This,” proclaims Dylan Moore, stretching out his arms, “is my own little Chipotle.” We’re camped out at Deluxe Burger, chatting about Moore’s rapid rise from a fruit squeezer and buser at Lucile’s Creole Cafe, which is owned by his mother, to sharing the line with iconic star chef Jeremiah Tower at Stars in San Francisco (a restaurant where Mario Batali also did a stint), to his current role as chef/owner of Deluxe, Delite, a new Deluxe street-food truck called the Little Orange Rocket, and Deluxe Burger.

“The burger idea was swirling around in my head for months, and I was looking for something to be my Chipotle, so I proposed the idea to Jill Warner, a very good friend of mine who owns Mod Livin’ next door, and two days later we were shaking hands,” recalls Moore, who co-owns Deluxe Burger with Warner. “It feels kind of weird to say this, but I think that burgers are my future, and this is a concept that I want to multiply.” Starting, he says, with a second location on Broadway, the stretch of asphalt where Deluxe and Delite reside.

Moore leans back in his chair and shakes his head. “You want to know what the weirdest thing about that wish is?” he asks. “I sold my soul for burgers once before, and it ended up being a horrible experience that ended in a bad breakup.” Moore had been working in a San Francisco restaurant that he likens to a “Gordon Ramsay kitchen nightmare” before moving to Denver in 1994 and taking the exec chef position at the Firehouse Bar and Grill — in a building that today houses the Rio — working alongside Mark Berzins, now the managing partner of Little Pub Co.

“It was an ill-conceived restaurant, and by the end, it was a pretty ugly scene with lots of blame to go around,” remembers Moore, who stepped away from the restaurant scene altogether for nearly a decade while he collected “junk” — a passion that’s superseded only by cooking — and opened a vintage store on Broadway he named Decade. “I was used up,” he remembers, “and after my experience at the Firehouse, I decided, then and there, that my next restaurant would be my own deal, but first I had to find the right space” — which he did, eventually, two doors down from Decade.

He christened it Deluxe. “My nickname has always been ‘Big D,’ which is why all of my restaurants begin with that letter,” Moore explains. He spent six months virtually alone in the space, hiding behind the papered windows. “After I opened, I almost didn’t want anyone to come in, because I’d spent so much time in there by myself, building everything from scratch,” he says. But people did come, and in 2008, Moore opened Delite, a convivial bar next door, which he followed with Deluxe Burger in February and, just last month, the food truck. “I love having new projects,” admits Moore. “I get antsy if I’m too complacent or things get too comfy. I like chaos, and projects motivate me.” During our conversation, Moore expands on his plans for the future, confesses to an obsession with fish sauce, hates on strawberries and admits to fucking up the food of two very prominent Denver restaurateurs.

Six words to describe your food: Clean, fresh, colorful, unpretentious, tasty and fun.

Ten words to describe you: Crazy, ambitious, silly, creative, artistic, determined, clean, outgoing, collector and motivated.

Greatest accomplishment as a chef: Opening Deluxe. It was a longtime dream of mine to open a restaurant, and it took years to put together, because I wanted to own the building.

I locked myself in there for six months, building every table and every banquet and laying every tile. It really was a labor of love.

Favorite ingredient: I’ve got this obsession with fish sauce. I’ll put it in the strangest things, like tortilla soup, or in a corn-andtomato ragu, instead of salt; it’s even the base for my ceviche. Fish sauce adds incredible depth to food; it just rounds things out. You don’t even know it’s there, but it just grabs me, and I use it everywhere, at all of my restaurants, including in the food I serve from the truck. People tease me about it, but I love it.

Best recent food find: Beef tongue. The first time I had it was just recently at El Taco de México, and now I can’t get enough of it. It’s got a melty, livery texture that I really dig.

Most overrated ingredient: Strawberries. I swear, every time I interview a new chef, he wants to go straight for the strawberries. Some guy did a chicken fettuccine with a strawberry balsamic reduction — and that’s just wrong. A spinach-and-strawberry vinaigrette is nasty, too. I don’t know, maybe it’s a country club thing, but strawberries belong in cocktails and desserts, and they’re great for breakfast, but they don’t belong anywhere else.

Favorite local ingredient and where you get it: Fresh corn from Munson Farms in Boulder. I grew up on corn, and I could kill four or five ears, even as a seven-year-old.

The corn from Munson is sweet and crisp, and you can eat it raw.

Rules of conduct in your kitchen: It’s pretty simple: Be clean and be nice. Weird rules? I can’t stand a thing on the floor; it drives me out of my mind. Maybe I’m a floor-watcher, but when fifty people have walked by the fry on the floor, I’m like, pick it up! I also hate dirty towels on the line, and if you’re using a towel, it needs to be nicely folded next to your cutting board.

Favorite music to cook by: At home, it’s Led Zeppelin. It’s my kickback music with a bottle of wine and a roasted chicken on a Sunday night. At work we listen to the radio, but when Zeppelin comes on, we crank it.

One food you detest: I love foie gras and duck liver, but I hate chicken liver. There’s something about the Smell that really turns me off, and it reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom forced me to eat it.

One food you can’t live without: Tacos. I need my Mexifix every day. My favorite place is El Taco de México, even though I hate the women who work there. I’ve gone there once a week — sometimes twice a week — for twenty years, and they’ve never once smiled at me. They don’t give a shit, because they know that fifty more gringos are right behind me. They’re the Taco Nazis, but I keep going back because the tacos are just so incredibly good.

Biggest kitchen disaster: I have plenty of kitchen disasters, but the one that really stands out is the time that we fucked up Josh and Jen Wolkon’s — the owners of Vesta Dipping Grill and Steuben’s — snapper Veracruz dish at least four times. I don’t remember all the details, but there were different problems each time we cooked it — different variations of undercooking and overcooking if I recall.

Josh is a buddy and fellow restaurateur, and we just kept screwing it up. I was mortified.

Favorite dish on your menu: My masa fried oysters. They’re probably the best thing I’ve ever come up with. Even the people I have to coax into eating them claim that they love them. I’ve got people who come in and order five or six orders — and then want more.

Current Denver culinary genius: Frank Bonanno. I love his restaurants, and the guy can genuinely cook. Who in town has $48 entrees right now, like he does at Mizuna, and still manages to kill it? I’ve never had a bad meal at any of his places. As far as Denver goes, he’s the shit.

Weirdest customer request: I have a customer at Deluxe who comes in with an entire page of things he can’t eat. That kind of shit drives me crazy.

Weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten: Tamari crickets at Sushi Zanmai in Boulder. They were the sushi chef’s special treat — crunchy and sweet.

Favorite Denver restaurant(s) other than your own: I’m sure I’ll get all sorts of shit for this, but I love the Cherry Creek Grill. The food is super simple and straightforward, always fresh and consistent — and I’ve never had a bad meal there. I don’t even know who the chef is, but I love his French dip and the artichoke.

Favorite celebrity chef: You can just tell that Anthony Bourdain is the real deal — that he actually has something to show from his twenty years behind the stove.

What’s next for you? After opening two new places in the past six months, I’m going to take it easy until 2011, and then I’ll be doing something new — most likely another Deluxe Burger, followed by another Deluxe Burger… and another. And at some point, I want to turn Deluxe inside out — give it a makeover, make it more of a casual neighborhood restaurant and lighten the prices on the menu.