioned to be the family home where Holly Arnold Kinney, her brother and pet Canadian black bear, Sissy, grew up.
The family intended to turn part of the home, built in 1961, into a museum to teach people about Bent’s Old Fort, but the cost of adobe bricks inspired a change of plans — a restaurant to help pay off the mortgage.
When conceptualizing The Fort’s menu, the family turned to diaries of those who passed through the historic Fort, leaning heavily on pioneer grub and Native American staples.
“Buffalo was the primary protein of the American plains,” Kinney said.
The restaurant serves more than 80,000 buffalo entrees per year, Kinney said.
Holly Arnold Kinney, owner of The Fort Restaurant, holds the roasted bison marrow bones appetizer with crostini at her restaurant in Morrison, Colorado, on May 27, 2025. The popular appetizer was known as “prairie butter” to the early pioneers. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
The Fort, along with its bison purveyor Rocky Mountain Natural Meats, is working with Cheyenne tribes to grow their buffalo herd so the restaurant can one day buy bison directly from Native tribes to support them, Kinney said.
“It’s bringing that full circle back in history to where the Indians used to provide buffalo meat at Bent’s Fort,” she said.
Buffalo tenderloin. Buffalo prime rib. Buffalo tongue. Buffalo testicles.
These are all up for grabs on The Fort menu.
So, too, are creative visions including bison empanadas and bison bone marrow, where the animal’s femur bone is placed in fire until it’s sizzling and crackling, and then diners are encouraged to sop up the “prairie butter” — marrow — with yeasty bread.
“Buffalo is like a really good, lean beef sirloin steak, but if you injected it with beef bullion,” Kinney said. “It has a more meaty flavor, but not gamey… It’s like the best steak you’ve ever had. It’s juicy and good.”
It’s best to serve bison medium to medium rare, or rare, Kinney said, because the meat is so lean.
“It’s very, very healthy,” Kinney said.
Bison on a budget
For bison on a budget, Tocabe American Indian Eatery in North Denver offers up authentic Native dishes under $20.
Indian tacos, nachos, rice bowls and salads provide a base for bison consumption. Bison ribs cured for 24 hours offer a more direct approach.
The fast casual location buys around 1,000 pounds of bison a month, according to Ben Jacobs, Tocabe’s owner and chef, and an Osage Native American.
“It’s become our most popular and most important protein,” Jacobs said.
It’s important to Jacobs to offer bison in a more accessible setting where people of all stripes have the opportunity to be exposed to it.
“Buffalo, while it is distinctly American, has origins in Native communities that sustained it for generations,” Jacobs said. “We’re really pushing for the redevelopment and health of the animal. The animal is very meaningful to us.”
When Jacobs, the youngest of four kids, was growing up, his family didn’t get the chance to eat out much, he said.
Tocabe’s prices are at the forefront of his mind as he hopes to provide a dining experience that families like his could have taken advantage of.
“That’s a business decision,” Jacobs said. “We have to deal with lower margins. For me, restaurants are about providing people an experience and making sure everyone has the opportunity to eat and have something special. That’s why we do it. We want to make sure everyone can experience our identity, culture and cuisine.”
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