Revving Up Flavors: Meet the Chef and Cafe at Phil Long Ford of Chapel Hills
If you'd like to view the Chef's Roots menu, you can find it below.
Fueling Up on Flavor: A Closer Look at the Café at Phil Long Ford of Chapel Hills
At Phil Long Ford of Chapel Hills, the customer experience goes beyond exceptional vehicles and service-it extends to a delightful in-house café that adds a unique touch to every visit. Tucked inside the dealership, this café offers a delicious and convenient way for customers to refuel while shopping for a new car or waiting for service. Featuring a chef-curated menu, the café provides a warm and inviting atmosphere that complements the dealership's high standards, allowing visitors to enjoy gourmet flavors without leaving the showroom. Whether you're craving a snack or a hearty meal, this café is the perfect pit stop during your dealership experience.
Meet Chef Supansa Banker
Chef Supansa is currently the Chef/Owner of Chef's Roots and a guest instructor at Paragon Culinary School. She is a local award-winning Chef who worked as a Private Chef from 2018 until 2022 cooking daily dietary restrictive meals for one family. Prior to that she was the corporate Executive Chef for the Wobbly Olive. She has as also worked at places such as Nosh, The Summit at The Broadmoor and was the Executive Chef at 2South Food & Wine Bar.
Chef Supansa believes that food and cooking brings people together, as it can nurture and heal relationships. She also believes that cooking is a way to show love and to show others that you care, as with every prepared meal you share a piece of yourself with them.
While overseeing the operations of 2South Food & Wine Bar Chef Supansa would host a monthly "Sunday Supper Club" where she would cater a private dinner for up to 40 people. The menu was always something she created from scratch, incorporating new flavors and skills that she had learned. Chef Supansa has also catered several holiday parties over the years. These parties were for companies such as the Cheyenne Mountain Country Club, Savory Spice, Eves Revolution and TMZ Design. When Chef Supansa first came to America she catered for McGee Entertainment in Los Angeles, California. While catering for them she had the opportunity to cook for music legends Ted Nugent, Hootie and the Blowfish, and KISS.
Since immigrating from Thailand, Chef Supansa has conquered many challenges to succeed in the United States. In addition to teaching herself English, she proudly earned her US citizenship, along with three separate college degrees one in culinary arts, another in baking and pastry and the third in restaurant management with an amazing 4.0 cumulative grade point average.
Chef Supansa considers community service and volunteering one of the best ways to give back to her community and her country for everything she has received since arriving in the US. In October 2012, she created and carved fruit & vegetable centerpieces and cooked at the Fran Folsom Culinary Arts Scholarship Inaugural Dinner. She has contributed to The Glass Slipper Ball, March of Dimes, Junior Achievement, Goodwill, and Salvation Army. Chef Supansa had been a consistent presence at the ACF - Pike Peak Chapter's yearly Passport Fundraiser which raises money to help the community. More recently she has donated her talents to help secure auction items to raise money for the Pikes Peak Regional Fallen Officer's Memorial. Chef Supansa's most notable charitable work came in 2017 when she conceived and worked with the Colorado Springs Police Foundation to start "Vittles for Vests" which helped to raise $22,000 dollars to buy tactical vests for the Colorado Springs Police Department. This event allowed every Lieutenant, Commander, Deputy Chief and the Chief of Police to receive the protective gear. She helped put on the event again in 2018 and initial numbers have it raising close to the same amount as 2017.
Chef Supansa isn't short of accolades. In 2013 she won silver medals in both the professional and student categories for the entrée in the ACF Sanctioned Culinary Salon. She also won the gold medal for student fruit and vegetable carving. In 2015 Chef Supansa won the appetizer/entrée and Chef De Cuisine categories in the National Restaurant Association Food and Wine Expo Chef's competition. In 2017 Chef Supansa was the first Chef to sweep all three categories in the same competition's seventeen-year history. Chef Supansa won both the judges tasting and people's choice in the 2018 Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo cook off along with the people's choice award at the annual ACF Passport Dinner. In that same year she also won bronze in the Colorado Springs Independent's Best of for Best Chef in Colorado Springs. In 2019 she again won Chef De Cuisine at the National Restaurant's Association Competition in the now renamed Taste of Pikes Peak event. That achievement put her in a three-way tie for the most times the trophy and Chef De Cuisine had been won by an individual Chef. This achievement is notable because she is the first female chef to have won it three different times. Recently Chef Supansa won the 2023 People's Choice award for the Chili Cook Off at Ivywild and on the same day won Judges choice at the Blue Smoke BBQ competition.
Chef Supansa is also humbled to be part of the "Wall of Giants" which is displayed at the Centennial Campus of Pikes Peak State College. The wall recognizes some of the most notable and successful students to graduate from the college's different programs.
A quick google search of Chef Supansa will show you numerous articles in the Colorado Springs Gazette along with other media outlets about her talent and dedication, making her a home-grown Chef that gives back to her community.
