Green Chili Fly-in lands at the Wolf

There was a buzz in the skies around Saratoga this weekend when Dennis Koontz and eight of his fellow pilots landed their aircraft at Shively airfield Saturday morning and walked down to the Wolf for some of Doug Campbell's famous green chili. Actually, the Wolf's "secret" green chili recipe was created and written down by Dennis' father, Bill Koontz, and then given to Campbell when the elder Koontz retired from the restaurant business.

Depending on who you ask, Koontz and his friends have been flying into town for the last five or six years for the informal event that started when Dennis decided to fly in with a couple of friends to have some of his father's green chili at the only place he could still get it.

Dennis' wife Celeste recounts how her husband rediscovered his father's old recipe, "We drove up here from Denver and Dennis just had to see the (Hotel) Wolf's kitchen since he grew up in his dad's kitchen when he owned his restaurant." That's when Dennis saw his dad's green chili recipe on the wall and realized the recipe hadn't been lost as he had long thought.

"I asked Doug if I could have the original copy of the recipe my dad had written down but he said that it reminded him too much of Bill to let it go," Koontz said. While Campbell eventually gave Koontz a copy of his father's recipe, the aviation and chili aficionados still make the annual trip from Colorado.

Among the aviators and aircraft that visited Saratoga was pilot Fred Hollendorfer, who flew in a kit airplane he had built himself and is a tribute to his father and grandfather's connection to aviation history. According to Hollendorfer, his grandfather was one of the first men to fly after the Wright brothers did and was actually received the 47th pilots license ever to be issued. Hollendorfer's father "Fritz" flew in the 533rd B-17 squadron in World War II and the squadron logo adorns the side of Hollendorfer's kit aircraft.

Also on hand was pilot Dennis Lacy, who attended the green chili fly-in with a 1963 Beechcraft Debonair, and was even generous enough to take this reporter and Saratoga Sun publisher Liz Wood, on a short joy ride around the skies of Saratoga.

The hungry airmen plan to be back next year, and possibly in June, to once again visit Saratoga and partake in more of Campbell and Koontz's green chili.

 

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