MY PROJECT TO EAT AT EVERY EATING ESTABLISHMENT ON COLFAX, FROM GRANT TO COLORADO BLVD IN GEOGRAPHICAL ORDER, MINUS THE CHAINS.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Streets of London: 3 Guys Pies

Wednesday nights at this well-known Denver dive are apparently not very brawl-inducing. This was my impression of the place, as I live so damn close to it I can hear the fracas more often than not, always breathing a sigh of relief when my clock reads 2am and I know I can finally get some sleep. I brought 3 friends along for the ride, thinking there's safety in numbers. But it turns out no protection was necessary: the place was only half full and everyone was behaving themselves. 

Streets shares the building with another eatery, Spices. Although I did spend a fabulously hung-over morning there once, waiting a baffling 20 minutes for a breakfast burrito to-go (we were the only patrons and the single sound I heard from the partially open kitchen was the ding of a microwave), Spices does not have a Colfax address nor an entrance on that street, so consider it un-Eat Colfax-worthy. The food available inside Streets of London is actually run by another company: 3 Guys Pies. Sound convoluted? Add to that the adjoining Scooter Liquors and you have yourself quite the hodgepodge of places to buy food and drink, not a strip mall, but a chubby L-shaped block of cement and brick and asphalt, surrounded by a triangle of streets where Park Avenue reaches it's terminus. In my opinion, (and the patrons' and purveyors' of Steets of London no doubt), 3 Guys Pies is the best thing to have inhabited the building, providing honest-to-goodness New York style pizza to soak up the pints and perhaps provide a greasy and cheesy if not quiescence than at least civil air to those disorderly late-night folks. 

The patio was full when we got there, so we grabbed a bar table, the 4 of us taking a minute to adjust to the dim and figure out the protocol to ordering. Actually they make it pretty clear at Streets: two signs declaring "Order Here" and "No Wait Staff on Duty", although having worked in restaurants and bars myself I'm aware that there are always some customers who are blind/lazy/ignorant. We go up to the pizza window, where the extent of their menu hangs above the counter in brilliant yellow and red and green. Well-organized, easy to read, in short, enticing. I see they offer gluten-free crust (I mean, if you're not jumping on that band wagon already you're sunk), pizza by the slice, whole pies ranging from 14 to 30 inches (30 inches!), calzones and salads available in half or whole sizes, subs and pasta. Standard NY pizza joint fare, with topping choices galore, although nothing overly unusual (still looking for pizza with broccoli in Denver). I order a small chef salad and a half-calzone with spiced meatball, sautéed onion and pineapple, 10 bucks and some change. I hear my name called some minutes later and pick up my "side" salad at the window. Wow. If that's a side I can imagine a "whole" coming in a salad-serving bowl. Mine is served in a lovely ceramic dish, the ingredients perfectly rounded over the top, each pepperoni and crouton and mushroom slice placed deliberately atop the lettuce, a plastic ramekin of house-made Italian dressing tipping precariously on the side. It's almost like a cold pizza, and you really gotta dig through the meat and mozzarella to get to the greens below. It's delicious and filling and as my companions' slices come out I come to realize that 3 Guys deals in enormity. The slices, perhaps coming from the 30 inch monster, are draped over the paper plates like a flamboyant man's wrist. They're a little unwieldy, and using the method of picking up the plate and eating about 6 inches off the pointy end first is a must. Everyone is "mmm"-ing and I'm excited for my hot portion to arrive as well, which it does soon after. Again, this is a half-calzone? It's been cut in half, so to me, it's two halves, which if I remember my math classes correctly, equals a whole. Bang for your buck here folks. The ricotta and mozzarella are oozing out of the perfectly plumped up crust. Cutting into it, I laugh at my innards-choices, it's really a bunch of white foods, even the crushed up meatballs have not escaped a color change, having just soaked up the sauce. And you know what they say about white foods. Well, they're tasty that's for sure. The sauce though, the mixture of ricotta and herbs, is a tad too sweet. Sure, it could be the pineapple or the onion (i.e. my own fault) but the spiciness of the meatballs is a bit lost and I can't help but think there is something a little off about it. A healthy dose of marinara brings back the savory acidity, but not quite enough. I manage to polish it off, along with two pints of London Pride, and am already planning my next visit where I will stick with a traditional Neopolitan. 
3 Guys Pies on Urbanspoon

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Caffe Sanora: An Ode

Neighborhood coffee shop, just around my corner,
Small inside and out,
Just big enough.
Patio too hot in the summer,
I never seem to get the shady seat.
But I watch the sun make it’s way from north to south, 
Across the sky, 
Over the months,
And take shelter under the half-shade of the Colfax locust trees
At the square table by the trash can.


At any given hour there are sirens,
The very same I would be hearing from my balcony.
But here I feel the whoosh of the truck as it screams by,
See the look of expectant indifference on the firemen’s faces.


Chess players, men all, playing for joe or a smoke or just to break up
A monotonous day in the sun.
A bowl of water for the myriad dogs, dogs who watch people and dogs
Who watch other dogs,
The humans busy staring at pawns or computers or crosswords or
Off in the distance.


A constant dumping and refreshing of the ashtrays.
They don’t try here, they just. . .are
Calm and perfect, accepting and guarding of its patrons.
It is a responsibility to run a café on Colfax,
A café that allows me to smoke next to the door, a café that lets in doggies,
A café with a constant flow of every demographic imaginable.
European.


What would Dave think of that?
Dave, the owner, 
Whistling and humming to the ever-constant classic rock radio station,
Dave who seemingly knows everyone but me.
You checked on me one time,
When a gravely-voiced bum decided to try
To have a dialog with me.


Once, a man ferociously washing the windows outside,
His too-long squeegee pole perturbing the patio patrons,
Desperately looking like he needs his job
And not more coffee.


I come here to write.
I come here to think when I’m anxious.
The constant hum and honk and clatter of cars,
Never a quiet peace,
But peace in knowing that people will always just
Go about their business.


This morning I ate something,
A bacon, egg and scallion croissant,
Heated in your microwave.
Buttery, decidedly non-American,
Non-Starbucks,
Baked by your “in-house baker”.
Give me more than that Dave.
Recognize me, know that I drink the same double Americano
In my black Caffe Sanora mug.
I’ve seen your “in-house baker”, a little smidge of a woman
In hair net.


I am not a regular anywhere,
But I frequent this place more than any other,
And I want you to know that.
Cafe Sanora on Urbanspoon

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Irish Snug: Where's the salt?

This project never ceases to surprise. First, I want you readers to understand the objectivity I am forced to deal with. I don’t pick the eateries, they just exist where they are, lined up on Colfax like dominoes that I slowly knock over one week at a time. Most food writers are either assigned or personally choose to eat and write where they do, and with that comes some sort of expectation, and perhaps excitement, knowing there is press or buzz or rumor of deliciousness. Not that some of my eateries don’t possess those things as well, but they are not the impetus for my visit. And so, when a place like the Snug pops up, I do get excited, I do have expectations, I think about what I’m going to order days before I go. I can imagine the smell of the steam wafting from the plate, the first bite of comforting Irish pub food, the last bite, a little sad, wanting more but satisfied enough with a shot of whiskey for dessert.

And so I had these expectations, on my umpteenth visit to the Irish Snug. We snag a table in the main room and are greeted immediately and have our beers within two minutes. Score. 20 ounces of Murphy's Irish Amber to whet my palate and sip as I peruse the menu. Kristin looks like she's going to pass out from low blood sugar so appetizers are a must. The Snug's menu is neither typically nor traditionally Irish, but they do have the smattering you'd expect, meaning, corned beef and cabbage, liver and onions, shepherd's pie. We start with hash-browned zucchini, which is mixed with parmesan and fresh garlic. I'm reminded of (and hoping for something akin to) one of my favorite side dishes cooked by mom in the summer: little zucchini rounds breaded and fried in the ever-loved electric fryer. What we get looks similar to latkes, two triangles of hash with diced roma tomatoes and sour cream on the side. It's hot, steamy, my mouth is watering and I take the first bite and, and. . .well, it's not bad, but, where's the zucchini? I can see specks of green but taste something only subtely vegetal. If I were blind-folded I would not know it was supposed to contain zucchini. But it's fried well and the parm and garlic are there and when you're dying of hunger you might tend to be less discriminating. 

For dinner I opt for corned beef and cabbage and Kristin for fish and chips. A caveat: I have only had corned beef here. Once, the corned beef egg rolls (sounds odd but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense). Another time, the corned beef sandwich. I like me some corned beef. And while I do try to branch out when I eat for this project, I just can't do liver and onions yet, especially after Kristin described the horror she experienced as a child, the metallic taste, etc... And quite frankly, I was hungry for corned beef! You know, my expectations and all. The menu uses the word "traditional" twice in it's description of the dish: first, "a traditional favorite", then, "with a traditional white wine parsley sauce". The former I can agree with, the latter not so much. Correct me if I'm wrong! But after a Google search, images and all, I could find no reference to any sauce being applied to corned beef and cabbage. But I like white wine, I like parsley, and I (usually) like sauce, so I feared not. The plates arrive, and sure enough, mine looks like a heaping mass of food covered in white gravy. Always with the gravy! I dig out some corned beef, a little cabbage on the end of the fork, and all I can taste is pasty flour. Unsalted, pasty, flour. There is not even a suggestion of white wine or parsley, just bleached, white flour with perhaps a teaspoon of butter. And unquestionably no salt. I take another bite, and another, hoping for redemption in the mashed potatoes, but alas, completely under-seasoned. This begs for an explanation of my relationship with table-top condiments: I never add salt and always add pepper. Truly, most restaurant food doesn't need salt. It should be a chef's first thought, the assaisonnement imperatif. This dish, known for it's homey, comforting, dare-I-say blandness, should at least activate my salivaries from the beef ("corned" meaning cured with salt corns). But the Snug chef has chosen to make the dish utterly tasteless by drowning it's key ingredients in liquefied flour. Of course, I break my rule and shake on some salt, to no avail. Salt applied after the food is prepared does not have the same gustatory conclusion, and in this case, didn't help the situation one bit. On to Kristin's food: same story. The fries had not a kernel of salt and tasted like they'd been sitting a while. The fish batter, again, no zest, no flavor, no salt! 

Our half-eaten plates get swept away and followed with a Naked Tinker Ale, from Tommyknocker Brewery. Believe it or not, when it comes to alcohol that often is described in edible terms, i.e. beer and wine, I am not usually able to come up with the right word. But one sip and I am instantly transported to the beautiful edificio that is the Mayan Theater: buttered popcorn. It's just all wrong. We need something to end the meal properly. A shot of Redbreast 12yr., neat, with ice on the side for me, and a Tullamore Dew 12 yr. for Kristin. There now, that's the ticket. The waitress brings a pint glass of ice, not quite right, but it'll do. I've never experienced a lack of sodium when visiting the Snug on previous occasions, but tonight just wasn't on point. Thankfully their Wednesday night band, the Gypsy Swing Revue, started playing and we sat back and relaxed with our whiskeys, thankful for the atmosphere and the opportunity to support a decent local band.  And mom, if you're reading this, which I know you are, did you pick up on some clues? (:

P.S. Eat Colfax is taking a week off, as I'll be on vacation. Woo hoo!
P.P.S. That's the last time you'll see an emoticon on this blog. 
Irish Snug on Urbanspoon

Monday, August 2, 2010

Her Bar

Well dear readers, I have to be honest with you, I'm in a slump. It seems I somewhat inadvertently skipped not one, but two eateries, due to my own lack of diligence and research. But perhaps something in me wanted to skip ahead, geographically, temporally, to neighborhoods more frequented and. . .friendly? Truly, this stretch of Colfax, from Pearl to Marion and perhaps a few blocks beyond, is just hot, nasty asphalt and cement and exhaust, no trees for respite from the July sun or the stretch of chains, fast-food restaurants all. This is a strip you walk through, not to. But one of my original intentions for this project was to not shun the neighborhoods --because of preconceived notions-- but to embrace them, discover their secrets, or at least discover what the particular eatery brought to Colfax at that location, and conversely, how an eatery's particular location effected it. That first stretch of 15-or-so restaurants fit nicely into my plan, made the project easy to explain and define, even to myself. But Colfax, all 26 miles of it, isn't merely about package deals. The random strip-mall stretches and lonely bus stops and billboards and busted-up sidewalks and seemingly arbitrariness of it all is bogging me down. Where is the soul when it's not obvious? Oh yeah, in the eateries. The hodgepodge of Colfax does have a common thread: the need to serve and be served something to eat. Even Her Bar, which seems like a rather incidental eatery (hence my previous neglect of it), has chosen to offer more than libations. Sometimes it doesn't have to be about the neighborhood, sometimes it's just what's inside that counts. And Her Bar, being an obvious destination location, is definitely in that camp. So tonight, I'm going to find out why lesbians would also choose to eat at their favorite watering hole. 

So I knew they’d constructed a patio, a serious plus for any bar, especially in the evening when it’s actually tolerable to be outside. It seems this added square footage also coincided with Her Bar’s acquiring of an Executive Chef (that’s what it says on the menu), someone named Cajun. When I read this I laughed to myself: I had checked the website to confirm the food rumor, had merely skimmed the content (not because I’m that inattentive but because the font was so hard to read I literally could only skim it for readable words), saw the word “cajun” and assumed I would be in for some spicy seafood and later on, heartburn. But no. At least no to the spicy seafood. The menu at Her Bar kind of looks like something a tweenager would present to her parents, proudly, if she were making dinner for them in a mock-restaurant fashion.  You can feel the care, the thought, but you surely can’t see it. This would be quaint, acceptable, if I truly was being made dinner by a twelve year old (hey, maybe I was) but this is, ostensibly, an eatery. A sampling of items from the menu: “a selection of worldly cheese” (Kristin: they must be well-traveled!); “rings of fire onion rings, with choice of dipping sauce”; “Veg-HER” (raw veggies with sauce choice, not entirely sure about the pun); burger sliders; buffalo chicken sliders. My favorite part is at the bottom of the menu, a section called “After Dinner Drinks”, which includes a Tuaca lemon drop martini and a jalapeno margarita. The sweetest touch is at the very bottom, with the requisite comments about alerting the staff to food allergies and a gratutity of 20% or more for parties 6 or larger. It just seems so, restaurant-like, it’s really trying, and yet. . .

It’s really just a step up from somebody’s back yard. We sit on the patio, after having our bags searched and my favorite water bottle confiscated (it’s a club license thing I assume, and I forgot how serious a butch bouncer can be). The patio is a big wooden deck with a narow wooden bar running the length of it, a smattering of bar stools, and 3 gigantic, round, plastic tables. There’s a free mini-basketball game, colorful and tacky triangles of fabric strung overhead (shade?) and then the bar itself: a portable wooden structure that I’m pretty sure I saw at Home Depot last week, a little metro rack behind it with the booze. It’s casual out here, to say the least, but I like it, I like it a lot. It is so utterly lacking in pretention that I’m a little shocked at what I’ve grown used to in my adult eating-and-drinking life. The service, at first, is a little difficult to assess. We sit at one of the round tables, see the lovely bartender flitting about, flirting with the bouncer, smiling at us but not really serving us. We go to the bar to figure it out, plus it’s high time I get some alcohol in me. I was pleasantly surprised by their one non-corporate beer option, Alaskan Amber. I was convinced I’d have to settle for shwag-piss. And two shots of tequila, Kristin declares. Alright, how about Cuervo, we don’t want to seem too high-falutent, with our microbrews and all. The bartendress pulls out two –are you ready for this?—plastic ramekins to pour the tequila in. Yes! The first shot has a little extra protein in it, and the second and third as well. I mean, it’s an outdoor bar after all. I’m totally undisturbed, I would go so far as to drink it if it were a high quality tequila, but I know that’s uncouth, even at the lesbian bar. The bartender is a little embarassed and offers us a different (better) tequila for the same price. Sold. We take our plastic ramekins and bottles and menus back to the table.

There are three women with very large drums on the patio, each one beating to their own rhythm, albeit quietly. Kristin asks if I’d rather be inside. No honey, it’s nice out, but I know how much pain you’re in right now. If it gets worse, we’ll move. There are fliers strewn about the table, one of them declaring tonight “Tribal Night”. Aha. Hopefully we’ll get opinions formulated, food in our stomachs, and notes diligently taken before they go into a trance. The bartender comes over to take our orders. It’s really a toss up, that is to say, it really doesn’t matter what I order, I know this already, so I go for spicy, my original intention: buffalo chicken sliders. Kristin is feeling healthier so she gets the Veg-HER and watching her say it I had to stifle a laugh. Aparently the sauce choices are bleu cheese and ranch. But of course. The food seems like it takes forever to come out, considering we’re getting the equivalent of crudite and chicken strips, but no matter. We’re on our way to drunk and if people watching is your sport, then Her Bar is an event of Olympic proportions. Finally the paper plates are delivered, mine piled high with waffle cut french fries and three little buns hiding the poulet underneath. Mmm, waffle fries! I’m 99% sure they are those of the Alexis brand one can find in one’s grocer’s freezer, but cooked in a deep fryer with a sprinkling of salt they are heavenly. What ever happen to waffle fries? Are they out of vogue? Okay Her Bar you get points for bringing me back to a time when I surely wouldn’t be caught dead in a dyke bar. Oh how I’ve grown. Kristin’s plate looks like something Amy Sedaris would be really proud of: baby carrots, broccoli, celery, green bell peppers, and button mushrooms, all raw and kinda sweaty and. . .do people really eat raw mushrooms like that? The bowl of ranch has a parsley garnish sprinkled on top. Again, I’m coming back to, to, my seventh grade best friend’s parents’ wet bar in their musty, dark basement. The sounds of the mini basketball affirm my daydream. So the waffle fries are great, the veggies are veggies, and my sliders, you ask? Two chicken nuggets, drenched in Frank’s Red Hot, bleu cheese sauce drizzled on the bun. It’s a chicken nugget sandwich. The phrase executive chef pops in my head again and while I would love to expound on the myriad ways this is an entirely ridiculous notion at a place like Her Bar, this blog is not meant to be a forum for me to judge my fellow queer women. Y’all can talk to me in person about that.

So why would a lesbian choose to eat at Her Bar? Because she’s hungry, and probably drunk, and also, well, undiscerning. There I said it. There’s a time and a place to eat crudite and chicken nuggets, and I really don’t mind paying for it either. Humans are very accomodating, accepting, and adaptable, for how else would we have the ability to create a culture or have relationships? The rules of restaurants change, what’s acceptable to a diner changes, depending on where you’re eating. This seems obvious but it’s something to think about. Why else would we eat at Her Bar? Different  eateries have different definitions of “service” and “good food”, and Her Bar is one of those places that just barely slides by because quite frankly, the clientele doesn’t give a shit. But no one’s really paying attention, except for that femme-y girl taking notes over there. . .