A Toast to Touching Tables and Summer Tomatoes with Carrie Baird from Fox and The Hen

Fox and The Hen is a bustling breakfast and brunch concept in Denver, CO. Co-owned by Top Chef finalist, Top Chef All-Star judge, and James Beard Award semi-finalist, Carrie Baird, Fox and The Hen turns up the volume on classic American breakfast food. From fancy toasts to her Beat Bobby Flay-winning huevos rancheros, Fox and The Hen has quickly become a Denver staple…with a waitlist to prove it.

At Toast, we create technology to help restaurants thrive. We also know it takes a team of hardworking people from front to back of house to power great hospitality experiences every day. The “Toast to…” series salutes those individuals and gets to the heart of what makes this industry so special. We sat down with Culinary Creative’s Culinary Director, Carrie Baird, to talk about her passion for breakfast, her journey from ski bum to “badass line cook,” and the leadership role she holds today. 

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? What was your first food service job?

I grew up in southern Idaho and I’ve always loved breakfast. It might sound cliche, but I have memories of playing diner with my dad as a kid. I’d cook breakfast for the family, make pancakes, and pour coffee. My first job was bussing tables at the local Quality Inn. Restaurants were always the goal for me. I can’t even remember doing anything else. I always wanted to own my own restaurant.

After high school, I tried college for a year but I didn’t care for it. I had some friends in Colorado so I moved to Breckenridge. That turned into a 12-year residency in Summit County. When I got to Breck, all I wanted to do was ski, and the best way to support a ski bum lifestyle is to work at night. So I worked front of house as a server, got my level one sommelier, and really just did everything in hospitality I could get my hands on.

So, what led you to pursue culinary school?

After a while, I felt bored for a lack of a better word. One of my line cook friends at the restaurant said “don’t go to culinary school, we’ll teach you everything you need to know.” But that didn’t talk me out of it. I left Breckenridge for two years and moved to Portland, OR, to study at Le Cordon Bleu. As soon as that was done, I hightailed it back to Breck—I missed my friends, the mountains, the snow, everything. I worked for Vail Resorts for a handful of years, and my culinary degree got me high-end jobs there. I oversaw hospitality at four hotels and did lots of catering, weddings, and stuff like that. I was a good catering chef, but I was barely 30 years old and I didn't even know if I knew how to be a badass line cook. 

I moved to Denver, got a job at Rioja, and it turns out I was a good line cook! I worked my way up, and stayed there with Jennifer Jacinski for four years. I opened Stoic & Genuine, I was a sous chef at Euclid Hall, and then left to start the Culinary Creative group seven years ago. I’m the Culinary Director of our Americana division in Denver. On the day-to-day, I oversee our four Tap & Burger concepts and am a Partner & Chef at Fox and The Hen. It’s such a passion project for me. 

The breakfast spread at Fox & The Hen

What does an average day look like for you?

My boyfriend and I have a large garden and a dozen chickens, so all days start outside with chores in the garden. We feed our produce to the restaurant—tomatoes, squash, peppers—in these hot Colorado months. Fox and The Hen opens at 7 a.m., so I head there and usually poke around for several hours, touch tables, work in the kitchen, and help in any way I can. 

I have full teams at Tap & Burger as well so I have check-ins. If we’re doing menu changes, I’ll jump in the kitchen and there’s a lot of R&D in my day. And then social media as well. I have two young nieces who live next door so I’m going to school drop-offs and pick-ups too. 

What’s the hardest part about your job? The most rewarding?

I’ve been a physical worker my whole life. I’m a line cook, I’m a chef—I clock in and I clock out. The hardest part of my job now where I’m the director is that I don’t suit up every day—I don’t even cook everyday. I never had a desk before and could count meetings I took in a month on one hand. Now I have 12 meetings a day. So that’s been challenging. I miss being in the heat, with the guys and the gals, “the kids” as we call them here. But I do love R&D a lot. 

Coming out of the kitchen and being more guest-facing is the most exciting part. I touch tables at all these restaurants all day. People recognize me and ask “Did we go to high school together?” or “How do I know you?” That’s been fun. Fox and The Hen is a neighborhood place so we see a lot of the same guests and actually getting to know the people who are coming here, and watching people enjoy the food and the space is so great.

The Fox & The Hen dining room

What’s your favorite thing on the menu?

It’s tomato season so I don’t eat anything that doesn’t have tomatoes in it right now. I just came up with this new starter and I’m calling it “nigiri” because I can’t find a better word. But it’s not Japanese, and it’s not even fish. It’s crispy rice and then as if it were spicy tuna, we make a spicy egg salad with togarashi. I haven’t come up with a bite that moved my meter so much in quite a while.

How do you use technology at work?

At Fox and The Hen, we’ll do 400+ covers on a Saturday or Sunday so Toast talking to OpenTable is so handy. The Toast handhelds [Toast Go® 2], the technology taking the order, helps us keep track of turn times. It was hard at first, especially for our more seasoned servers to get a hang of them. It was awkward at the beginning too, but then we figured out verbiage and it’s not just us holding the handheld and looking the other way while our guests complete payment. Now we’re cruising. We’re seeing much better time and saving a lot of paper by using the touchless payment system. They give power to our managers and servers to move things around in a way that makes sense to them. 

We use Toast Now as well. I’m a sucker for product mixes and was just on the app a few minutes ago looking up a payment from yesterday. It has a great search engine. I’m sure we’re barely scratching the surface of what it’s capable of, but so far so good!

Restaurants thrive when both the back of house and front of house are clicking, the ambience is correct, food is coming out on time and at the right temperature, and people are having a good time. That’s what we come to restaurants to do—make a memory, have a good meal, and catch up. Thriving to me is having my employees happy and showing our guests a good time as well.

Who in the industry would you like to Toast?

I’d love to toast the education and training team that manages Toast for us. Culinary Creative is only two years into our Toast program and the team spends a lot of time to make it really smart and organized. Shoutout to Marcia and her team!

What are you Toast-ing with today?

Tomatoes, because it's late August in Colorado, and there’s simply nothing better!

This interview was edited for space and clarity.

Carrie Baird is the Culinary Director for The Culinary Creative Group and is a Partner and Chef for Fox and The Hen. To learn more about the restaurant or to book a table, you can visit their website, or follow them on Instagram.