Brian Wilson
Cart-Driver LoHi | Denver
july 2022
After moving to New York City from Nebraska, Brian Wilson needed a job to subsidize his jazz composition degree. So he picked up a part-time job on the line at Marlow & Sons and quickly fell in love with being in the kitchen. When Chef Sean Rembold offered him a full-time position, Wilson dropped out of school and never looked back. He spent the next several years at Andrew Tarlow’s restaurants, learning the foundations of cooking and charcuterie, before staging around the country. In 2012, Wilson followed his family to Denver and was hired as a line cook at Jen Jasinski’s Mediterranean restaurant, Rioja. He was promoted to sous chef within a couple months, then became executive chef at the New American restaurant Telegraph. In 2016, he teamed up with Chef Paul Riley to open his Roman-style trattoria, Coperta, while working as chef de cuisine at Beast & Bottle.
Wilson was hired to develop the food menu for Death & Co’s Denver location in 2018, and while the cocktail bar was under construction, he cooked on the line at Cart-Driver, a wood-fire pizza and oyster spot. When the restaurant’s owner, Andrew Niemeyer, was in need of an executive chef for their second, larger location in the Lower Highlands neighborhood, he turned to Wilson. For the last four years, Wilson has continually evolved the Cart-Driver menu while staying true to its signature dishes, further developing their sourdough recipe and launching an in-house pasta and charcuterie program.
