Ruth Tobias

I don’t know if that’s as wholly fair as it is kinda funny, but
the point is this: just because you can’t compare Vietnamese
cuisine & Thai cuisine per se doesn’t mean you can’t mention
a prime Vietnamese joint & a middling Thai, er, bistro in the
same sentence. See, I just did.

And having happened to sample the repertoire of both
Dong Khanh Saigon Bowl (in the Far East Center at Federal
& Alameda) & Jason’s
Thai Bistro near DU on the same day, I couldn’t not be struck
by the culinary pride & generosity of spirit of the one in
light of the overall dumbed-down corners-cutting of the other.

My pal Larry (he’s the photographer whose stellar portfolio of
the pickles & pumelos & plucky or puckered faces of their
vendors in marketplaces around the world I’ve referenced
before) & I spent a hyperleisurely lunch the other day
picking over the pile of tidbits & morsels & fry candy
that is Dong Khanh’s all-of-$18 signature appetizer platter the
other day—

shrimp cakes & egg rolls & half a softshell crab on top,
grilled chicken & pork strips & cold rice noodles on
bottom, lettuce & basil & sliced cukes & shredded
carrots & daikon & peanuts, all for wrapping in rice
paper disks softened in warm water like so

(the tricks: be quick before they get sticky on you, & keep
the mix of fillings to a minimum sizewise so they’ll hold) to
form your own fat cigars of goodness graciousness, which you dip
in the classic Vietnamese sauce, sweetish nuoc cham (think duck sauce with
class), before chomping away.

We also split goi tom
thit & got this gorgeously crisp & kicky
concoction of cold sliced roast pork & plump shrimp, sprouts
& mint & sliced chilies & more basil & peanuts
drizzled in a dressing not unlike nuoc cham, but lighter &
more than a bit spicy.

Dim-lit styrofoam aside, how could the Director’s & my
take-out trash from Jason’s not pale in comparison to what
remained as fresh & vivid in my memory as it was on the
plate?

Mind you, I’m all for rifling through trash upon occasion—who
doesn’t get down with a gloppy gallon of sweet & sour pork or
fettuccine Alfredo or chile con queso now & then?—but, to
paraphrase Stephen King, who once said of his writing something
like, “Sure, it’s salami, but it’s good salami,” if I ask nicely
for soppressata you’d better not toss me Oscar Mayer.

And if I order crab—not krab, crab—& avocado salad, you’d
better not serve me a bunch of lettuce with a smattering of
shredded processed whitefish on top.

And if I order fried tofu, I want crunchy golden-brown chunks of
soybean curd, not marshmallows or cotton balls.

And if I order plain old steamed veggies with beef, chicken,
shrimp & scallops, I’d better not get plain old steamed
veggies with beef, chicken & shrimp. (No photo necessary, I
presume.)

To end on a positive note, though, I will give it up for the snap
pea–studded signature rolls with beef, unexpectedly stirfried
with onions until caramelized & juicy, accompanied by a
peanut sauce that actually was, as opposed to just melted peanut
butter.

Now that’s more like it. I mean, not like it—Dong Khanh—but adequate in &
of itself.

Of the few groups a flag-flying misfit like me finds herself belonging to, aesthetic minorities make up the majority. I’m oddly far fonder of lesser prizes—of modestly showcased semiprecious gems rather than their spotlit, velvet-swathed precious counterparts, speaking both literally

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& figuratively; for instance, I’ll take Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later over either of his more celebrated smashes, Trainspotting & Slumdog Millionaire—neither of which boasts zombies going from zero to 60 in hilariously terrifying, gore-splattered seconds—or the extended remix of “Rain” over not only all the rest of Madonna’s A-sides combined but also, say, Radiohead’s entire oeuvre (how’s that for waving the contrarian banner?).

Likewise, I realize I’m among a select local lot (joined, I might add, by the Director &, I hear, Boulder Weekly dining critic Clay Fong) who officially if incrementally prefers King’s Land to Super Star.

Mind you, it’s partly a matter of vibe; in my experience, to contradict the above remark about gems (very well, then, I contradict, containing multitudes for better or worse, especially post–dot hearts), dim sum’s the stuff of gaudy, echoing faux-temples where the cartpushers have room to swoop around Busby Berkeley–style

Warner Bros., in case they care

rather than holes in walls where what should be hustling & bustling is bumping & grinding. Thus bumped & ground on a recent trip to Super Star (kindly invited by CulinaryColorado’s Claire Walter, who rates the rivals roughly equally; to cast judgment once & for all, I propose a tiebreaking double-header—back-to-back, cross-parking-lot dim sum. Who’s with me?), I myself had less room to swoon over the best of the bunch—including the jiaozi (steamed pouchlike dumplings), their pork filling visibly juicy;

these pan-fried, shrimp-filled chive dumplings (as they were identified for me in this Chowhound thread, much to my eventual acceptance but initial surprise, since the chive dumplings I was most familiar with & keen on, from Boston Thai fixture Brown Sugar, were only & entirely filled with minced chives, whereas the green shreds in these were relatively large—suggestive of the leek version that is listed on Super Star’s menu rather than of any chive version that isn’t; perhaps it’s a question of translation &/or semantics?);

this special order (scored by Claire’s other guests & new pals—fellow bloggers & ”world residents,” in her words, Dimitri & Audre) of snails sauteed with green peppers, celery & onions—each poked-out gastropod pure umami on a toothpick;

these clams, essentially snails redux;

this eggplant dish, full stop. Though logicosyntactially I should really keep this sentence going until I’ve covered all my faves, aestheticoemotionally (to use the least aesthetic, indeed most annoying word I may ever have lazily coined) I must here pause to opine, as an above-all-else Italophile, that no one does eggplant like the Chinese (well, except maybe the Japanese, Turks, Indians &, as long as I’m at it, the Italians). Here thick slices were pan-fried & fitted with an oval of what, according to the menu, was shrimp. If it wasn’t in fact minced whitefish of some sort, I’ll eat my hat, & probably insist afterward it tasted like whitefish. But either way it was moist & flaky & crumb-coated atop world’s sweetest nightshade, seeping oil from every fleshy pore. What more could you ask for, besides a ream of blotting paper?;

this Goldilocksian congee—the 1 dish I’d deem hands-down superior to King’s Land’s, being just right—neither too thin nor too thick, recognizably ricey rather than generically glutinous, & clam-dappled;

this super-chunky seafood noodle soup with firm-fleshed whitefish, gailan & red peppers in your typical (but therefore fine-by-me) egg-drop-type broth;

& this perfectly fried rice bedecked with bits of egg, peanuts & greens.

Less best were the char siu bao—

like some sort of freak hybrid between barbecued pork buns & jelly donuts due to overly sweetened filling;

these whole fried shrimp, greasier & heavier than King’s Land’s;

yet more shrimp dumplings, also made with a somewhat heavy hand;

this cheung fun, or steamed rice noodles wrapped around yet more shrimp—neither here nor there as oral sensations go (IMHO, that is, though I learned a thing or 2 about them I could appreciate via this other Chowhound thread);

the ubiquitous fried taro cake, no better or worse than the competition’s;

this ho-hum, prefrozenesque crab-stick roll

& really?-more-shrimp? roll;

this gailan, stir-fried nicely but sided by that offputting black pudding—practically half a bottle’s worth of oyster sauce;

these underfried sesame balls;

& that milquetoast of all Chinese sweets: coconut jello cubes, here studded with seemingly raw red beans (compare to these, which as cubes of milquetoast go actually look appealing).

At the opposite end of the gelatinous spectrum, however, I confess to getting quite a kick out of these cubes of congealed blood (to use this CulinaryColorado commenter’s term), I’m guessing from a pig; tasting like you’re simultaneously licking an aluminum pole & biting through the freshly spilled bowels of a moonlight sacrifice, they put those indescribably obscene Jello commercials in a whole new, much more fun light.

In (dim) sum—though I enjoyed & stuffed myself as silly as ever—thus far I’d rather be living off the Land than swinging on that particular Star. Take me up on the proposed rematch, though, & all bets are off (or, for that matter, on).

***Thanks to ninelives, gini, a l i c e & yumyum—Boston Chowhounds & pals all—for your assistance in itemization!

As the final deadline of the massive freelance work project I’ve mentioned nears, leaving the house is not an option. Neither is cooking. (Hell, neither is showering, much to the dismay of the Director but to my own secret funky delight.)

So we’ve been ordering in a lot. I didn’t even bother taking pictures of either the chef’s salad or the calzone we recently got from Pasquini’s, knowing at a glance that neither would amount to much except from a calorie-counting standpoint. The menu describes a calzone as being “like a pizza folded over.” No “like” about it. This one spanned the width of the pizza box it came in. Actually, given the toughness of the dough & the blandness of the ingredients—sauce, sausage, & cheese all barely registering as such—”like a pizza box folded over” would be more to the point.

That said, Pasquini’s delivers wine by the bottle—cheaply, & I mean cheaply (most are $12-$14). Antiquated as my old hometown of Boston’s liquor laws are, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Oh, West, how wild you are. Oh, little not-so-now-that’s-Italian pizza franchise, how awesome you are in all your mediocrity.

Speaking of mediocrity, I’m fully aware Go Fish fits the definition. The Director and I dined there a couple of times shortly after it opened and couldn’t fathom returning, what with Sushi Den around the corner & Sushi Sasa around, period. Nor have we. But we have ordered take-out a few times in the past few weeks, & I can’t bring myself to knock it. A, the folks behind the bar have been nothing but kind to the Director, plying him with complimentary shots of ginger sake while he waited. B, they offer a few riceless rolls; since rice is one of those things that tends to launch me on a roll—a taste triggers a craving that isn’t fulfilled until I’ve eaten a whole pot’s worth, straight therefrom, with salt & butter—I try to avoid it when under the sort of stress & duress I’m under now, lacking the strength to resist its ricey wiles.

Wrapped in cucumber, the filling is sort of like spicy tuna, only mild, mixed with salmon & poked with avocado. It’s basically a chunky fish cream. Cucumber-encircled chunky fish cream. I’ll take it.

The temptation to rely on the laziness of strangers & skimp on take-out portions is 1 the majority of restaurateurs seem to yield to; not so Go Fish. An appetizer of grilled jumbo calamari rings reminds me of Madonna’s arms circa 1983.

=

That could be because it has the same basic texture as a stack of those old rubber bangles. But the squid flavor’s all there—that flavor I love, the slipperiness of pink turning white—with a drizzle rather than a drenching of teriyakiesque sauce.

Still, I can hardly write the word “grill” without yearning for the moment when I can once again step over the threshold of the door before me & into the light of, say, Buenos Aires Grill, where the provoleta a la cazadora—provolone with mushrooms, scallions & tomato—is like a giant grilled cheese sandwich you dropped on the floor, so you just eat it right off the linoleum there in the kitchen, scooping up the filling with the bread, because it’s too good to toss…in fact better this way, the exception that proves—or maybe the refutation of—the 5-second rule.

Or behind the bars of, oh, El Taco de Mexico, where that tugboat of a twice-stuffed burrito—its hull laden with a chile relleno as well as beans & rice—steams on through the purest of green chiles, porkless & just this side of brothy.

Or in the colorful if liquorless confines of Los Carboncitos, amid posters advertising the sort of local boxing tourney you just know devolves into a parking-lot free-for-all, where the foot-long huaraches evoke oval sopes or even Turkish pides—unless you get
the Cubano: festooned out the wazoo with beef, ham, cotija, tomato, red onion,
jalapeno, avocado, and “Mexican sausage” I’ll swear up & down is chopped hot dog,
it’s comparable to nada.

Or even, as it cools & darkens through the fall, in the rock garden of Domo—a place I consider largely overrated but for the jars of pit viper wine lining the kitchen window

& the battara yaki, a sort of shrimp frittata smothered in Domo’s sweet-sour “original sauce” & mayo & bonito flakes & I don’t know what all.

Help me…

Is there such a thing as accidental stalking? Logged onto Westword’s F&D blog, Cafe Society, this blurry & screechingly bright morning to discover Jason Sheehan must’ve been blogging away mere feet from where the Director & I were getting sloppy over at the bar of The Corner Office. (I don’t think he was either of the 2 gorgeous Asian chicks I remember sitting in the private area temporarily & without a hint of irony designated the

,

but you never know. Maybe he was both of them at once.) If this were the first instance of blogging about the same place either just before or just after him, I wouldn’t mention it, but it’s not—not by far. It kinda freaks me out & makes me feel as though I need for one part of my apparently split & scheming personality to slap a restraining order on the other part’s ass before Westword’s lawyers do.

Anyway. We went to the woods because we wished to live deliberately, by which I mean we went downtown because we wished to get blotto while gawking at the sideshow freaks both on the streets & on the tube. & we started at the Second Chance Saloon, by which I mean the Office, because the more snark-patties I hurl at a place 1 day, the more I regret my bitch-chimpiness the next & resolve to give it yet another shot.

It could be argued that my timing was totally unreasonable—that no place should be judged by its performance in a globally televised shitshow. I get it but doubt it. If anything, every downtown venue, representing by extension every Denver venue & Denver itself, had better be freshly scrubbed & polished this week—every recipe, every greeting, every everything down pat. So the fact that the Corner Office is offering a special DNC-themed menu is neither here nor there. Whatever you’re serving, whenever, perfect it or forget it.

The menu is, to be sure, cheeky in ways that are both characteristic and, in small amounts, charming (Economic Prosperitini excluded. I guess I don’t believe in hell but I do believe in an everlasting bar crawl wherein every conspicuous snifter comes with a bottomless chaser of devil puke).

I opted for a cocktail only on the regular drink menu—which I was inadvertently initially handed & therefore perversely more interested in—& our bartender, remarkably calm & kind at the eye of the chaos, obliged: the Paper Shredder, a tingly-all-over combo of bourbon, ginger ale & fresh ginger.

But the slew of small plates we ordered mostly made me wish the kitchen would put a wad of cash where its cheek is. Having just given Steuben’s props for its savvy appropriation of meth-lab chic, I’ve got to knock the Corner Office’s clunkier efforts. If the words “Cheez Whiz” were set in quotation marks to indicate they actually referred to some sort of artisanal cheddar fondue, I’d probably have been secretly salivating even as I made an elaborate show of rolling my eyes—but they’re not. That goo really accompanies this undersalted, underwarmed pretzel, such that the whole thing tastes like spitballs formed from the very paper it must’ve sounded cute on to somebody.

As the pretzel went, so went the barely thawed tater tots haphazardly scattered alongside a mini-burger with chili that, far from honoring this piquant historic moment of ours, captured Reaganomics in a bite—just a trickle-down of tomato product.

& as the chili went, so went the bland salsa on the sope—singular rather than plural as advertised: in its absence, you realize just how important a good hot salsa is for delineating the blurred silhouette of all those other dollops, at least at their own least carefully seasoned.

It wasn’t all bad, though. In fact, my expectation was proportionally inverse to the execution: the south-of-the-heartland concession-stand snacks that should’ve been the kitchen’s bread-&-butter paled & slumped over next to, 1, crisp spring rolls with wazoo-hot mustard over cabbage dressed in a vivid sesame-ginger vinaigrette

& 2, this mini–chicken pot pie, whose gravy smacked of chicken stock so you could almost hear it:

Still, a few bright spots in a dull expanse—sounds more & more like a typical day at the Office.

In need of a change of scenery, namely one with closed captioning (a convention on mute ≠ must-see TV), we hit Harry’s Bar in the Magnolia Hotel—neither resembling its Venetian namesake nor really finishing the atomic-era aura it starts,

but then, a bar that doesn’t try very hard to do much of anything but be there is really my kind of bar.

Which is why Harry’s perfectly serviceable quesadilla & wings trump the Corner Office’s forays into freezer-aisle-style gourmet fare. To repeat myself ad nauseum, better to surpass low expectations than fall short of higher ones.

Granted, the company we were keeping contributed something to our contentment. Back in Boston, I’d have had to make the trek to Jamaica Plain, home of much-beloved crumbling pub Doyle’s Cafe, to knock one back with Ted. Here at Harry’s, he never seemed closer.

On that note,

Behold some eats that slipped through the cracks of one relatively recent blogpost or another if not of my meticulous gut:

pulled piglet’s benedict at Snooze

From the neat script logo to the asterisk motif marking the two-tone vinyl, this place sometimes sets my teeth on wink-wink-retro-edge. But what soothes them like a plate full of Anbesol is this: a hot, buttered, darkly crisped but super-chewy English muffin topped with perfectly poached eggs, plump-to-bursting like bellies that you just want to tickle ’til they do, loads of slow-braised pulled pork (one associates pulling with barbecuing, but really, it just means removing the meat from the bone using something other than a knife—hands, a fork, etc.—so it’s in shreds rather than slices), sliced avocado & smoked-cheddar hollandaise that actually tastes like a hollandaise gone wild rather than cheese dip.

lamb loin with Merguez sausage & Marcona almond gazpacho at Beatrice & Woodsley

Let’s pause to eulogize this remarkable combination of morsels, which is no longer with us (though I imagine the milkfed veal loin with herbed veal sausage & roasted cauliflower that took its place on the menu as a variation on the theme). Mighty for its size, it contained thumb-length slices of seared lamb so juicily rare the blood still seemed to be circulating through them; charred crumbles of spicy housemade sausage (true to the Merguez name, I suspect—i.e., made with lamb & beef & harissa-spiked); & all of an ounce of coolly creamy gazpacho (which I likewise presume came by its creaminess the traditional Spanish way, via bread & olive oil).

sotong goreng at Jaya Asian Grill

Fried calamari, Malaysian-style: tender & light on the breading, heavy on the seasoning, from black pepper & chili pepper to fried bits of garlic & onion. (Conventional wisdom says China’s going to take over the world, but I think it should be Malaysia, because the garlic-&-tamarind-fried anchovies known as ikan bilis, sadly not available at Jaya or anywhere in Denver as far as I know, ALREADY RULE:

)

yet another cheese plate from Urban Pantry

Clockwise from top are Z garlic & basil crackers; Jacquin Valençay—a runny, stinky, ash-coated French goat cheese; a classic aged gouda, nutty & sharply mellow (not an oxymoron in aged gouda’s case); balls-out, pepperoniesque chorizo seco.

another jar of malidjano (eggplant dip) from East Europe Market, this one Macedonian and heavier on red peppers than the first one I sampled

As EEM devotes 1 entire aisle to veggie pickles & spreads, I aim to devote at least 1-half of 1 of my 2 hollow legs to same; therefore, more such luscious aerial shots to come.

There’s nothing at Arada that isn’t just a touch more wonderfully pungent than it would be a lesser Ethiopian joint, from the admirably elastic & chewy injera with its that-much-sourer tinge to the vibrant tomato salads to the firm-curded, salty freshness of the fetalike ayib to the smoky spice of the mitmita-laced kitfo, as near-raw as you could hope for (having always had it raw, I’m a little wary of ordering it thus whenever I’m asked how I want it cooked, lest the question indicate that the kitchen doesn’t order a grade of beef one might be inclined to scoop out & ingest straight from the cow) & as juicy as all get-out.

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The likelihood that the folks behind Rodney’s went into the resto biz for at least some of the right reasons—because they possessed hospitality to spare, say—is particularly apparent in the phenomenon that is the prime rib special, so tender you wonder if “prime rib” might be black-market slang for “human baby,” & all of a Jackson.

***

Named for the British brand of gravy they’re doused in, the hand-cut, swiss-smothered, curry-spiked Bisto chips at Pints Pub are all the funkier with a few shakes of the greenish, Worcestershire-based sauce on the tables that for me brings to blissful mind Lizano, a tangy Costa Rican condiment I adore but rarely come across stateside.

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Judiciously battered in peppered cornmeal, the fried green tomatoes at M & D’s Cafe actually taste like firm, fresh, unripe & plenty tart tomatoes, not like dough with some seeds stuck in it.

***

Thank you very much, I’m well aware the gado gado I made using Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe—a fairly classic version of the Indonesian salad that contains cauliflower, cucumber, cabbage, carrots, in short basically any vegetable that starts with “c,” bean sprouts, new potatoes, green beans & hard-cooked eggs—would be more appetizing if the homemade peanut sauce didn’t look like something out of the Archie McPhee catalog,

which isn’t to say I’d turn up my sniffer at the likes of a little gummy haggis.

Coming from Boston, where the best-known restaurant critic for much of the time I lived there frankly didn’t seem to know beans*—literally, as in the sight of them at breakfast struck her as odd & novel in a city whose culinary traditions were transported intact from England—I’m pleased to have relocated to a place whose (I’m presuming) most widely read critic I feel I can trust for his, at least as I read it, intellectual curiosity & generosity, combined with an inherent sense of fairness (the latter being something I was obviously born without. Balance is not my forté, like that Filipino girl whose feet are on backwards. Then again her name is Jingle, so as far as I’m concerned she wins. This has been an awfully long sentence).
So when Shaw gave the Palace Arms a dressing down back in February, I bet myself they’d be straightening up quick.
I don’t know if I won (slash lost) yet, because I haven’t been to the Palace Arms. But I did recently get treated to lunch at Ellyngton’s, & though I didn’t eat the way I’d have eaten if I’d been paying for it—I strive for gluttony only on my own time—my limited experience suggests someone must have gotten up off the laurels they’d been resting on. (I’m assuming here there’s some interaction between the Brown Palace’s kitchens; I could be all wrong.)
The bread in the basket wasn’t warm, but it was varied—there were flour-dusted olive rolls, sourdough rolls, Melba-style toasts & so-thin-as-to-be-semi-transparent sesame seed–sprinkled flatbreads—& the butter, with its pretty pinch of poppy seeds (which I admit I was hoping against all hope & logic was caviar), was nice & softened.

The corn chowder might have been a bit too thick for purists, but it lacked the gloppiness of overly starchy versions, being simply rich & thoroughly studded with bacon, onion & pepper as well as corn kernels.

This salad, meanwhile, was quite the bite-for-bite sensation: a generous amount of pan-roasted, salmonlike Arctic char, thin strips of jicama, hominy kernels boiled to a nice firm chew, mandarin segments, spiced walnuts, appealingly briny watermelon carpaccio & farm lettuce judiciously dressed in a surprisingly funky, creamy tahini dressing—the flavor combination any given forkful offered was nothing if not vibrant.

A Cobb’s a Cobb (except when it’s sprinkled with kernels—then it’s corn on the Cobb! heh), but when it’s special-ordered with grilled salmon, it sure cuts a mighty fine figure.

On a roll, I met a friend for a glass of wine at Tastes, a new wine bar & bistro on E. 17th (the flagship’s on Tennyson). It’s cute in the usual, vaguely urbane way—exposed brick, exposed ceiling pipes, graffiti-inspired artwork—

but the wine list & small-plates menu show some quirky flair. Kudos to the owners for the emphasis on lesser-known varietals like Languedocienne picpoul de pinet, Venetan garganega & German portugeiser as well as the risk they took in attempting to revive throwback nibbles like herring in wine sauce & sweet-&-sour meatballs (curried with pineapple!). Cheeses, pâtés & a smattering of sweet little sandwiches, salads & soups like peanut with chicken & pork chili with white beans & red ale round out what strikes me as a pretty promising repertoire—but it’s nice to know that, should it happen to suck, I can drown my sorrows in this stuff,

of which I’ve partaken but have absolutely no memory beyond toasting an ex with a flaskful on a train from Prague to Venice. Good blacked-out times.
*Which, granted, is only slightly sadder than not knowing franks & beans.

In lieu of photos to illustrate my debut post compiling my Top 5 fave dishes in Denver thus far (nos. 4 & 5 to come soon—oh the suspense!), please enjoy these fine artist’s renderings by my beau over at La Pistola:

Fresh bacon, Rioja
Chili-fried calamari, Black Pearl

What a cyberschmuck, eh? Starting a food blog at the turn of 2008? What sort of exclusive scoops could a jalopy on the information highway like me, just chugging along, possibly deliver? Hey kids, keep your eyes peeled for pomegranates! Whoa, those wacky foams are funky fresh! Check out this chocolate cake—it’s all gooey in the center!

But allow me to explain. Back in Boston, where I worked, steadily enough, as a food writer for several years, blogging struck me as pointless. For one thing, I got paid to share my thoughts on food & drink; why would I bother to repeat myself for free? For a-somewhat-contradictory-nother, I spewed gratis daily as a regular poster on www.chowhound.com; and since the Boston-area board of that David-turned-Goliath of a gastronomic site is so active—the info so thorough and the constant debate so stimulating—it seemed to me I already had a blog, one I just happened to co-author with 10,000 other Beantown eatfreaks.

But now I find myself in Denver, shocked at the lack of info and debate about the local dining scene—especially given how dynamic it is, growing by leaps and bounds and heaps and mounds. We’re atop a working goldmine, y’all! So I humbly hope both to impart the nuggets of wining-and-dining wisdom I’ve dug up since moving here—and to glean from you still more glittering morsels.

On that note, here (in no particular order) are the 3 dishes that, thus far, have rocked my new Rockie-peaked world hardest.

Chili-fried calamari at Black Pearl.
Leaving the East Coast, I bade a sad farewell to superior seafood—only to find it throwing me a surprise party upon my arrival. Turns out it was here just chilling all along! (In hindsight, I should have known better—considering a) our global economy and b) the depletion of native populations due to overfishing, it’s no surprise everyone’s flying their finny supplies in from everywhere; much of the sashimi I now snap up at Sushi Sasa [see below] comes from the same famed market in Tokyo as that I inhaled at Boston’s Uni.)
Anyway, this is not your average fried calamari, breaded and deep-fried beyond recognition, doomed to be drowned in the deluge of spaghetti sauce-slash-salsa-from-the-jar most marinara amounts to. Think rather lightly crusted, spice-dusted, presumably pan-fried slabs of flesh (likely cut from the filets of giant squid?), so meltingly tender that no other ingredient is needed to boost their flavor: their texture is their flavor, as gently salty-sweet as, say, sliced baby’s butt. (I’m guessing.)

Fresh bacon at Rioja.
Is the image of infant tush pushing it? How about little piggie tummy? Ever since the notion of nose-to-tail eating reared its, um, nose-to-tail, ugly but yum, a few years ago, pork belly—essentially bacon at its most pristinely fatty—has been popping up all over even the fancy-pantsiest of menus, not as a finishing touch but as the starting point. With this appetizer, Rioja grants it the respect it turns out to deserve. The porcine equivalent of birthday cake, one thick slice yields the cushiest of layered interiors, quintessentially savory rather than salty—the icing on which is of course its freshly crisped lid. Offsetting its lushness just as ice cream does cake’s is a sort of light curry of fresh chickpeas—which, unlike their dried counterparts, indeed possess something of the off-sweetness of green peas. Kudos to the kitchen for handling something so hearty with such delicacy, showcasing it so subtly, as to reveal the synonymity between the humble and the noble.

Miso black cod at Sushi Sasa.
Why, it’s piscine pork belly. Enough said.

At least, that is, for now. In a future post I’ll compare Sasa’s version to those at other local sushi strongholds; in another I’ll drop top dishes 4 & 5. If you’re reading, many thanks.