The menu at Rumi’s Kabab is emblazoned with a photo of the Buddha of Bamiyan, a 121-foot statue carved from the raw rock of an Afghan cliff in the sixth century. In this central Asian country along the Silk Road, the statue’s flowing robes were influenced by the ancient Greeks and Persians. The Buddha came from China and stood for ages as a reminder that Afghanistan is a crossroads of civilization. In 2001, the Taliban decided the statue was an idol and destroyed it with dynamite.

Still, the Buddha is a good analogy for Afghan culture. It is a meeting of east, west, north and south. And while sometimes the clash of cultures has been bitter, the cuisine is delicious.

At Rumi’s Kabab, which opened in September, diners will find dumplinglike aushak ($5) influenced by China, spicy lentil daal, basmati rice, heavily seasoned spinach influenced by the Indian subcontinent, and garlicky lamb, chicken and beef kebabs, courtesy of Iran and points east. It is a lovely mix, and generally, Rumi’s pulls it off quite well. If you are looking for a new culinary expedition, this is the place.

Rumi’s is owned by Shams Forough, an Afghan who has lived in Colorado Springs for more than 15 years. For much of that time, he has worked as an interpreter and cultural advisor for the U.S. Army in his home country, facilitating meetings between various generals and potentates, including President Hamid Karzai (who speaks perfect English, but still ... ). At a recent lunch, Forough was recommending books on the Afghan language to an airborne sergeant in full fatigues. When the sergeant asked if Forough would give lessons, he said Mondays and Tuesdays after the lunch rush would work best.

“What do you say to $15 an hour?” he said.

“Is this one of those things where I say $8 and we eventually settle at $12?” the sergeant asked.

“Please, my friend,” Forough said with a chuckle. “If that was the case I would have started at $30.”
Rumi’s has a daily lunch buffet from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and a dinner menu with a number of delectable, but more delicate, extras. The buffet ($9) usually has about a dozen things.

Start with lovely palau — basmati rice seasoned with cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and cumin. Then pile on whatever moves you. The daal is basically refried beans, but made with lentils. Rumi’s version is spicy and more chunky than those found at most Indian places. A really unusual treat is the kadu — a general word for squash.
Here, it is deep-orange banana squash, slow-roasted until the starchy flesh is almost candy sweet, then drizzled with a light yogurt sauce. The buffet usually also includes two vegetable dishes, such as curry-like kormah with cauliflower or slow-roasted eggplant and tomatoes, and two or three meat dishes, usually an Afghan version of chicken curry called Lawang e Murgh, and some kind of beef kebab.

Dessert comes as a sweet rice pudding with cardamom and pistachio. Technically, it is called Sheer Birenj. I just call it delicious.

Many of the same dishes show up at dinner, though the evening menu also includes more fragile dishes that I have not seen at lunch.

The aushak — dumplings filled with leeks and scallions and drizzled with garlic-mint yogurt sauce and seasoned ground beef — are a real treat, as are the Mantu ($10) — homemade pastry shells filled with onions and ground beef topped with carrot, yellow spit peas, and a spicy, savory ground beef sauce.

The Koura Challau ($12) is tender lamb chunks in a currylike sauce. The Koufta Kabab ($11) is a sort of Middle Eastern meatloaf — ground beef mixed with garlic and a ton of spices, and cooked on a skewer. It is fantastic with rice.

It is worth it to order tea ($2) because the steaming pot arrives brimming with the aromas of cinnamon and cardamom.

Only a few dishes missed their mark. The Theekha Kabab, prime rib beef chunks marinated with spices, is the most expensive dish on the menu ($14), but mine was over-marinated and sour-tasting on the outside and tough on the inside. The dishes tend to be on the heavy, oily side, with few light options for balance.

On some lunch visits, the smoky smell from the kebab-laden grill followed me around all day. And the service can be a bit too subtle. Walk in at lunch and you may grab a plate at the buffet and make several visits, then pay without ever being formally welcomed. But these are small quibbles, especially for a family-owned restaurant that brings an entirely new cuisine to our city.

The green chili is less a gravy than a broth thick with meat and ribbons of chiles. The pieces of pepper give it some heat, but not enough to eclipse the restaurant's spot-on enchiladas and other fare.

2427 W. Colorado Ave., 634-9031

There are few more indulgent delights than ruffling open the foil wrap on a bundle of fresh, handmade La Casita flour tortillas, tearing off a steaming warm piece of the thick, spongy flatbread, and chewing the rich, slightly salty bite without adornment.
I like to savor a tiny piece like a sacrament, chewing it slowly just before I dig into a hearty plate of slow-cooked carnitas or spicy green chili with beans. I do it every time I go. And I’ve been going for a long time. La Casita is one of my favorite local places.
I’ve eaten everything on the menu. I’ve celebrated a number of life’s small victories at its colorful tables. But I never knew the full story of this local Mexican chain until I dug into its history.
La Casita opened its first bright pink location in an old gas station tucked almost under I-25 on South Nevada Avenue in 1986. The restaurant was set up like a fast food place: Wait in line, order, take your food away on a tray. But everything was made fresh; even the hot tortillas blistering on the grill started as a sack of flour in the back. And this little fast food place served bottles of esoteric Mexican beer from a heaping bin of ice, and fresh margaritas. It is a set-up so common now that it has its own industry label: Fast Casual. Think Smashburger, Noodles & Company and, of course, Chipotle.
But at the time, at least in Colorado Springs, owner Janet Sawyer said, “There was nothing like it.”
Mexican food in Colorado Springs then generally meant either Taco Bell or sit-down Tex Mex. La Casita was different. Besides exotic, sizzling fajitas and carnitas, the place boasted a salsa bar with four styles — unheard of at the time — and piles of fresh cilantro.
The place was a huge hit. When I discovered La Casita in 1992 it was not uncommon to see the line snaking out the door. Naturally, Sawyer expanded. Bright pink locations opened on North Nevada Avenue and Academy Boulevard in the mid-1990s. A location opened on Woodmen Road in 2004. Expansion of the interstate forced the original shop to move to Eighth Street, and the North Academy location closed, but all locations do a pretty good job of replicating the appeal of that first store.
I consider myself an expert on the menu. Over the years, I’ve worked through it as my tastes changed. My first love was the cheese enchiladas wrapped in Christmas-red corn tortillas ($4.20). Then the steak fajita dinner — long cuts of flank, marinated and tenderized, and served with piles of sweet onion and green pepper ($7.50). They were mild, delicious and perfect in those warm tortillas. Then I moved on to chicken fajitas ($7.50), flavored with what tastes like savory bay leaf. For a long time my main dish was green chili ($5). I would order a bowl of this greasy, gloppy, wonderful stew full of tender chunks of pork, dump in a few thimbles of La Casitas’s spicy tomatillo and jalapeño salsa, and wipe the bowl clean with hot tortillas. On my most recent visit, I found a new favorite, the carnitas ($7.50). The pork shoulder is roasted for hours until it has a luscious, caramelized crust and is so tender it easily falls apart. It is hacked up with a cleaver and served as big chunks that you eat in a tortilla. And it is bliss.
But for all I know about the menu, I was surprised to find out, after talking to the owner recently, that I knew nothing about its origin.
It turns out La Casita is an idea lifted, almost entirely, from a San Antonio doppelganger called Taco Cabana that Sawyer visited in the mid 1980s. Taco Cabana made its own tortillas. It had bins heaped with ice and cold Mexican beer. It had cheese enchiladas wrapped in Christmas-red corn tortillas. It even was, and is (Taco Cabana now has about 140 locations, mostly in Texas), painted bright pink.
At first I was a little disappointed that La Casita is little more than a copycat, but I suppose there are some concepts that gain strength and integrity only as they spread: freedom, democracy, fast fresh tacos.
And La Casita has a few of its own flourishes, like delicious borracho beans and that chunky green chili.
Of my hundreds of visits to La Casita, my most recent was the first I ever made as a food critic, and I noticed a few things I had overlooked for years that could use improvement.
The beef in the crispy tacos seems to be seasoned only with a little salt and pepper; a good base with some Tex Mex chile and cumin could jazz it up quite a bit. Same goes for the chicken enchiladas, which are overwhelmed by the fiat taste of black pepper. Adding some good Chimayo ground red chile and garlic would help.
The huge, tasty churros ($1.30), slaked in sugar and cinnamon, would be twice as good if they were fresh-fried to order, like the sopapillas.
The delicious borracho beans — pintos cooked with bacon, tomato, onion and beer — should be an option as a side with every meal, not just some.
And finally, the salsa bar should have limes. Right now it has only lemons, and I never see anyone use them. Limes go better with Mexican food and Mexican beer.
Now that I have heaped criticism on one of my favorite places, I need to absolve myself. I’m going for another bundle of fresh, hot tortillas.

Dishes touting Caribbean flavors work well at Tejon street eatery
Rasta Pasta, a new restaurant on Tejon Street, sounds like something my college roommates would have cooked late one night, probably while high. Roommate No. 1: “Dude, you know how Rasta and pasta, like, rhyme?” Roommate No. 2: “Huh?” Roommate No. 1: “Wouldn’t it be sweet if there was a place that served pasta with all kinds of gnarly Caribbean sauces?”
Long, intense discussion would have ensued late into the night. Then nothing would have happened.
But, in the case of the real Rasta Pasta, something obviously did. The local chain, which has a location in Breckenridge, one in Fort Collins and the latest addition in Colorado Springs, serves Jamaican-inspired pasta over a background of righteous reggae beats. As a short history on Rasta Pasta’s Web site notes: “No one really knows why Dan (The Founder) decided to go with a Caribbean theme, but speculation has it that since Rasta rhymes with pasta, and Dan likely enjoyed some Rastafarian traditions, it all just came together.”
Actually, for such a strange idea, it came together pretty darn well.
The vibe at the Colorado Springs locale is naturally easy-going. A crowd of small tables dressed in bright, tropical tablecloths are scattered across a bare concrete ffoor. Bunches of bananas hang above the steaming open kitchen next to a bar fringed with corrugated metal to make it look like a beach shack. Red Stripe beer bottles serve as vases on the tables. Bob Marley portraits gaze approvingly from most of the walls. If you are jonesing to listen to Jobob Miller or Burning Spear,
—
—
this is the place.
And the pasta, as weird as it sounds, sorta works.
By weird, here is what I mean: A plate of cheese tortellini ($8 at lunch) comes sautéed with pineapple, grapes, Caribbean spices and banana. Tortellini Jamaica Mon is the kind of dessert-meets-dinner debacle you always find (but never try) at potlucks. But here the results are good. The rich but slightly bitter ricotta in the tortellini is complemented by the fresh, bright sweetness of the fruit. I ordered it hoping it would be an easy dish to make fun of in print, and found instead that it was my favorite of the four entrees on our table.
Not quite as weird, but just as good, is the Natural Mystic, a sweet and savory pineapple curry sauce served with jerk chicken over pasta ($7 at lunch).
Some things sound weird, only to disappoint with how normal they are. The signature Rasta Pasta — jerk chicken, green onions, diced tomatoes and a tomato-y garlic sauce ($7 at lunch) — tastes like a very Italian dish. The Seafood Alfredo ($10 at lunch), swimming with shrimp and minced clams, did not seem to have any Jamaican inflection at all. (It was a hit anyway. The shrimp were plump and perfectly cooked, and a friend who ordered it raved over the rich clamminess of the whole dish.)
What Rasta Pasta lacks in sophistication it makes up for in service. Vegetarian, whole-grain or gluten-free pasta options are ofiered for almost every dish. The servers are super friendly and the prices are good. Bargain-priced lunch portions can be ordered any time of the day. The bar has Bristol brews on tap — always a bonus. And Rasta Pasta’s Rum-flambéed, caramelly version of Bananas Foster, called Bananas Marley ($4), is a terrific way to end the meal.
The only place Rasta Pasta skips a beat is in seasonings. Dishes that are marked “hot” are often disappointingly tame. The kitchen is happy to bump up the spice, but the jerk seasoning seems to be dominated by heat, without the savory back beat of other aromatic spices.
A better spice rack would make this already-grooving spot really sing.

Manitou eatery takes French favorite and adds world of flavors.
Anyone expecting to find erudite French refinement at Coquette Creperie, a restaurant that opened late this summer in Manitou Springs, is bound to be surprised. So will those hoping for the simple, economical ham and cheese or Nutella snack crepes served on practically every corner in Paris.

In the folds of these crepes you may find tuna, basmati rice, sweet ricotta or tangy guava paste.

Coquette does Crepes Manitou style. They are diverse, funky and thoroughly enjoyable.

Diners can skip from country to country, sampling crepes like the Latin Lover (chicken with a jumble of zucchini, corn, onion, peppers, tomato, rice, black beans and cotija cheese) or the Cowboy (grilled tri-tip beef, barbecue sauce, black beans, coleslaw and sour cream). The stylish little dining room with an open kitchen and concrete floors also serves breakfast crepes and dessert crepes, plus a full bar with a surprisingly long and eclectic wine list.

The whole endeavor represents a collaboration of eight-year Manitou resident Michelle Marx, her daughter Turu Fleites, and Fleites’ husband, Hiram.

They had been talking about opening a restaurant for years, but the kids were busy with their indie rock group, The Human Value. (Described on the band’s Web site as “a power trio fronted by serpentine vocalist Turu and king of the fuzz-tone guitar Hiram.”) Now, it has happened.

Generally, the results are delightful.

All of Coquette’s thin, chewy crepes are gluten free (made from a mix of rice, potato and tapioca flours instead of wheat). The diverse stuffings are freshly prepared and always interesting.

The Rise and Dine South of the Border Crepe ($9) is stuffed with real scrambled eggs, good hippie chorizo sausage, a touch of Swiss cheese, and a fresh dice of tomato, onion, black beans and a cilantro-packed fresh homemade salsa.

The Monte Cristo ($9) is a lighter version of the classic deep-fried French toast sandwich that still offers the guilty pleasure of ham, Swiss and strawberry jam together.

Dinner crepes also hit the right notes.

The Coquette, a pairing of ham, Swiss, sautéed mushrooms and Dijon-style mustard with a dollop of béchamel, is as close as the restaurant comes to a classic French crepe, and it is delicious.

The Tokyo ($14) is about as far from French as crepes can get. It starts with ruby-pink ahi tuna, barely seared then encrusted in sesame seeds, sliced thin, and topped with steamed rice and sinus-clearing wasabi cream cheese and a light citrus-soy reduction. The finished crepe is lovely to look at, topped with a few squares of tuna and a tussle of seaweed ribbons, but our crepe was dominated by the strong cream cheese.

The Argentinean ($9.50) was another unexpected pairing. Chicken, basmati rice, sliced green olives, tomato and mozzarella came wrapped with a side of chimichurri, and Argentinean lemon and herb sauce usually served with steak. The sauce was great.

So was the citrus-marinated salmon we opted to sub in for $3, but the basmati — usually a light, dry rice — was mushy and dense.

For $2 extra, any of the crepes can be served as a salad or over rice, instead of in a thin pancake bundle. We went that direction with the Argentine and ran up against the fundamental problem of Coquette: the prices.

At $10, the Argentine crepe is a bit pricey to begin with. Add a salad and sub in salmon, and suddenly it costs $14.50. That’s a steep price for a salmon salad with a bit of rice.

Most of the menu suffers the same weakness — it is a bit pricey for what you get.

Nowhere is this more clear than dessert. A simple banana and Nutella crepe was fabulous but was worth $5, not the $7.25 Coquette charges. Bananas Foster in a pool of rum sauce was $8.25. A blintz with sweet ricotta and a choice of fresh preserves (strawberry, blueberry, fig, pumpkin butter) was $6.25. All were delicious but a lot to swallow when the bill came.

TODD WALLINGER
THE GAZETTE

Charles Dickens wrote some of the most beloved novels in the English language. But except for “A Christmas Carol” (sometimes even then), his works have struggled to find effective adaptations.

“Great Expectations” is a case in point. First serialized in 1860, the story follows an orphan named Pip who’s raised by his abusive older sister and her blacksmith husband. Invited to the home of the batty Miss Havisham, he meets and falls in love with a disdainful, upper-class girl named Estella and decides to better himself to win her love.

David Simpich, who adapted the story for his current production, is as skilled a writer as he is a performer. But I think this sprawling 700-page novel was just too much for him. In distilling it into a 90 minute marionette play, he lost much of the charm as well as the sharply drawn characterizations that are Dickens’s greatest strength as an author.

What’s left is a tediously talky story in which nearly every action the characters take seems arbitrary and capricious. It doesn’t help that Dickens made Pip one of literature’s most maddeningly passive protagonists. And, of course, there’s no reason we should root for Pip to get such an unlikable girl.

All of this would be a big show spoiler for me, except that Simpich is such a phenomenal performer. The night I saw him, he gave another one of his flawless performances, juggling marionettes, voices and lights as though it were a walk in Bancroft Park.

Simpich recommends this production for children as young as school age, but I believe it skews older. Kids younger than 12 are likely to find it slow and difficult to understand. Adults, however, may find themselves enjoying it for the artistry behind the strings. Just don’t have any great expectations for the story itself.

“Great expectations” by the simpich
showcase theatre

When: 7 p.m. Fridays, 2:30 p.m. Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays, through Nov. 8

Where: 2413 W. Colorado Ave.

Tickets: $8-$12; 465-2492.

When exploring Colorado Springs taquerias, I always try to uncover some specialty that makes each stand out from the rest.

Often these tiny Mexican restaurants, which spring up in the city’s forgotten strip malls, come and go with little more notice than the immigrant laborers they serve. The menus are often nearly identical. The décor is classic low-rent.

But somewhere on the menu, the good ones offer a dish that showcases not just their home country, but their home state: Oaxacan stuffed aguachiles, Guadalajaran tortas ahogadas, and Sonoran hot dogs.

At Maria’s, it’s Baja-style fish tacos.

The deserts of Baja jut into the Pacific, where big waves crash along the long coast, and tiny shacks in the shadow of giant cactuses often attract lines of surfers and locals with fresh, narrow fish fillets, deep fried and served in a soft corn tortilla with a nest of cabbage, cilantro, crema fresca and maybe a little avocado and lime.

Maria’s does not quite match the regional delicacy. Here, the fresh-caught fish is replaced with farmed catfish, but the batter is light and good, the cabbage is crisp and cool, and at $2 each, the price is right.

“This is why we come here,” a woman holding a plate of fish tacos and wearing smart business attire (a rarity at local taquerias), told me recently.

Beyond the fish tacos, Maria’s stays squarely in the middle of the pack. The asada tacos ($2) had a nice flavor, but the chopped beef lacked the hot, crispy edges that come from sizzling on the grill. Instead, they tasted like they’d been sitting in a hot tray.

Most taquerias in town offer a salsa bar where you can dress your plate. The best, like El Ranchito No. 3, have a spectrum of salsas from brown to green to fiery red, plus lime, onion, and cilantro for sprinkling. At Maria’s, there is no bar, or even salsa offered on the table besides a Tabasco-like bottle of hot sauce.

With some dishes, you don’t notice the absence. Chicken Enchiladas in salsa verde ($5.50) had the piquant, spicy bite of a sauce made from tomatillos and chiles.

Chiles rellenos ($7) came with meaty poblano peppers, with just the right amount of mild, gooey queso blanco inside and a terrific bright tomato and dried-chile sauce.

But other dishes, like the Sopes — two tostadalike mounds of meat, lettuce, cilantro and a drizzle of sour cream-like crema fresca on thick, soft disks of masa corn dough — needed a little extra bite that good salsa could provide.

Beyond the food, Maria’s is mixed. English is spoken very well here, so the linguistically timid who don’t want to point or fumble with their poor Spanish can breath a sigh of relief.

The setting is pretty dreary. The dining room is a Spartan, lightly redecorated version of the dining room that has served two previous taquerias in this location. Though it generally has a steady stream of customers, the room’s collection of chairs and booths has a lonely feeling cast by a loud television that no one seems to be watching. But the room is clean, and the service is friendly.

These are minor quibbles. With a salsa bar to dress up the tacos, Maria’s could easily find itself as one of the city’s favorite authentic taquerias.

MARIA'S TACO SHOP
3 stars out of 5
(Off-the-hook fish tacos)
Address: 2812 E. Pikes Peak Ave.
Phone: 471-4525
Entrees: $5-$7.50
Hours: 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sundays
Vegetarian: Plenty
Alcohol: No
Credit cards: Yes

You've found recipes for the perfect Chinese menu. Now it's time to go shopping:

Bok choy? Check.

Roasted duck? Check.

Bird spit? Huh?

One recipe called for bird spit. Not the kind of spit you'd stab into a hunk of meat for roasting. The kind of spit from the mouth. And someone sells this?

You can find a selection of it at the relatively new 15,000-square-foot Asian Pacific Market at 615 Wooten Road. As you enter the store to the left, you'll find a section devoted to Asian medicines, including the bird spit. A more genteel name is "bird's nest."

To the American palate, this may sound less than palatable. Bird spit is saliva from swiftlets, birds from Southeast Asia.

"The spit is good for cell growth, elderly people, the lungs and pancreas, and for women who want to look attractive," said May Zhou, manager of the grocery store.

It's usually used in soups, both savory and sweet. It's sold at the store in bottles by the six-pack, costing up to $55.

"It's best to drink in the morning," she said. "It keeps you young. Blood bird spit is the most expensive."

It's called blood bird spit because of its reddish color when prepared. Bird spit is only a small part of the huge selection of Asian food and sundry items at the market, including more than 20 brands of rice, more than 50 brands of noodles (fresh, frozen and dried), 15 brands of soy sauce - the list of ingredients, some quite exotic, goes on and on.

The family-owned store got its start in a roundabout way.

"My cousin moved here from New York in 1997," Zhou said. He opened the New Panda restaurant, "and it was because of the expense of buying almond and fortune cookies that they got into the grocery business."

Only a few companies were making fortune cookies, and they found a less-expensive supply.

"He used his garage to store the cookies," she said. "They were selling the cookies out of the garage. Before long, they were buying other Asian foods and selling them to other Asian restaurants. In 1999, they moved to a warehouse that was on Academy behind a Gart's store."

The warehouse, known as Lee Hing, became the main supplier of all things Oriental for Asian restaurants. The business continued to grow and wound up moving to an even larger warehouse on Wooten, with enough space to open a retail section.

"The Chinese and Asian population in Colorado Springs has grown, and this type of market meets a lot of needs," said Mali Hsu, organizer of the Colorado Springs Chinese Cultural Institute. "We had to go to Denver to find many of our Chinese ingredients or I'd wait until I went to California to visit my parents to buy things I missed here."

Now, with the Asian Pacific Market, shopping is much easier for Asians and others searching for Asian ingredients - especially for those looking for the unusual, such as bird spit. The variety of unique and not-so-unique items will amaze you. And the prices, in some cases, are much less expensive than at a regular grocery store. A case of mango costs less than $15. Bing cherries are $2.25 a pound. A whole roasted duck is $15.

Zhou has plans to open a section of the store as a restaurant.

"I'm looking for a dim sum chef," she said. "I hired one from New York, but he went back because it was so cold and dry here."

Store hours are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The roasted ducks and charsiu (barbecue pork) are available only on Saturdays and Sundays. If you have roasted duck on the menu plan on being at the store around 11 a.m. That's when the ducks are coming out of the oven.

"They sell out fast," says Zhou. "They will all be gone before 1."

-

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0271 or teresa.farney@gazette.com

THAI SPICED SHORT RIBS
Yield: 4 servings

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 tablespoon Thai red curry paste
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
4 (1-pound) beef short ribs
1 cinnamon stick (about 2 inches long)
1 cup diced white onions
1 (14-ounce) can reduced-sodium beef broth
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Procedure:
1. Combine oil, garlic, ginger, curry paste, allspice, salt and pepper in a small bowl to make a paste. Rub on ribs.

2. Put ribs, cinnamon, onions and broth into a 4 ½ quart or larger crockpot. Cover and cook until beef is tender, 6 to 7 hours on low or 3 ½ to 4 hours on high. Skim excess fat from broth. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve.

SOURCE: www.recipezaar.com

BIRD NEST SOUP
Yield: 6 servings

3 1/2 ounces bird's nest (dried) aka bird spit
1 large chicken breast (deboned)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
6 cups chicken stock, plus 2 tablespoons, divided
1 tablespoon dry sherry
1/4 cup rich chicken stock
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon salt
2 green onions (minced)
1 tablespoon minced ham (preferably Smithfield)

Procedure:
1. In large bowl, soak bird's nest in cold water overnight. Drain and rinse. Spread softened nest pieces on plate; remove prominent pieces of foreign matter (such as feathers, twigs).

2. Remove membrane and muscle fiber from chicken breast. Using a cleaver handle, pound meat to break down tissue and mince chicken until it is pulp. In mixing bowl, mix cornstarch with 2 tablespoons chicken stock to make medium-thick paste. Set aside.

3. Heat 6 cups chicken stock on high heat until boiling. Immediately add bird's nest and simmer 30 minutes. Mix together sherry and rich chicken stock, and slowly dribble mixture into chicken. With fork, lightly beat egg whites and fold gently into chicken so they are not completely blended.

4. Bring soup back to boil and slowly add chicken stock mixture. Add salt and heat over medium. When soup returns to boil, it's ready to serve in bowls. Garnish with green onions and ham.

SOURCE: www.netcooks.com

CHICKEN BOK CHOY
Yield: 4 servings

MARINADE:
1/2 cup Teriyaki sauce
2 teaspoons chopped raw ginger
1/4 cup whiskey
1 teaspoon brown sugar

GRILLED CHICKEN:
1 pound boneless chicken breasts kosher salt and course ground pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons peanut oil
3 tablespoons sesame oil, divided
4 baby bok choy
8 ounces sliced mushrooms
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3/4 cup chicken broth
1/2 tablespoon chili paste
1 tablespoon chopped pickled ginger
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Procedure:
1. Mix marinade ingredients in a bowl. Pour into a plastic bag and add chicken breasts. Marinate in refrigerator 1 hour.

2. To grill chicken, place marinated chicken on a plate and lightly coat both sides with kosher salt and coarse pepper.

3. Grill 10 minutes on each side, or until cooked through. Dice chicken into bite-size pieces and set aside.

4. For vegetables, add peanut oil and 2 tablespoons sesame oil to 5-quart sauté pan and cook over medium heat. Add mushrooms and cook 10 minutes until they brown slightly. Add garlic and continue cooking, about 1 minute. Add broth, chili paste, pickled ginger and bok choy.

5. Cook 10 minutes. Add remaining 1 tablespoon sesame oil, and salt and pepper to taste.

6. Mix cornstarch into ½ cup cold water until fully dissolved. Push vegetables to one side of the sauté pan, and quickly whisk in cornstarch mixture with the liquid in the pan. Bring heat up to high and continue whisking until mixture thickens.

7. Add diced grilled chicken and serve.

SOURCE: www.cooks.com

VEGAN ASIAN LETTUCE WRAPS
Yield: 4 servings (8-10 wraps)

FOR TOFU:
1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
4 ounces firm tofu
1 tablespoon canola oil

SALAD:
1/2 English cucumber, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup chopped bean sprouts
1/2 teaspoon sliced green onion
3 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1 head lettuce

SAUCE:
1 tablespoon each seasoned rice vinegar and soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon each sesame oil, sesame seeds and sliced green onions

GARNISH: 1/4 cup each chopped basil and cilantro 4 lemon wedges

Procedure:
1. For tofu, mix together rice vinegar and soy sauce. Drain tofu, and marinate in mixture overnight. Chop tofu into tiny bits. Heat oil in wok over medium-high. Cook tofu until browned with crispy edges.

2. For salad, combine cucumber, pepper, sprouts and onion. Add rice vinegar, sesame oil and sesame seeds. Add tofu and toss.

3. Clean lettuce and separate leaves. Combine sauce ingredients.

4. To assemble: Divide salad among lettuce leaves; add dash of sauce to each. Garnish with herbs and squeeze of lemon; roll up.

SOURCE: www.recipezaar.com

Have you been to the Asian Pacific Market on Platte Avenue? It’s the largest Asian market in the area, and believe me, it’s huge – 20,000 square feet!

A large selection of teas and more types of sauces than you’ve ever seen before. Oyster sauce? Check. Hoisin Sauce? Check. Fish sauce? Check. Soy sauce? Check check check. Lots of saucy goodness. If you regularly cook ethnic food, you should really check out the ethnic markets – most things are way cheaper than buying them at WalMart or King Soopers, if you can even find the ingredients you need there.

One caution, however – before you buy a gallon of some sauce you’ve never heard of before because it’s such a good deal, I’d recommend buying a smaller bottle first and making sure you like it. It takes a long time to use up a gallon of sesame oil when you discover you don’t like it! (Right, Elisabeth? ;)

Bargain grocery shoppers will often tell you that great deals can be found at ethnic markets, and the Asian Pacific Market is no exception. I’ve found their produce quality can be somewhat spotty, but if it’s good, it’s probably a pretty good price. Their prices on things like ginger, garlic, bok choy, sprouts, and lots of other stuff I’ve never heard of or used are much cheaper than the normal grocery store. (Unfortunately, I lost my paper that I took note of prices on so I can’t quote specifics.) They sell bell peppers by the pound instead of by the each, so it’s generally a better deal than chain supermarkets.

Last time I was there, they were installing several aisle of freezers for a new frozen food section. I would imagine that’s up and running now.

asian-pacific-market-take-out
Asian Pacific Market also has a small cafe. I haven’t tried any of their food, but it smelled and looked delicious and seemed to be a good price ($3.99/lb).

Never shopped at an ethnic market before? This one is a great place to start! They won Best Ethnic Market in Colorado Springs in the Independent’s Best Of 2008 awards. The employees are very friendly and helpful, and they do speak English well, so don’t be afraid to ask for help!

The Asian Pacific Market is located at 615 Wooten Road, just west of Powers Blvd on Platte Avenue. They’re open 9 AM to 8 PM Monday through Friday and 9 AM to 7 PM on Saturday and Sunday. If you need to contact them, their number is 573-7500 – I couldn’t find a website.

Lee Derr held a tiny yellow songbird in his hand and walked around showing it to 60 schoolkids.

The bird weighs about as much as three pennies, he told them, and he held it close enough to each student’s face that they could see the bird’s pointed beak and even the whiskers that help it feel the insects it eats.

Finally, Derr placed the Wilson’s warbler on its back in a fourth-grader’s hand. The bird was still for a precious second, trying to get its bearings, and then it disappeared in a yellow flash.

But it didn’t get away before it had been measured, recorded, and fitted with a tiny band around its leg.

This is the bird banding station at Chico Basin Ranch, southeast of Colorado Springs. The water and trees at the ranch make it an irresistible oasis on the plains for migrating songbirds as they make their journeys each spring and fall.

And the birds made it an irresistible spot for birders and the scientific endeavors of the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. Thanks to the money and cooperation of the ranch operators, birds have been banded and studied at this spot for about a decade.

So far this fall, the 30 nets that hang in a grove of trees on the northern end of the ranch have brought in a catch of 1,158 birds of 62 species, said Brian Gibbons of the RMBO.

More than half those birds have been Wilson’s warblers like the yellow beauty that Derr was showing off, and the high numbers of young birds tell scientists it was a good breeding year for the birds.

Gibbons said the scientific payoff of the banding station is amorphous, but when the birds migrate might reveal clues about climate change, the number of birds helps ornithologists keep tabs on the dwindling population of songbirds, and banded birds that are recaptured at other banding stations yield information about the birds’ migratory movements.

The banding station also offers a more immediate payoff — the chance to teach school groups about birds first-hand. Derr said well over 1,000 students have come this year, including Wednesday’s troupe of 60 fourth graders who came from Summit Elementary School in Divide for a full day at the ranch’s birding station, corrals and vintage one-room schoolhouse.

The kids started learning the moment they poured off the bus.

“You’re going to be as big as Godzilla to the birds,” Derr told a group of boys. “I need you guys to be absolutely quiet, attentive and still.”

Awed by the tiny creatures before them, the kids were just that. Besides the Wilson’s warbler, they saw a white-crowned sparrow and ruby-crowned kinglet.

“They’re so excited about the trip that they buy in and they’re engaged,” said teacher Angie Keefer.

They learned why the birds migrate, how far they travel, and the theory that they navigate using the stars during night flights. They touched the soft, flexible nets that trap the birds. They asked questions, like “Why do they call them hummingbirds, ‘cause they never hum?”

And they marveled.

“It surprised me how a little bird can do so much,” said Natalie Graber, 9.

DETAILS: Bird Banding

Want to take a field trip to Chico Basin Ranch’s bird banding station next spring? Lee Derr said groups can come for free, or give an optional donation of $1 or $2 per student. Schools, home-school groups, and adult groups are welcome.

The peak periods for migratory songbirds are late April and May in the spring, and September and October in the fall. Individual birders are welcome at the ranch year-round — where 320 species have been spotted — with $15 for a day pass.

La Zingara in Palmer Lake is a perfect example of the old standby — that restaurant, more familiar than fancy — that you end up going to again and again because it is delicious but not too spendy, comfortable, and dependable enough that you know it will deliver for all those minor celebrations that punctuate life, even if the occasion is just that it is Friday.
This is pretty much our go-to place,” a friend told me as we sat down near La Zingara’s fireplace. “It’s just easy and good.”
He and his wife love the pasta dishes, and the servers never bat an eye when the kids order spaghetti and meatballs with the sauce in a separate bowl and the meatballs solo on their own saucer.
La Zingara did not start out as a go-to place. Three years ago, it opened as a northern outpost of Old Colorado City’s popular Paravicini’s Italian Bistro, but it never quite attracted the crowds of Paravicini’s.
“Palmer Lake has a different crowd,” said co-owner Ted Sexton. “It is both old and younger. There are more families. At Paravicini’s on a Saturday night you see lots of people on dates. You never see that here.”
So in Palmer Lake the owners started tweaking the menu to suit the customers. Families wanted pizza, they gave them pizza. The sales volume was not high enough for seafood items like lobster bisque and cod, so they gave them the hook. Finally, a year ago, the restaurant was so different that the owners realized it deserved a different name, and La Zingara was born.
The restaurant still boasts many dishes that make Paravicini’s one of the best Italian restaurants in town.
The simple penne with vodka sauce ($10) is a case in point. The chef starts by sizzling thick chunks of salty prosciutto in a skillet with garlic and oil, then douses the pan with vodka, lets it simmer, and adds fresh, bright marinara and a generous pour of cream. The result is rich, complex and generous — a great meal for the price, and one reason Zingara is an old standby.
Another is the linguini and clams ($17). Zingara uses quarter-size, fresh East Coast clams. “That’s where all the flavor comes from,” Sexton said. “When you cook the fresh clams, they open up and let out all their juices.”
The result is a fantastic mix of white wine, garlic, red pepper and tender clams ready to be plucked from their shells.
Baked pasta fares well here, too. The handmade ravioli ($12) come stuffed with four cheeses, topped with a steaming, hearty mantle of meaty Bolognese sauce, and crowned with a generous scoop of rich, creamy ricotta.
The only speed bump we hit on the road to understanding why so many Palmer Lakers hold La Zingara in old-standby esteem was the pizza. We ordered the Piccante ($8.75), which came topped with sausage and portobello mushrooms. The meat was real coins of spicy Italian sausage cut in the back. The meaty chunks of portobello and thick, molten layer of mozzarella gave the pie real heft, but the crust had a dead sponginess I was sure came from a frozen, pre-made product.
Sexton says no, the dough is handmade. If so, it needs work.
But the tiramisu that followed was undoubtably fresh, with fluffy layers of sweet whipped cream and espressodipped lady fingers. As we scraped the dish with our spoons, my friend admitted that in all his visits he had never ordered dessert, preferring to go to the ice cream shop across the street. But that may have to change now, he said.

Since 1972, Sandy’s Restaurant has been the place on the edge of Colorado Springs, where two lonely prairie highways meet, and ranchers sip coffee and talk cattle after a trip into town.
A lot has changed over the decades. Sandy’s is now surrounded by defense contractors and an Air Force base instead of wind-tusseled grass. Its lonely bend in the road has been renamed Space Village Avenue. But some things are the same.
Last week at lunch, two men in white straw cowboy hats talked for over an hour in the sunny parking lot while leaning over the bed of a pickup. One still had his spurs on and a saddled buckskin horse waiting patiently in his trailer. When I asked what was good, both said the cheeseburger.
Inside, I grabbed a booth next to more guys in boots and worn jeans (as well as several in Air Force dress), and surveyed the classic country diner. Sandy’s has a long counter at the back, booths lining the wood-paneled walls, which are decorated with parts of old wagons and, yes, a portrait of John Wayne, and three long tables in the middle, labeled the “Liar’s Table,” “Wannabee’s Table” and the “Trucker’s Table,” where various cabals of regulars slurp cofiee and digest the world’s problems.
“So what?” a friend I dragged along said. “I’ve been to rancher hangouts before. They never care if the food is any good.”
I figured he was probably right. Then I tried the chicken noodle soup.
The soup came as a first course for the bacon guacamole burger ($7), which shows up occasionally as a special. I wasn’t expecting much more from either than food service prefab stuff, but the soup was really, truly homemade — big chunks of moist chicken in a bright, flavorful (and not too salty) broth, flecks of fresh parsley, vibrant slices of carrot and celery, and — get this — thick, tender handmade noodles. Who makes their own noodles for a dish that comes free with a hamburger?
I was in love. And the burger that followed — a juicy, hand-formed quarterpound patty topped with guacamole that started with ripe avocados and flnely diced tomatoes, not a bag of bright green citric acid-stabilized goo — cemented the relationship.
Closer inspection of the menu showed lots of other examples of things that no one makes anymore — things that, like the neighborhood around Sandy’s, have been paved over by the modern era. But not here. The bread is homemade. The biscuits are homemade. The onion rings are homemade. The green chili is homemade. Even the corned beef hash — which I think of as the scariest massproduced muck you can legally buy — is homemade. And it’s wonderful.
Rich strands of corned beef are fried with cooked potatoes, onion and a little Cajun spice until they form a delicate and complex conglomerate that is a lovely escort for eggs. It’s all done by hand.
“It’s a pain, but that is just how we’ve always done it,” says Connie Crippen, who bought the place in 2001 and has worked on and off here since she was 13.
Not that Sandy’s doesn’t give a nod to the mass-produced diner milieux. The Hunter’s Sandwich, roast beef and grilled tomatoes and onions grilled between slices of homemade bread, gets a welcome dose of gooey American cheese slices — the perfect cheese for a hot, melty sandwich.
And not that everything homemade at Sandy’s is stupendous. The from-scratch biscuits and gravy had a sauce too thick with flour and what tasted like white pepper, and too thin with sausage.
But in general, the foods that diners find here — the great eggs and home fries, the generous six-egg omelets, the burgers and excellent onion rings — are done the old-fashioned way, which, when it comes to diners, is another way of saying the right way.

“A Place I Call Home” from Creating a Newsense

Style: rootsy jam rock

If you like…Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers Band, Leftover Salmon, Little Feat…then you might like Creating a Newsense

The players: Jason Gilmore (vocals, mandolin, electric guitar), Matt Hollensbe (vocals, bass guitar), Brian Galloway (electric guitar), Joe Johnson (vocals, acoustic guitar), Eric Earley (vocals, drums)

Album vitals: 10 songs, 45 minutes

Bottom line: “If you ain’t drinking boy, you best say goodnight” is a line from the “Black Bear Blues,” and it defines Creating a Newsense. These Manitou scene stalwarts know how to have a good time, and you can join in or go home. From the moment the ramshackle rhythm of the first track (”County Line”) kicks in, you know it’s time to get loose.

What’s to like: Plenty. The band is showing off its rootsier side on this album, and influences from jam bands, southern rock, bluegrass and country flow through Creating a Newsense, and mingle to create their own sound. The lead singer has a rich baritone voice that feels like an old friend, the musicianship is consistently good, and there are some tasty mandolin runs, as they shift easily from the country stomp of “County Line,” to the gospel grace of “Waltzing in the Moonlight,” to the twangy growl of “Train Ride Away.”

What’s not to like: If you long for pop hooks and a clean sound, keep moving. Creating a Newsense’s sound is not fastidious or at all poppy; like most jam bands, they’d rather keep things greasy. Also, the vocals on “Independence Day” and Portrait of Syrie” are noticeably weaker, and bring down the songs.

“Colorado Springs is now the proud possessor of one of the most beautiful Public Library buildings in the West,” began the story in the March 12, 1905, Gazette and Telegraph newspaper.

For its centennial celebration Sunday, the downtown Carnegie Library is finer than ever. A fiveyear, privately funded $3.2 million renovation and restoration project was completed in late 2002. All that remains to be done is landscaping the barren adjacent grounds.

The centennial celebration will be a family event, says Tim Blevins, head of the Pikes Peak Library District’s special collections. “We work with the history of the community. We really want the children involved.”

The most substantive change to the library was the completion of the lower level, which was left unfinished in 1905. Now it’s the library’s genealogical area.

“It was the basement,” Blevins says. “Now it’s been elevated in stature — it’s called the lower level.”

But the transformation of the upper level was just as dramatic. Windows that had been painted over in the 1960s were restored; barriers were removed. It opened vistas that hadn’t been seen in decades.

“They did things we think are horrible, but it saved the building,” says Blevins of the 1960s alter- ations. “It was the time of urban renewal.”

The celebration will offer an opportunity to reacquaint the public with the Hampton Doll Collection, a library exhibit that’s been in storage for years.

Blevins says many visitors to the restored library asked about the dolls, which were on display from 1961 until around 1995. “They wanted to remember what they experienced as a child, and some were disappointed that the dolls weren’t back,” he says.

Now the dolls — collected by Gretchen Hampton from 106 countries — are displayed in several cases upstairs and downstairs.

The doll theme continues Sunday at an “American Girls” tea. “We’re encouraging children to come in costume of the period,” Blevins says. “There will be a drawing for a set of 1905 coins.”

People have flocked to the restored library, which houses the Pikes Peak Library District’s historical and special collections.

“Last year, we exceeded 50,000 visitors to special collections,” Blevins says.

Users were almost equally divided between genealogy and history: “People research the families, and people research their homes,” he says.

Although it’s the city’s grandest Carnegie Library, the downtown library isn’t the oldest. Old Colorado City’s Carnegie Library was completed earlier.

“They beat us by three months,” Blevins says.

For a front-row view of Pueblo Mexican cuisine, grab a table at the recently reincarnated Estela’s Mexican Restaurant, where Pueblo native Susie Mares (Estela is her mother) serves up the Steel City’s classic thick red and green chili to Colorado Springs.
For a front-row view of Pueblo Mexican cuisine, grab a table at the recently reincarnated Estela’s Mexican Restaurant, where Pueblo native Susie Mares (Estela is her mother) serves up the Steel City’s classic thick red and green chili to Colorado Springs.
The first thing you’ll probably notice at Estela’s is that, like most good Pueblo Mexican places, every plate passing by looks almost identical: Whether you order flautas or enchiladas, most dishes are hidden by a steaming veil of chili and topped with a molten ingot of bright yellow cheese.
“How can you even tell which is which?” I asked the server, one of Mares’ nieces, when she brought plates of chiles rellenos, enchiladas and stuffed sopaipillas.
She’s been doing this for a long time, she told me with a smile.
That night, the dining room was packed with folks who loved the original version of Estela’s (1993-2000) and rushed in as soon as the place reopened in July. The recipes go much farther back than that — they come from Mares’ parents’ place in Pueblo, the venerable Mill Stop, which has been drowning dishes in chili for 28 years.
A word about Pueblo chili. The red is not as red as the stuff encountered in New Mexico. It has more fiour, and sometimes oregano and garlic and onion powder, making it more of a cross with gravy. The same is true with the green. While purists in Santa Fe serve a chunky sauce that is little more than green chiles with token shreds of pork, in Pueblo the sauce is often as thick as gravy, pumpkin orange, and loaded with red and green chiles, and huge chunks of pork. An anthropology student could make a fas- cinating study of how the sauce poured out of a melting pot of Hispanic, Eastern European and Italian cultures brought together by work at Pueblo’s steel mills. That’s one thesis I would actually read — if it included recipes.
At Estela’s, the chili is mellow — even more toward the gravy side of the Pueblo spectrum than at places like El Taco Rey and Jorge’s.
The plates it covers are what Mares’ husband, John Morales, calls “good oldfashioned Pueblo American food.”
It’s comfort food. The chicken enchiladas ($9.75) are generously stuffed with lightly seasoned shredded chicken, flooded with chili, and served (like everything) with refried beans and Spanish rice cooked so long and slow in tomatoes and spices that it is almost a porridge.
The pork and avocado burrito is a milder version of the one that people line up for at El Taco Rey or Salsa Latina.
Nothing on the menu will make you sweat. Even the meaty Hatch peppers in the Chile Rellenos ($9.50) are mild.
Instead, the place packs a ton of old school flavor. Most of the employees are family, so service is excellent. Plates are generous. Everything is made from scratch. And every meal ends with free sopaipillas that are the picture of perfection: golden and so hot that steam spews from the hollow centers when you rip them in half, begging for you to cool them with a fresh drizzle of honey.

For a front-row view of Pueblo Mexican cuisine, grab a table at the recently reincarnated Estela’s Mexican Restaurant, where Pueblo native Susie Mares (Estela is her mother) serves up the Steel City’s classic thick red and green chili to Colorado Springs.

The first thing you’ll probably notice at Estela’s is that, like most good Pueblo Mexican places, every plate passing by looks almost identical: Whether you order flautas or enchiladas, most dishes are hidden by a steaming veil of chili and topped with a molten ingot of bright yellow cheese.

“How can you even tell which is which?” I asked the server, one of Mares’ nieces, when she brought plates of chiles rellenos, enchiladas and stuffed sopaipillas.

She’s been doing this for a long time, she told me with a smile.

That night, the dining room was packed with folks who loved the original version of Estela’s (1993-2000) and rushed in as soon as the place reopened in July. The recipes go much farther back than that — they come from Mares’ parents’ place in Pueblo, the venerable Mill Stop, which has been drowning dishes in chili for 28 years.

A word about Pueblo chili. The red is not as red as the stuff encountered in New Mexico. It has more flour, and sometimes oregano and garlic and onion powder, making it more of a cross with gravy. The same is true with the green. While purists in Santa Fe serve a chunky sauce that is little more than green chiles with token shreds of pork, in Pueblo the sauce is often as thick as gravy, pumpkin orange, and loaded with red and green chiles, and huge chunks of pork. An anthropology student could make a fascinating study of how the sauce poured out of a melting pot of Hispanic, Eastern European and Italian cultures brought together by work at Pueblo’s steel mills. That’s one thesis I would actually read — if it included recipes.

At Estela’s, the chili is mellow — even more toward the gravy side of the Pueblo spectrum than at places like El Taco Rey and Jorge’s.

The plates it covers are what Mares’ husband, John Morales, calls “good old-fashioned Pueblo American food.”

It’s comfort food. The chicken enchiladas ($9.75) are generously stuffed with lightly seasoned shredded chicken, flooded with chili, and served (like everything) with refried beans and Spanish rice cooked so long and slow in tomatoes and spices that it is almost a porridge.

The pork and avocado burrito is a milder version of the one that people line up for at El Taco Rey or Salsa Latina.

Nothing on the menu will make you sweat. Even the meaty Hatch peppers in the Chile Rellenos ($9.50) are mild.

Instead, the place packs a ton of old school flavor. Most of the employees are family, so service is excellent. Plates are generous. Everything is made from scratch. And every meal ends with free sopaipillas that are the picture of perfection: golden and so hot that steam spews from the hollow centers when you rip them in half, begging for you to cool them with a fresh drizzle of honey.

Estela’s Mexican Restaurant

**** (4 stars - Pueblo pride)

Address: 925 South 8th St.

Phone: 719-575-0244

Entrees: $5.50-$12

Vegetarian: Cheese enchiladas

Liquor: License pending

Credit Cards: Yes

For all those longtime Manitou Springs residents with “Keep Manitou Weird” bumper stickers, who finger their hemp jewelry in concern whenever The Cliff House is mentioned because the flawlessly restored Four-Diamond Victorian hotel is just a little too normal, relax.
The hotel’s new Red Mountain Bar & Grill serves a rattlesnake, rabbit and venison sausage pizza.
The bar is part of a gorgeous, $1.6 million, three-story addition with a rambling, two-level patio looking out at Manitou’s Red Mountain. Wicker chairs and couches gather around a gas fire pit. On the upper deck, diners have a stunning view of the foothills. It is in the running for the most spectacular place to have a drink in town.
The food ain’t bad, either.
The one-page pub menu offers appetizers, sandwiches and small pizzas. Besides the aforementioned rattlesnake and rabbit, there are few surprises, good or bad.
The kitchen does good work with ubiquitous pub grub, like hot wings ($7), and fish and chips ($8). Sometimes pub fish can be greasy. Here the batter was light and crisp.
Done just as well was the Southwest chicken sandwich — again, something that lurks on a lot of menus — but here it came on lightly toasted sourdough with mild jalapeño slivers, a homemade cilantro chipotle mayonnaise and fresh, ripe avocado slices instead of the standard premade guacamole product.
The steak sandwich ($11) is also a cut above. Usually, the steak reserved for steak sandwiches is pretty bleak. Here it is a tender, 6-ounce New York strip, served open-faced with sweet grilled onion and a rich, tomatotinged take on Bearnaise called Choron sauce.
Even small things, like the potato wedges served with most sandwiches, or the tempura vegetable appetizer ($6) are tasty and well-executed.
Not everything rises to this level. While the beer list is long and the wine list looks like a phone book, there are no beers on tap, the prices for bottles seem high ($7.50 for a Stella Artois, anyone?), and the wine-by-the-glass options are few and somewhat dull.
The buffalo sliders ($8) are part of a sinister trend on restaurant menus. Once relegated only to places like White Castle, these sets of tiny burgers are now in trendy restaurants everywhere (Ritz Grill and Nosh both have them). My theory is that it allows them to charge more while serving less meat. Either way, the sliders at Red Mountain — decked out with bacon, cheese, and barbecue sauce — did not rise much above the level of fast food.
The bar, which seems tantalizingly close and inviting from the street, requires an anti-climactic hike from the front door down a narrow hallway. The hotel manager tells us that direct access to the new bar and grill is a security issue his team is working on.
And, I hate to say this, but the rabbit, rattlesnake and venison sausage pizza is only a small step above frozen pizzas.
The crust is thin and unremarkable. The sauce is thick, pasty and dominated by what tastes like too much sage. And the sausage — well, as appealing as it is to have predator and prey ground into the same minced meat, the results hardly justify the $16 price for a 10-inch pie. I suppose the value is more in saying you did it than in actually doing it.
The same is not true for Red Mountain. If you want to grab a drink and a light bite at a place that offers some of the best of Manitou (history, views) without the worst (a stubborn resistance to credit cards), step right in.

Quick, think of a local restaurant with an extensive, creative beer and wine list, a delectable small menu of sandwiches, salads and a few entrees, shady al fresco tables along the street and (the Holy Grail of urban dining) ample free parking.
Chances are you are not thinking of Black Tie Gourmet, the little catering company on West Colorado Avenue that for five years has also operated a small deli, but you’ll find all this and more at this easily overlooked little eatery.
Owner and chef Derek Howard recently changed the name of the deli to Terrazza Grill and gave the menu a slightly Mediterranean makeover.
Most of Howard’s business is still in catering, but Terrazza shows he can also run a mean cafe.
The inside of this west-side house is cheery but a little cramped. The best advice is to take advantage of the shady street-side dining while the weather is still warm.
At lunch you can’t go wrong with the Black Tie Burger ($7.25), a half-pound of juicy, ground round that’s hand-formed and cooked to pink perfection, then served with good, gooey cheddar on a sturdy, chewy ciabatta roll. We dressed it up with bacon and avocado from the deli menu.
Just as good, and generously proportioned, is the Grilled Pesce Insalata ($11), a fillet of blackened tuna or salmon set in a wreath of spring greens with cucumber, olives, tomato, egg, avocado, sprouts and sun-dried cranberries. The heaping salad almost spills over the plate.
Deli sandwiches — such as the Bistecca Panini ($9), with sliced, medium-rare roast beef and provolone with roasted peppers, black olives, lettuce, onion, tomato and pesto mayo on grilled ciabatta — all use Thumann’s all-natural meat, and you can taste the quality. Too often roast beef cold cuts bear only passing resemblance to the real thing. Here they taste unmistakably like an expertly cooked steak.
Dinner is where the biggest changes have come — and where the restaurant has the most potential and the most challenges.
The menu is new, and consists of a dozen or so bistro-style choices, including steak, shrimp and sea bass.
The tables are flawlessly set, and the glassware has the simple elegance that lets diners know they could be in for a treat once they order.
The wine list includes more than 40 reasonably priced and interesting bottles ($21-$43), all available by the glass. Terrazza also offers an extensive list of good bottled beers.
A fabulous way to get a taste for the restaurant would be a few glasses of sauvignon blanc on the patio with an order of the mussels ($8.95) in a classic French garlic, shallot and white wine sauce. These are not the big, mealy, green-lipped mussels flown in from the Pacific, but smaller, darker Atlantic mussels — and they’re wonderful.
Dinner entrees proved not as consistently impressive. Some dishes delighted. Veal Picatta ($12.95) — with tender, pounded veal cutlets in a bright lemon and caper sauce — was excellent. The small dinner salad that accompanies each entree was an enticing mix of spring greens with fresh vegetables.
But a pepper steak ($14.95) with a brandy glaze had too much flavor, and a sea bass fillet ($14.95) too little.
Most disappointing was that all dishes came with the same two sides: blanched green beans with almonds, and fettuccine with marinara sauce — both were fairly good but left me feeling as if I were at a banquet, not a fairly nice restaurant.
Terrazza Grill can survive in the same kitchen as a catering business, but only if the catering side does not show in the dining room.

The window-side tables at The Sunbird Restaurant fill quickly with diners hungry for a sweeping view of the city. When we visited for the champagne brunch buffet recently, the only seat a friend and I were able to get was one row back from the glass.
People like to look down on things, my friend said as she spread her napkin in her lap. It’s why huge SUVs were so popular. In a way, the Sunbird is a lot like a huge SUV. It is great for big parties and big impressions, but somewhat clumsy and, in certain circumstances, impractical. Its greatest asset is sheer volume.
This is most evident at brunch.
The Sunbird perches on the edge of a sandstone mesa above Interstate 25 with several dining rooms walled in glass to make best use of the view (which, unfortunately, is ffrst of the ever-widening interstate, then a warehouse district, then the city’s leafy, diffuse downtown).
The brunch selections take up two full rooms, starting with an elegant carving table with tender, pink prime rib and delicious ham, then winding through eggs Benedict and fat sausage links, a waffe station, salmon roulade stuffed with spinach and goat cheese, London broil in a tangy green peppercorn sauce, enchiladas, a tangle of crab legs perched on ice, and a swarm of shrimp, mussels, soup and salad before ending at a gang of cakes and fruit arranged around a fountain of chocolate.
There is an omelet, pasta and fajita bar. Servers come around refilling slender glasses with champagne or mimosas. As the menu says, “The only thing we overlook is the city.”
There are some real delights on the line. The king crab legs taste fresh and succulent. The prime rib is expertly medium rare. Even some sleepers deep in the phalanx of chaffing dishes shine, such as very good pork tamales in a tart, vibrant New Mexico-style red chili.
But like all assembly lines, this one tends to stress consistency and output over creativity and quality. The whipped cream tastes like a highly stabilized whipped dairy product. The cantaloupe was stubbornly starchy, even though it is the height of Rocky Ford season. Madeto-order veggie omelets had the overbearing oiliness of cheap, takeout lo mein.
Still, brunch is a success. Where else can you get all this and a bottomless glass of champagne (with or without a view) for $28?
Dinner is where the SUV feels a little clumsy.
The best way to understand it is the wine case that greets diners as they walk in. The tall, glass-and-dark-wood affair is elegantly formal, but inside, the labels tend toward big, familiar labels such as Clos du Bois and Kendall-Jackson.
Dinner is the same. It is white tablecloths and candles, but the selections are so familiar they give you the idea no one is putting in the effort to offer creative, distinctive choices.
There is fillet mignon ($26) and shrimp scampi ($20). There is Salmon Oscar ($20) and rotating chef ’s specials, such as rack of lamb ($28).
There are some very good options, such as cornmeal-crusted calamari ($8) or a great beer cheese soup ($5), which manages to be rich without falling into the trap of being thick and gloppy, and which has a wonderful range of ffavors.
But too many things hit the table with a yawn. Almost every meal has the same two sides: mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables, which consist of a spear of asparagus, a carrot and a frond of broccoli. It immediately feels like banquet food, which, since Sunbird does a swift wedding-reception business, is probably the kitchen’s focus.
Sunbird would be a great place for a wedding reception. The view and restaurant are gorgeous. The food is consistent and pretty good. But for anyone looking for a spot for an intimate, special dinner, this place is a little too large.

It is almost impossible to open the door of Carlos' Bistro.

Owner Carlos Echeandia or his wife, Marcia, always seem to do it for you.

They give a genuine smile of welcome, usher diners through a realm of rich smells as steaming plates of lamb in a champagne balsamic reduction or skewers of thumb-size grilled shrimp pass by, and offer a cozy table and a simple, irresistible menu.

Carlos returns to the table several times, his tie flung over his shoulder in trademark style, to ask in his deep, rich Peruvian accent whether "everything is fabulous."

Walter's Bistro is almost a mirror image. Owner Walter Iser takes your coat, glides through the dining room in a starched shirt and pleated pants, extolling the lobster bisque to one table, quietly moving a candle out of the way at another.

He answers the phone. He clears plates. He is somehow everywhere, in every room, making sure everything is impeccable. Two men. Two excellent bistros.

Both with the same recipe for greatness: close personal attention. Whether they realize it or not, each is doing his best to reverse an almost universal trend in restaurants: the meaningless apostrophe.

The tiny mark that once denoted ownership has, instead, become a sure sign that a place is a faceless chain - usually a not very good one.

Think Chili's, Applebee's, T.G.I. Friday's, and of course, McDonald's. All are corporate concepts with no flesh behind the possessive nouns. Walter and Carlos, on the other hand, make strides to put real ownership - even love - back in apostrophes.

"I have a lot of passion for service," Carlos told me. "I think hospitality is the first step toward success. After all, all humans love attention."

Of course, a competent kitchen doesn't hurt either.

And both bistros have one.

The restaurants are remarkably similar.

Both straddle the edge of the Broadmoor ZIP code.

Both have owners who have spent years at other local eateries (Walter: Garden of the Gods Club; Carlos: Marigold Cafe).

Both have short, simple menus stocked with sophisticated versions of beef, chicken, lamb and fish. Both have premium prices to match. But most important, both have owners who are in the dining room nearly every day doing their best. "I'm here most of the time - mostly because I just love it," Walter said.

"It goes both ways. The customer loves it when you know them. And they become friends, so I enjoy it." Walter's is a study in traditional fine dining.

The room is lined with formal banquettes.

The tablecloths are a stylish shade darker than white. The food, prepared by chef Greg Champagne, is classic continental.

Lobster bisque ($10), a plain but labor-intensive dish, is on the menu every day, and so brimming with fresh lobster taste that sipping a spoonful is like being backhanded by Maine.

An appetizer of prosciutto-wrapped quail ($12), topped with a delicate violet and microgreen boutonniere, hides a sweet, crunchy center of dried dates and celery. Dinner is just as good.

A classic pan-roasted Half a Chicken ($23) resting on a pedestal of sausage-wild mushroom bread pudding had a skin so rich and crackly you could almost shatter it with a spoon.

Search for weaknesses, you won't find them.

The wild salmon ($27) is fresh, perfectly cooked and comes paired with an unexpected, seet butternut squash sauce.

Even the onion rings that come with the Bison Strip Steak ($29) have innards that somehow manage to not slither out of the breading at the first bite - a tough trick.

Make no mistake, diners pay for perfection. Walter's inhabits the top floor of the Colorado Springs restaurant prices.

But it has neighbors on that floor that are just as pricey and not as good.

One of the few that can stand up is Carlos'.

It, too, serves a classic bistro menu. Carlos is justifiably known for his fish. There is no set species on the menu.

Whatever is fresh is what he serves.

Sometimes it's mahi-mahi with walnut pesto swimming in a red pepper buerre blanc.

Sometimes it's escolar pan-fried in panko crumbs. Rarely is it anything short of exceptional.

After one bite of mahi with a crisp veneer from a hot skillet and an intense, light, flaky flesh, I was ready to name Carlos' the best place for seafood in the city. A half-dozen briny Chesapeake oysters only confirmed it.

Carlos comes to almost every table to explain the nightly specials.

His deeply inflected, passionate pitches are so compelling I would probably order fried raccoon from the guy.

On a recent night, the special was a lobster salad: fresh mixed greens, warm, floral goat cheese, pine nuts, grapefruit wedges and a scattering of homemade pistachio brittle sprinkled in a lovely fresh tarragon dressing and topped with a grilled half lobster tail.

I've had a lot of bad lobster in Colorado Springs.

Some that was frozen too long. Some that should have been. At Carlos', you can count on fresh, juicy crustacean.

Terrestrial selections are just as good.

The Colorado lamb ($36) in a champagne balsamic reduction strikes a perfect balance. The meat is fiavorful but not gamey, and supremely tender. If any lamb rack is worth almost $40, it's this one.

A let mignon ($37) was so tender you could almost eat it with a spoon, and set in a pool of reduction redolent with the oak accents of good brandy.

To find criticisms of either bistro is to truly nitpick - a dull wine-by-the-glass list at Walters, tables and chairs too chintzy for the prices at Carlos'. If there is a weak point at both, it is hit-or-miss desserts.

Both serve up delights. Carlos' chocolate bread pudding is something I could eat for every meal.

Walter's apple walnut strudel ($7) has the right blend of sweet and spice.

But Walter's sorbet tastes overly sweet and mass produced. Carlos' crepes change constantly, and sometimes waiters don't mention when one is full of bananas.

These are minor sour notes in otherwise brilliant performances by culinary conductors who know that, first and foremost, if a restaurant bears someone's name, that person should be there, working to make it great.

WALTER'S BISTRO
**** (Elegance with ease)
Address: 146 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. Phone: 630-0201
Hours: Lunch 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Mondays-Fridays; dinner 5:30 p.m.-close Mondays-Saturdays; bar menu 2 p.m.-close Mondays-Saturdays. Entrees: $10-$36
Vegetarian: Yes
Liquor: Full bar
Plastic: Yes

It is almost impossible to open the door of Carlos' Bistro.

Owner Carlos Echeandia or his wife, Marcia, always seem to do it for you.

They give a genuine smile of welcome, usher diners through a realm of rich smells as steaming plates of lamb in a champagne balsamic reduction or skewers of thumb-size grilled shrimp pass by, and offer a cozy table and a simple, irresistible menu.

Carlos returns to the table several times, his tie flung over his shoulder in trademark style, to ask in his deep, rich Peruvian accent whether "everything is fabulous."

Walter's Bistro is almost a mirror image. Owner Walter Iser takes your coat, glides through the dining room in a starched shirt and pleated pants, extolling the lobster bisque to one table, quietly moving a candle out of the way at another.

He answers the phone. He clears plates. He is somehow everywhere, in every room, making sure everything is impeccable. Two men. Two excellent bistros.

Both with the same recipe for greatness: close personal attention. Whether they realize it or not, each is doing his best to reverse an almost universal trend in restaurants: the meaningless apostrophe.

The tiny mark that once denoted ownership has, instead, become a sure sign that a place is a faceless chain - usually a not very good one.

Think Chili's, Applebee's, T.G.I. Friday's, and of course, McDonald's. All are corporate concepts with no flesh behind the possessive nouns. Walter and Carlos, on the other hand, make strides to put real ownership - even love - back in apostrophes.

"I have a lot of passion for service," Carlos told me. "I think hospitality is the first step toward success. After all, all humans love attention."

Of course, a competent kitchen doesn't hurt either.

And both bistros have one.

The restaurants are remarkably similar.

Both straddle the edge of the Broadmoor ZIP code.

Both have owners who have spent years at other local eateries (Walter: Garden of the Gods Club; Carlos: Marigold Cafe).

Both have short, simple menus stocked with sophisticated versions of beef, chicken, lamb and fish. Both have premium prices to match. But most important, both have owners who are in the dining room nearly every day doing their best. "I'm here most of the time - mostly because I just love it," Walter said.

"It goes both ways. The customer loves it when you know them. And they become friends, so I enjoy it." Walter's is a study in traditional fine dining.

The room is lined with formal banquettes.

The tablecloths are a stylish shade darker than white. The food, prepared by chef Greg Champagne, is classic continental.

Lobster bisque ($10), a plain but labor-intensive dish, is on the menu every day, and so brimming with fresh lobster taste that sipping a spoonful is like being backhanded by Maine.

An appetizer of prosciutto-wrapped quail ($12), topped with a delicate violet and microgreen boutonniere, hides a sweet, crunchy center of dried dates and celery. Dinner is just as good.

A classic pan-roasted Half a Chicken ($23) resting on a pedestal of sausage-wild mushroom bread pudding had a skin so rich and crackly you could almost shatter it with a spoon.

Search for weaknesses, you won't find them.

The wild salmon ($27) is fresh, perfectly cooked and comes paired with an unexpected, seet butternut squash sauce.

Even the onion rings that come with the Bison Strip Steak ($29) have innards that somehow manage to not slither out of the breading at the first bite - a tough trick.

Make no mistake, diners pay for perfection. Walter's inhabits the top floor of the Colorado Springs restaurant prices.

But it has neighbors on that floor that are just as pricey and not as good.

One of the few that can stand up is Carlos'.

It, too, serves a classic bistro menu. Carlos is justifiably known for his fish. There is no set species on the menu.

Whatever is fresh is what he serves.

Sometimes it's mahi-mahi with walnut pesto swimming in a red pepper buerre blanc.

Sometimes it's escolar pan-fried in panko crumbs. Rarely is it anything short of exceptional.

After one bite of mahi with a crisp veneer from a hot skillet and an intense, light, flaky flesh, I was ready to name Carlos' the best place for seafood in the city. A half-dozen briny Chesapeake oysters only confirmed it.

Carlos comes to almost every table to explain the nightly specials.

His deeply inflected, passionate pitches are so compelling I would probably order fried raccoon from the guy.

On a recent night, the special was a lobster salad: fresh mixed greens, warm, floral goat cheese, pine nuts, grapefruit wedges and a scattering of homemade pistachio brittle sprinkled in a lovely fresh tarragon dressing and topped with a grilled half lobster tail.

I've had a lot of bad lobster in Colorado Springs.

Some that was frozen too long. Some that should have been. At Carlos', you can count on fresh, juicy crustacean.

Terrestrial selections are just as good.

The Colorado lamb ($36) in a champagne balsamic reduction strikes a perfect balance. The meat is fiavorful but not gamey, and supremely tender. If any lamb rack is worth almost $40, it's this one.

A let mignon ($37) was so tender you could almost eat it with a spoon, and set in a pool of reduction redolent with the oak accents of good brandy.

To find criticisms of either bistro is to truly nitpick - a dull wine-by-the-glass list at Walters, tables and chairs too chintzy for the prices at Carlos'. If there is a weak point at both, it is hit-or-miss desserts.

Both serve up delights. Carlos' chocolate bread pudding is something I could eat for every meal.

Walter's apple walnut strudel ($7) has the right blend of sweet and spice.

But Walter's sorbet tastes overly sweet and mass produced. Carlos' crepes change constantly, and sometimes waiters don't mention when one is full of bananas.

These are minor sour notes in otherwise brilliant performances by culinary conductors who know that, first and foremost, if a restaurant bears someone's name, that person should be there, working to make it great.

CARLOS' BISTRO
**** (Unpretentious excellence)
Address: 1025 S. 21st St. Phone: 471-2905
Hours: Lunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Mondays-Fridays; dinner 5-9 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays.
Entrees: $19-$38
Vegetarian: Yes
Liquor: Full bar
Plastic: Yes

Dogtooth Coffee Co. looks like one of those impossibly picturesque artists’ renderings that architects use to show what a building will look like when it is done.
Outside, cyclists and dog walkers crisscross on the sun-dappled Shooks Run Trail, which runs right past the cafe’s garden patio.

Inside, old friends chat over lattes in comfy chairs under good light, students devour Wi-Fi in the glow of their laptops, kids press their faces against the cool glass of the ice cream case. There are books and magazines to peruse. There is a vegetable garden out back that belongs to the apartment above.

In short, it is a well-loved community hub. The whole mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly thing might as well be ripped from a new urbanism textbook. It’s almost creepy how pleasant it is.

And the food ain’t too bad, either.

The little cafe is tucked in the quiet, leafy streets of century-old houses in Colorado Springs’ Patty Jewett neighborhood. Husband and wife Amy and Mark Kalmus opened Dogtooth in 2006 very close to where Amy grew up.
They started by serving just coffee. Now, they offer a lunch menu of soups and sandwiches, homemade gelato, and a smattering of breakfast dishes.

Lunch is the best bet. Most sandwiches come on a thin but robust ciabatta, perfectly grilled until it is both crispy and chewy. Pair that ciabatta with thinly sliced roast beef, sautéed red onions, gooey Swiss, a dose of potent horseradish, warm dipping broth, and chips and a pickle on the side ($7.60), and you have a dynamite sandwich au jus.

Just as good is the pollo speziato: more of that perfect ciabatta stuffed with chicken breast, marinated tomatoes, feta cheese and a delectable, better-than-pesto basil mayo.

There are some dogs on the menu, too. The BLT, which, when done right, is perhaps the world’s perfect sandwich, came with wimpy strips of bacon and a starchy pink wheel of what food-service purveyors try to pass off as tomatoes. As a gardener reveling in August, I’m not convinced any restaurant serves a tomato worth eating. Dogtooth adds guacamole for richness, but it doesn’t help. And all the sandwiches are hurt by an escort of a sour, flaccid pickle spear.

Fortunately, you can top off even a disappointing sandwich with an array of spectacular gelatos ($3 each). Gelato, which I thought for a long time was just ice cream served with an extremely small spoon, is, in fact more of a frozen custard. It generally uses less cream and more eggs, making it lower in fat than most ice cream. Not that you would ever know. A dish of chocolate hazelnut or Dulce de Leche is as rich as any Ben & Jerry’s.

The coffee at Dogtooth is a shade less than fantastic. A bottomless cup is a steal at $1.15, and the place has a full range of good hot and cold espresso drinks, but I have yet to fall in love with any of its straight beans. I even bought a pound of the Ethiopian and brewed it at home, but there was no romance.

Breakfast is more limited than lunch. Dogtooth serves up bagels and pastries, including a good cherry almond scone ($2.50) from Alpine Bakery, but the one hot item on the menu, breakfast tacos, disappoint. The tiny preassembled bundles of flour tortilla with egg and a choice of potato, sausage or bacon, are bland and too small to justify the $2 price tag. A larger burrito or sandwich that showed some of the flair of lunch would probably be a hit with the picturesque regulars who pack the place every morning.

Clearly, locals are showing the place some love. Now, it’s time to give some back with better bacon and stepped-up coffee.

Anyone who has ever sat in one of the few seats at King's Chef at 110 E. Costilla St. has learned to love the large plates of food smothered in superhot green chili. That chili is bottled by its creator, Gary Geiser, who also owns the well-known diner that looks like a little castle. And if you like that green chili on your food, you can buy a bottle of it there to take home. It's a recipe Geiser has honed over time, and if you talk to him about it, you'll find out he's pretty picky about the chiles he uses.

"When I bought the diner in 1997, customers told me right away that I needed to change the chili recipe," he said. "So, I said, OK."

The big complaints were that the chili was too thin and not hot enough. Over the years he figured out how to "roux it up," he says of the thickening mixture he adds. It's a very simple recipe of basically canned green chiles, tomatoes, spices and his secret ingredient: habanero chiles.

"I turn up the heat with habaneros," he said, which are one of the world's hottest chiles.

"I'm very picky about the quality of the habaneros I buy. They have to be the right size and heat."

The green napalm caught the attention of one of his regulars, Chris Miller, a chef at Whole Foods Markets. "Chris told me I should get the chili into Whole Foods," Geiser said, "I said OK."

Since Geiser had already been bottling small batches of his Chef Green Chili with Extreme Habanero Flavor, he had a leg up on FDA rules for processing, labeling and selling the product to the public. But he had never bottled a product to sell in grocery stores, and he wasn't prepared for the volume he would have to produce.

"I was looking for kitchen space where I could handle the huge orders I needed to guarantee to get a contract with Whole Foods," he said.

He had already been thinking about expanding his restaurant with a second location. The interest in his green chili led him to open a second store at 131 E. Bijou St., the former home of Big City Burrito, in July.

"It was great to get the larger kitchen and have more restaurant space, too," he said.

He got to work making large batches of the chili, and the bottles hit Whole Foods Markets in September. It was almost an overnight success.

"I couldn't believe how customers were liking it," he said about the introductory tasting held at the North Academy Whole Foods. "Women were especially liking it. They would drink a sample and ask for a second and then pick up a jar to take home."

Keep in mind, this stuff is so hot that when customers in his restaurant order it, the servers ask if they have had it before. If not, the servers insist they take a small sample, to be sure they can handle the heat.

As popular as his hot green chili has been, he had requests for a milder version. So Geiser set out to find the best-flavored mild green chile to use as the base of a new chili mixture to sell alongside the hotter version. Miller steered him to Pueblo to meet with Shane Milberger, owner of Milberger Farms, who supplies produce to Whole Foods Markets and supplies several Pueblo restaurants with his roasted green chiles.

Milberger, who grows the chiles, has six chile roasters at his farm that use a method to steam the pods once they are roasted. Steaming quickly removes the skins. Geiser visited the farm, and after sniffing and tasting a batch of the chiles, told Milberger that he thought the peppers needed to be roasted longer.

Though Milberger agreed to a longer roasting time, he warned, "When you roast chiles longer than 15 minutes, you will lose more water from the pods and be paying more per pound."

Geiser understood the economics, but still in his picky way, wanted the longer roast for several reasons:

"I like the flavor of the deeper roast, and it will break down the chiles more so I won't have to cook them as long once I start processing them."

After more back-and-forths, Geiser and Miller walked away with 30 pounds of deeply roasted green chiles.

Back in the Bijou Street kitchen, the two started chopping chiles and dicing onions and garlic. They decided that for their first test batch of mild-flavored chili, they would leave the seeds in. However, after tasting the end result, they decided the seeds added too much heat to qualify for mild chili. The next batch would have almost no seeds, but still had a nice spicy flavor. The new King's Chef Mild Green Chili formula was perfected. The new product was introduced to Whole Foods Market on Oct. 11 and sales of both versions have been brisk.

"The hot has been doing very well as well as the mild," Miller said. "On the Saturday the mild was introduced, we sold five cases during the demo."

"Whole Foods customers have gone crazy over the King's Chef bottled green chili sauce," said Jan Mowle, marketing director for the store. "The Habanero has already sold more than 370 units."

Customers are happy about the introduction of the mild green chili.

"We introduced the mild version with Gary here on Saturday during our Fall Festival and the customers loved it," Mowle said. "Many had not heard about King's Chef diner downtown and were excited that the chili was being made locally and that they could buy the mild version. Many commented that it was the best mild green chili they ever had."

Miller added, "They (customers) love it and are very glad that we carry it so they can get it in the north side of town."

To keep up with the demand for the mild green chili, Geiser has worked out a deal with Milberger to get 300 pounds of roasted chiles each month. The mild green chili is sold only at Whole Foods Markets for now. But you can still buy the hot green chili by the jar at the two King's Chef restaurants.

From Colorado Highway 94, Corral Bluffs doesn’t look like much, a gentle rise above the rolling prairie, lower or similar in elevation to the Waste Management landfill just to the east.

“I think I’ve seen this place before on my way to the dump,” said Dave Ryan, riding in a line of cars snaking across the grasslands on a recent Saturday.

But what appears to be just another roll in the prairie is actually one of the Pikes Peak region’s most important geological and archaeological features, a landscape of canyons, washouts, high bluffs and overlooks with views that seem to stretch forever.

Last year, El Paso County nearly made it a dirt bike park, a controversial prospect that galvanized opposition and paved the way for the Colorado Springs Trails and Open Space and Parks program to buy the land. Now, the public is getting a chance to explore it.

Sort of.

TOPS officials don’t know when Corral Bluffs will open to the public, but the city is allowing the citizens’ group Corral Bluffs Alliance to host guided tours this summer and fall.

A study commissioned by El Paso County showed that the bluffs area has been used by humans for centuries — from hunters in 6200 B.C. to 19th-century cowboys who corralled cattle there on the way to Denver’s stockyards — and the city won’t come up with a master plan for the area until more archaeological and paleontological studies being done of the area are complete.

The TOPS program, funded through a voter-approved sales tax, paid $1 million last fall for 522 acres that make up the heart of Corral Bluffs.

“I get the sense people are anxious to get in here. They would like to get in and see what they can find and see the scenery,” said Phyllis Cahill, a group member who led a hike July 11.

That hike, like the others the group has offered, was full. Eight more are planned through October. They are free and open to the public, but reservations are required.

“I’m always interested in finding new places to go and this seemed like a good one,” said hiker Tom O’Bryan. “We go hiking in the mountains quite often and it’s nice to go somewhere different.”

“I just thought this was an opportunity to see something new and it’s beautiful. It’s so exquisite, and I’m just so glad the city saved it,” said Cyndi Deswik, of Woodland Park.

“I’m always amazed at the beauty that’s right here on the plains,” she said.

As hikes in Colorado go, this is easy, short and dry. So why was Cahill wearing gaiters?

“Those are for snakes. I’ll be going first,” she said, as the group prepared to head from the already constructed trailhead into the prairie.

Sure enough, within 10 minutes, a rattlesnake forced the group to take a detour. Later, another delay occurred when a boy fell into a cactus.

The hike was about two miles, through a dry creek bed where layers of rock are exposed, up a cactus- and yucca-filled hillside to a bluff with long views and back down to a rounded canyon that American Indians may have used as a buffalo jump, luring buffalo over the side to kill them. The walk took about two hours.

During a hike in June, hikers found two arrowheads, which they had to leave since no one among them was an archaeologist, Cahill said.

Because such artifacts may be scattered around the bluffs, city officials say they won’t know what shape recreation will take until the scientific studies are complete.

“I would say this open space is quite unique from our other open spaces and parks,” said Chris Lieber, TOPS program director. “We know we have very fragile soils out there and paleontological and archaeological value, perhaps in higher concentrations than we have had in other properties. We want to be good stewards of that resource.”

Lieber expects to have public meetings later this year and a master plan for the open space done in the spring of 2010. He said he does not know when it will be open to the public. Since it has not been public land, there are few trails, and volunteers would be needed to build them.

Lee Milner, a member of the TOPS Working Committee who fought plans for a dirt bike park, envisions a trail through the canyon floor, up to the rim and around the rim, which he hopes would be a loop. But much depends on whether the city acquires more property for the open space, since the bluffs area extends well beyond the property bought by the city.

Lieber said there have been discussions about more acquisitions. He did not elaborate.

So for the near future, guided tours are the only way to experience Corral Bluffs.

Those who went July 11 left with a new appreciation for the unspectacular high ground they had seen only from the highway.

“It doesn’t look like anything from a distance until you get into it,” said Ryan, a hiker.

“Certainly it was worth all the effort it took to preserve it,” O’Bryan said.

Location is everything. Or at least almost everything.

A restaurant situated on the right corner can thrive for decades, even though a spot just a block away would be the kiss of death. Sure, service, value and the food can trump the address, but it is tough.

That’s how you know that Taste of Thai Spice must be very good. It sits at what, for civilians, is effectively a dead-end street populated with a strip club, and a few dive bars and pawnshops. It shares a dingy strip mall with a porno store and a drug paraphernalia shop. And every day the place is packed.

Order the green curry ($9 at lunch, $10 at dinner), and you’ll see why. An enticing plume of ground chiles and galangal root (a limey cousin of ginger) wafts up from the rich, pea-green broth in which long fronds of Thai basil float like kelp in the tide. In the depths swims a species rarely seen in Colorado Springs: the golf-ball-size Thai eggplant — green and striped and good for soaking up the lovely coconut broth. Schools of julienned bamboo shoots add crunch. Rice on the side cuts the formidable heat. The whole thing is served fast and with a smile.

Since the restaurant is so close to Fort Carson, almost all in the lunch crowd are dressed in camouflage. It is fun to watch privates try to impress one another by ordering their meals “Thai hot,” then sweating and swearing through the peppery pain.

A good place on the menu to start is the Tom-Yum-Goong, ($12) a hot and sour soup that arrives in a big, earthen pot warmed by an open flame. Lift the steaming lid and you’ll find big chunks of tomato, wood ear mushroom and bamboo bobbing with shrimp in an aromatic, citrusy broth spiked with fresh lime juice, lime leaves, lemon grass, slender dried chiles and tart galangal.

One pot yields several bowls, which gives diners a chance to assess the spice level, since every Thai place uses the same scale —mild, medium, hot, and Thai hot — but at every place it means something different. Here, medium will make you sweat. Thai hot could probably be used to strip paint.

Some dishes are unapologetically mild. The Tropical sweet and sour ($9 at lunch, $10 at dinner) is a fresher take on the Chinese classic with a light, pineapple-based sauce over tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, bell peppers and a choice of proteins.

Others are meant to pack fire. The rich peanut and coconut milk base of the panang curry ($10 at lunch, $11 at dinner) almost demands some heat to cut through the thick, delicious sauce.

Cool off by ordering a salad of fresh green papaya (which is more crunchy than sweet) tossed with garlic, tomato, sugar and lime juice ($10).

Taste of Thai Spice has won Best Thai from The Gazette staff for several years running, but not everything is stellar. The mix of capillary-thin, clear rice noodles, cabbage, soy sauce and Thai seasonings in the Pad-won-sen ($11) arrived mushy and unimpressive compared with other entrees.

The egg rolls ($3 for 2) were crisp and fresh, but undistinguished.

And while the service is always friendly and excellent, the dining room is dim and desperately in need of a makeover.

None of these quibbles, or the disastrous address, hurt the bottom line: This is authentic, delicious Thai, served fast at reasonable prices.

He’s adapted to life on a bus. As Texas-blues guitarist Johnny Winter’s tour bus rolls, he writes songs, learns to cover oldies and strums his famed blues on his guitar.

Winter, 65, has even written songs about the loneliness of touring on wheels.

So on his recent trip to Seattle, with TV blaring in the background, Winter spoke about life on his 140-concert tour. He spoke about how he’s been “everywhere,” and in that time, how blues guitar seems to have faded.

It isn’t what it used to be, Winter said, who’s toured for more than four decades.

But the blues legend’s still here and touring. He stops by Armstrong Hall on the Colorado College campus at 7 p.m. Wednesday to give blues, played the way it should be, to Colorado Springs.

Question: What’s it like constantly touring?

Answer: Well, you just miss your wife and miss home. It gets lonely, sure you do.

Q: Has that experience been immersed with your music?

A: Definitely. It’s pretty hard to say how I make music. I think of the lyrics first and put music around it. But one of my favorite one’s “Stranger”; it’s about being on the road and being lonesome.

Q: You’ve been across the entire nation; where do you call home?

A: Connecticut. It’s not much different from Seattle or Colorado. They’re pretty much the same. … My blues, it’s a combination of Mississippi and Chicago and Texas. Definitely, they influence how I play. I’ve picked blues styles while on the tour.

Q: So are blues guitarists today up to par with the blues musicians you’ve worked with in past decades?

A: They’re not as good as the early ones. There’s a few good people out there. Back in the ’70s, there were a lot of better people. Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. A lot of good people back in those days.

Q: So what does that say of the state of blues guitarists today?

A: It’s changed. It’s definitely changed. Like I said, it’s not as soulful. I wish it was like in the ’50s — just great people back then.

Yes, there’s definitely a lack of blues today.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to say to fans who come to hear your traditional blues guitar?

A: Just keep coming.

Simple taqueria features delicious, authentic dishes from Mexico — including dressy wieners
After years of searching, I have stumbled upon a legendary Meso-American artifact: the Mexican hot dog.

I glimpsed it once, years ago, at a smoky street-vendor cart in Baja: perfectly grilled, coiled in a strap of crisp bacon, then slathered in Mexican crema fresca and fresh salsa.

I thought I would never see it again — at least stateside — and then I wandered into La Perla Tapatia.

The no-frills little restaurant in a westside strip mall takes a needed piece of eastern Colorado Springs — authentic taquerias — to the city’s west side.

The menu, prepared by the friendly owner-cook Sergio Laureano, has excellent versions of classic taqueria dishes, such as carne asada tacos, but he also strays from the norm with options such as his hot dog and regional dishes from his home city, Guadalajara. Fans of Colorado Springs taquerias must put La Perla on their to-do list.

Laureano’s hot dog ($3.50) is a work of art. He splits and grills the wiener, wraps it in bacon, then serves it with onions so caramelized they have lovely bits of char along the edges, drizzles the whole thing with Mexico’s thinner, lighter sour cream cousin and a fresh tomatillo sauce, and sets it on a bun next to a heap of fries.

Laureano also may be the only place in town to get a Torta Ahogada, or drowned sandwich ($7.50). This sloppy combination of rich, juicy chunks of carnitas pork on a baguette deluged with tomato, chili and lime sauce is to Guadalajara what pizza is to New York and po’ boys are to New Orleans: the classic local street food. Tradition is to eat the mess with your hands, but Laureano also provides forks.

(Interesting side note: Some Mexicans also love eating pancakes from street stands. They cover them with caramelized condensed milk instead of syrup.)

But La Perla also stands out with more typical dishes. The flautas ($5.50) are corn tortillas rolled around moist, seasoned chicken until they are fat as a Boss Hog cigar, then deep fried to golden. The dish can be stingy and greasy at some places. Here it is generous and crisp, served over lettuce with a tart tomatillo salsa and sharp cojita cheese.

The tacos ($2.25) are also generous. La Perla skips the tongue, tripe and other odd animal bits some authentic taquerias offer and sticks to the good stuff. The tacos al pastor — chili-marinated pork slow-cooked with a touch of pineapple — come with fat slices of ripe avocado on top and an unusual foundation of good pinto beans along the tortilla. They are excellent.

The quesadillas are just plain huge.

Don’t expect much ambience beyond a few soccer posters, but the service is friendly and fast, and the English is good. Don’t let this place slip away.

After Cripple Creek legalized gambling in 1991, it became all about slot machines and poker. But now that a new Heritage Center has opened, gambling has taken a back seat to history, community and culture.

Yeah, right. And if you believe that, you’d probably draw to an inside straight. No, behind those movie-set Western facades on Bennett Avenue, you’ll still find one row of one-armed bandits after another. But look hard enough and you will find a few doses of that culture stuff. And, yes, the Heritage Center is helping with that.

The massive faux-rock arch at the entrance to the new Pikes Peak Heritage Center looks as if it were lifted from Disneyland.

The entryway is a good metaphor for the center itself: A glitzy introduction to a high-rolling town, but one that holds a fascinating history for those who care to look a little closer.

For instance, inside the $3.7 million center, the floor is speckled none-too-subtly with gold, but the handrails on the stairs are made from Carlton Mine ore-car rails.

The Heritage Center is part museum, part welcome center; a mix reflected in its displays on everything from local tourist attractions to turn-of-the-20th-century brothels.

The center is a half-mile outside of town, perched across the highway from the Mollie Kathleen Mine, where tourists can descend 1,000 feet into the earth. Although the center isn’t walking distance from the casinos, it gives the center a commanding view across the town and a nearly 180-degree swath of southern Colorado with a sky that puts Montana to shame.

Inside the Heritage Center, you’ll find three floors of displays. The main floor is devoted to Cripple Creek’s colorful and often crude mining history, while upstairs are displays on fossils and wildlife, including a life-size reproduction of a stegosaurus, and the basement holds a movie theater and displays on other Pikes Peak attractions.

“There’s a lot of hands-on kind of things that tell you a lot about the area,” said Scott Kerr, the center’s director.

Many of the displays are kid-friendly, such as the side-cut model showing the depths of the Mollie Kathleen mine and the fossil drawing stations, but the center doesn’t gloss over the rougher parts of Cripple Creek’s history.

You’ll learn, for instance, that a barbershop connected to an outdoor saloon was the first business in town, and that, at its peak, Cripple Creek contained 150 saloons, 15 newspapers, 72 lawyers and 300 prostitutes.

A family with young children — or a gambler itching to get to the tables — can easily breeze through the displays in half an hour, while someone with a little more patience can spend a couple of hours and walk away with a good grounding in the region’s history.

And as glossy and new as the Heritage Center is, Cripple Creek’s history is never far away. Just out the center’s back door, you can look straight down an innocuous-looking ditch that leads 300 feet down to a tunnel built to drain the district’s mines.

GETTING THERE
By car: Take U.S. Highway 24 west. Turn south on Colorado Highway 67.

By bus: The Ramblin Express bus to Cripple Creek has three local pick-up locations: 21st Street at Ghost Town and Van Briggle Pottery; Academy Boulevard at Pueblo Bank & Trust (eastside lot), 1515 N. Academy Blvd. at Palmer Park Boulevard; and 2864 S. Circle Drive, between the Sheraton Hotel & Days Inn. Round-trip fare is $25, but you get $20 in casino tokens. For schedules, go to casinoshuttle.com.

Bland food, baffling service send Manitou restaurant down the river.

Maybe if the recent shawarma explosion hadn’t brought so many great pita places to the region, The Nile Café could slide.
But with such excellent competition, The Nile flows in with little to add.
The small cafe moved into a space on Manitou Avenue’s main drag this spring, taking the place of the Machu Picchu Store.
Owners Jimmy Sabry and Michael Ezzat (Egyptians and New York City transplants) hung the faux-wood walls with papyrus paintings and tall, gleaming hookah water pipes, which are all for sale.
At the counter they serve everything that might appeal to a passerby at any time of day: bagels, Danishes, sandwiches, ice cream, pies and cakes (all made elsewhere), and even Jell-O. At night the tables are whisked away and the booths become a den where smokers sip a sweet array of flavored shisha tobacco smoke (everything from apple to blueberry pancake) through slender hoses.
But for most of the day, Egyptian food is the scattered business’s focus.
There are lamb, chicken and beef shawarma sandwiches ($7-$8) in pita, plus kebabs and seasoned meat patties called kofta.
I started with an order of hummus ($5), which arrived thin and bland — no garlic flavor to speak of, just what tasted like lemon juice and a
— splash of oil.
It went downhill from there. Tzatziki ($5), which the very young, very inattentive server described as “yogurt with fruit or something in it,” is usually a bright, zesty sauce flavored with cucumber, lemon, mint, garlic and spices. Here it arrived as a bland, sad-looking dip with no discernible flavor.
The meats suffer from a similar deficiency. Some are undersalted. Most are underspiced. The chicken is as dry as jerky. All leave you wishing there were still a better schawarma shop in town. (The very good Heart of Jerusalem was chased out last year because its landlord said the frying falafel was bothering loft owners upstairs.)
The service is mystifying. Both times I visited, there was one other table of diners, and yet every other table was dirty.
The apparently high school-age servers don’t seem to clean one or acknowledge you until you sit down. The tables have boxes of tissues instead of napkins, and to make matters worse, the robust fan from the air conditioner keeps blowing your tissue ofl the table.
On my most recent visit, the server asked if I wanted a take-home box for my lunch at the same time she handed it to me, but she was too busy talking to the owner about smoking shisha to notice that my drink needed replenishing. The meal was supposed to come with a tomato-and-onion salad and fries. When I pointed out that it came with neither, she just shrugged.
With the constant turnover in tourists, The Nile has a decent chance of keeping its doors open, but locals should heed my friend’s adage that Egyptian food is lousy.
It’s probably not true in general, but it is in this case.

Southern cooking meets german fare at eclectic takeout restaurant
In 1947, President Harry Truman told Congress that he was “fully aware of the broad implications” that his doctrine to contain communism around the world would entail.
In 2009, when I stared into a plate of hot schnitzel over waffles, with red beans and rice, sauerkraut and black-eyed peas on the side and an order of frog legs, I doubted if old “Give ’em Hell Harry” knew how broad those implications could be.
I’d just ordered lunch from Sassafras & Blues, a new German/Cajun/Soul Food joint off South Academy Boulevard, where the culinary breadth of containment can be measured in Styrofoam to-go boxes.
See, Colorado Springs owes almost all its culinary diversity to the Cold War. Whether it is Korean or Vietnamese or German, most of the ethnic cooks came over here because they married Americans stationed over there.
I’m hoping we invade Provence next.
Sassafras’ owner, Anita Lancaster, is from Munich but married an American serviceman from the South stationed in West Germany and followed him home.
The marriage didn’t last, but the culinary fusion did. So Lancaster, who spent most of her life in Colorado Springs as a housecleaner, took over the space vacated by Brothers Barbecue this winter.
These days, Lancaster waltzes around the kitchen, whipping up a varied and well-priced menu for a diverse crowd.
“We got a little something for everyone,” she said.
But can a German woman do justice to Cajun po’ boys and red beans and rice? Jawohl!
Here the softshell crab po’ boy ($10) comes stuffed with three full crabs, legs and all, in a delicate cornmeal crust with lettuce and tomato dressing and traditional remoulade as tasty as any I’ve ever had in New Orleans. With home-cut fries on the side, it’s a terrific deal.
So is the too-big-to-actually-take-a-biteof pulled pork sandwich ($6.50). The barbecue sauce on the pork was a bit too
— ketchupy, but with soft, chewy bread and some more of those fresh fries, it was a good lunch.
The red beans and rice, ($2.25), which tend to be painfully salty at most restaurants, here are well-balanced. The beans are boosted by big chunks of chicken and spicy Cajun sausage, and the rice is not added until you order, so it stays fluffy.
Delve deeper into down-South oddness by ordering the chicken and waffles — four fried chicken wings served over, yes, a Belgian waffle ($7.25). The chicken is perfect — moist but not greasy — and the waffle batter is laced with some of Lancaster’s heavenly moonshine vanilla, made from whole vanilla beans steeped in Jim Beam. On top she offers fresh strawberry or honey butter. It is truly a guilty treat.
Sassafras is no slouch with the German dishes either. You can get a schnitzel platter— pounded, breaded and fried pork loin with a choice of two incongruous sides, such as collard greens and sauerkraut ($7.25) — or jagerschnitzel with noodles and rich brown mushroom gravy ($7.99).
On my second visit, I tried to mix it up and asked Lancaster to give me a made-up combo I called “der waffleschnitzel.”
“You want the schnitzel on the waffle? With sauerkraut?” she said, cocking her head.
“It’s fusion!” I said.
“No, it’s just weird,” she said, before telling me I could have the schnitzel on the waffle, but the sauerkraut would have to be on the side.
Desserts ($3.25) are dangerously good and always include peach cobbler, sweet potato pie and an ever-changing trifle. The first time I visited it was white chocolate tequila-lime, brownie, Baby Ruth.
“Is that all one dessert? That’s crazy,” a friend said.
“Yah, crazy good,” Lancaster replied, sticking a spoon into a huge bowl of something that turned out to be sweeter than the ultimate headliner at a church potluck dessert table.
Despite its many charms, Sassafras is not for everyone. It is carry-out only. And with everything made fresh, expect to wait 20 minutes if you don’t call ahead. It’s a good destination for foodies looking for an adventure, or folks with a hankering for some good wings, but bringing the whole family could be a hassle.

Eco-minded Sunflower boasts extensive menu of tasty gluten-free items, plus plenty for bread eaters.
A friend’s jaw almost dropped when she walked into Sunflower Cafe and saw a whole tray of gluten-free desserts at the counter. There were big cookies, dark, moist chocolate cake, and buttery scones, no longer marginalized, but finally in the wheat-free spotlight.
“There they were, right on the top shelf,” she said. “It just blew me away.”
Sunflower is a new venture by the folks who brought you Montague’s Coffee House. The two restaurants are day and night. While the dark Victorian wing chairs and cozy fireplace at Montague’s feel like a good place to curl up with a cup of hot tea and a good mystery, Sunflower’s bright, open space and soothing spring-mint walls make it feel like the ideal meet-up where the yoga set can catch up over iced acai tea.
Everything in the restaurant caters to the emerging green aesthetic. There are whole-wheat desserts and chairs made out of sustainable woven banana leaves. The cups, plates, forks and spoons are all made from plants, and so, instead of one trash can, there are two: one for recycling bottles and cans, and one for everything else, which is then composted.
I’m not sure if composting paper plates and corn-starch forks is any greener than just washing real plates and forks, but the tiny kitchen of Sunflower doesn’t have a dishwasher, so it’s a moot point.
The limited cooking space still manages to crank out what is probably the most extensive wheat-free menu in town. The pastries are cooked at Montague’s. The bread comes from local bakery Outside the Breadbox. There are also espresso drinks and tea.
Lunch is a smattering of good salads, soups and build-your own sandwiches ($9).
“It’s so nice to be able to order a real sandwich,” my friend with the wheat intolerance said as she sat down to a turkey, tomato and pesto sandwich on oat bread. “I usually end up just ordering the insides of sandwiches on a plate.”
If you tolerate wheat just fine, Sunflower also has plenty of traditional bread, which is good, because gluten is yummy, and even the best gluten-free breads to me still taste a bit like dust.
Sandwiches, such as the grilled chicken topped with a lovely sunflower seedbased pesto, sweet roasted peppers and avocado, are freshly made to order and delicious. I’m not sure about the public’s appetite for sandwiches that approach the $10 mark, but time will tell. All sandwiches come with crispy, lightly sweet vegetable chips that, when I went, always seemed to be the broken pieces from the bottom of the bag. Some more side choices would be a nice touch.
Salads are a better deal. The spinach, avocado and grapefruit salad with a homemade a sesame and poppy seed dressing, ($6) came adorned with dried cranberries and slivered almonds that made for a wonderful range of flavor and texture. It may be the best thing on the menu.
The cool gazpacho and roasted red pepper bisque ($4.50) are both terrific, bright, vegetarian summer soups that would be an elegant escort for either sandwich or salad.
The new restaurant has a few kinks. The chicken caesar salad ($7) had a good dressing and generous chunks of chicken breast, but no croutons (not even gluten free ones!). It may be a sign of a persistent problem: Because Sunflower is an outpost with no real kitchen, supplies seem to run low often. The two young staff members are probably spread too thin to restock, and they often get backed up if even half the tables are full at lunch. But based on several visits, they seem to be improving.
By the time Sunflower opens its evening service, Moonfiower, serving wine, chocolate and tapas, in August, perhaps they’ll have their game down. After all, they’ve already done what I thought was impossible by making gluten-free desserts that a even a gluten glutton like me would order.
The best is the Chocolate Mesquite Cake ($3.50), a dark, moist sponge cake with lots of sweet chocolate frosting and a secret ingredient: flour made from pulverized mesquite beans. The protein-rich powder adds a sweet, nutty complexity and welcome pliant bite that most wheatfree cakes lake.

LARKSPUR • You might think the Colorado Renaissance Festival is a strange venue for a theater critic to practice his craft. But in one sense, the whole place can be considered one big theater, with hundreds of costumed actors playing their parts - even if most of those parts consist solely of trying to separate you from your hard-earned money.

The good news is that if you can get past those "acts," you'll find more traditional theatrical acts performing almost constantly at one of eight stages scattered throughout the grounds. And best of all, they don't cost you a dime (although a small tip is asked for and, usually, well-earned).

I didn't have time to catch them all, but what I did see provided a fairly goodly mix of acrobatics, comedy and magic.

Puke & Snot - Sadly, the original Snot died last year, but Puke found a very capable replacement in John Gamoke (otherwise known as Snot Jr.). These guys often made me feel as if I were watching the Johnny Carson show (yes, some of the jokes were that old), but they delivered their double-entendres with such rapidity and panache that you couldn't help loving them for it. This act has been part of the festival since 1981. The enthusiastic response from the audience made it clear that it's still the best-loved.

Arsene of Paris - If you, as I do, avoid mimes because they're always trying too hard to be liked, you'll definitely want to check out this guy. He doesn't try at all. He does perform some amusing, if mostly entry-level, magic tricks, but the heart of his act is the hilarious disdain he shows his audience at every turn. Make sure you applaud or you might lose your beer.

Washing Well Wenches - It took awhile for this pair of dentally challenged damsels to get their act going, but once they did, they kept the audience laughing - and cowering - with their watery antics ("the louder you cheer, the drier you'll stay!") They were especially adept at humiliating select male members of the audience in exchange for a flower they could give to their sweethearts.

Jousting - By far, the most popular event at the festival. I loved the pageantry and spectacle, and the medieval "cheerleaders" did a good job of getting the audience fired up for the four colorfully costumed knights. The dialogue, however, was a little stagy (not unlike most movies about the era, come to think of it) and the combat was dismissed by my 13-year-old as "fake." Could be really thrilling with some better acting.

Great Balls of Fire - I was never quite sure if his crazed demeanor was part of his act or if he really is crazy, but the wild-eyed Wilsome Fire succeeded in igniting the audience by igniting various parts of his body (ever see a guy light a torch with his tongue?). If nothing else, he'll give you a fascinating rundown on the effects of accidentally ingesting gasoline.

Ded Bob - A ventriloquist act featuring a skeleton as an insult-spewing dummy. It seemed a bit of a cheat for the ventriloquist to keep his face covered (how do we know he doesn't move his lips if we can't see them?). But this was one of the freshest acts at the festival: Bob's continually ad-libbed zingers were as clever as they were funny. I especially enjoyed the barbs he aimed at the other acts.

The German Brothers - New this year, this strange little act features two brawny "brothers" who dress like Bavarian peasants and pose and preen like supermodels. Think Zoolander with a Teutonic accent. They also threw in some mildly humorous rap songs, but it's never a good sign when your volunteers get more laughs than you do.

Barely Balanced - Another new act this year, these talented acrobats - two men and a woman named Large, Medium and Small - wowed the audience with their impressive feats of balance, fire juggling and self-deprecating comedy. I still don't know if Medium meant to drop that torch so close to Large's nether regions, but it sure looked unplanned to me.

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, with 51 auto or truck drivers and 115 motorcycle racers in 11 divisions, including automotive, semi truck, exhibition, open wheel, super stock car, pro truck and motorcycle classes, will roar off on Sunday morning at 9 a.m.

Vintage cars, featuring three 1960s-era Ford Mustangs, a 1952 DeSoto Firedome 8, a 1954 Oldsmobile Super 88, a 1955 Chevy Corvette and a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda, will open the competition schedule for the 87th running of the Race To The Clouds.

The competition order:

Vintage Cars, Motorcycle Sid Car, Vintage Motorcycles, 450 Quad Motorcycles, 250 Pro Motorcycles, 450 Pro Motorcycles, 500 Quad Motorcycles, Supermoto Motorcycles, 750 Pro Motorcycles, 1200 Pro Motorcycles, Exhibition Car/Trucks, Time Attack, Pikes Peak Open, Super Stock Cars, Open Wheel, Unlimited, Pro truck, Exhibition Big Rig Trucks.

The Race to the Clouds takes its competitors to the summit of Pikes Peak, a distance of 19.99 km (12.42 miles) over 156 turns, climbing 1,439 meters (4,721 ft) from the start at Mile 7 on Pikes Peak Highway at 2,862 meters (9,390 ft) on grades averaging 7 percent over both gravel and paved sections.

NASCAR rookie Max Papis will drive the pace car to open the historic race, which will be viewed by several thousand spectators who line the road to the summit.

The buzz about this year’s race centers around four well-known international drivers who will try to crack the Peak’s elusive 10-minute barrier for the first time in the Unlimited divi

The overall record is held by Japan’s Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima, who clocked a time of 10:01.408 on July 21, 2007 driving the 1,000 hp mid-engined Suzuki XL7 Hill Climb Special, breaking the previous record (set in 1994 by Rod Millen) by less than 3 seconds.

Two Supercharged Ford Rallycross Fiestas from the Olsberg Motor Sport Evolution team from Sweden make their debut, driven by Andreas Eriksson and rally legend Marcus Grönholm. Eriksson, 35, is a four-time Swedish rally champion, with multiple Rallycross victories, and Grönholm, 41, is one of World Rallying’s greatest drivers, with two World Championships and 30 WRC victories.

Japanese superstar Tajima will be back again this year in his Suzuki Sport speed machine to go for the mark again, but this time, he faces the new and exciting challenge posed by the entry of the Fiesta and their super-star drivers. He clocked 10:18.250 last summer in his attempt to crack the barrier.

But the trio will also face British Rallycross Champion Mark Rennison, a new entry who will bring his famous 1999 Ford RS200 to the Peak to square off with the three other international drivers in the assault on the record.

In all, a dozen defending champions are back from the 2008 event including record holders like veteran Rhys Millen of Huntington Beach, California (Time Attack 2WD) He set a world record on the Peak last summer with his winning clocking of 12:31.06 in his 2007 Pontiac Solstice GXP, but this time, he’ll be driving a modified 550-hp Hyundai Genesis Coupe as he goes for his third straight win.

Veteran Paul Dallenbach of Basalt, Colorado, has served notice that he also feels he can crack the 10-minute barrier this year in the Open Wheel division, which has been run since 1916 and has been won by such names as Mario Andretti, Al Unser, Bobby Unser, and Robby Unser (the current class record holder, achieving 10:05.85 min in 1994). Dallenbach, who has won the division four times, will be driving a Chevy

2008 Super Stock Car winner Clint Vahsholtz (Woodland Park) has signed up to defend his Pikes Peak crown in a 2002 Ford Mustang to represent the famed family again. He’s won 15 of the 17 Hill Climbs he’s entered, and needs only three more wins on the Peak to break his dad’s (Leonard) record mark of 18.

The event’s popular “Fan Fest,” on Friday, presented by Budweiser on Tejon, Bijou and Platte in Downtown Colorado Springs, will include seven blocks of entertainment from 5:00-10:00 p.m. for the public to enjoy.

On the scene will be the world famous Budweiser Clydesdales, a chance to meet the drivers and racers, view their cars and motorcycles, music with live local bands, a Firefighters Chili Cook-Off, food and refreshments, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb’s Mobile Museum, a merchandise and race ticket booth, displays of custom cars and motorcycles, and stuff for kids like Freestyle Motocross Jumping exhibitions.

The first running of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb in 1916 was promoted by regional icon Spencer Penrose, who had finished widening the narrow carriage road into a much wider "Pikes Peak Highway." The race was an idea to encourage tourism.

It began on Aug. 10 as an automobile race featuring Barney Oldfield and Eddie Rickenbacker to help promote a new highway to the top of a Colorado mountain, and it is now America’s second oldest motor sports race, behind only the fabled Indy 500.

Among those entered in that first-ever event was crowd-pleaser Oldfield. He drove a big Delage, and while he did not distinguish himself among the top drivers, spectators came to watch this famous man attack the Peak. Rickenbacker, later to become famous as a World War I flying ace, was also registered to drive.

Duesenberg automobiles were driven, as were Cadillacs, Hudsons and a Stutz. Entry fees were $25 to $50, depending on the event. First Prizes ranged from $500 to $2,000 cash, again depending upon which event the driver entered. To further encourage competition Penrose offered a 43-inch trophy covered in Colorado silver and gold, valued at $10,000. The winners could keep the trophy for a year.

Walk into Fujiyama's stylish new downtown location and you walk into a showroom of American sushi.

The restaurant, a few doors north of Fujiyama's old address, is big, hip and an instant hit with diners.

A granite bar at the front gleams under tastefully dim lights. Beyond, a sleek dining room is lined with sizzling Teppanyaki tables and a mock forest of bamboo on one side, and the bold, simple prints of Katsushika Hokusai on the other. At the back, a line of chefs slice and dice at a brightly lit sushi bar. The blend of light and dark splashed on different areas gives the place the feel of a narrow street market at night. And the throngs of diners, both at lunch and dinner, make it feel like a busy one.

From my seat at the sushi bar on a recent night, I watched servers return again and again for big, ornate platters of sushi rolls with multi-colored layers of fish tumbled together and drizzled in a sweet, rich sauce.

Most rolls here boast goofy, sometimes bawdy names such as the Who's your Daddy?; the Viagra; and the Screaming Orgasm. Many shun tradition. The filling of the Cowboy ($10) is "beef and only beef." The Heart Attack roll ($10) wraps spicy tuna, jalapeños and cream cheese in rice and sheets of seaweed, then the whole enchilada is deep-fried.

The dragon roll ($20) takes an already-crowded roll of deep-fried shrimp, fake crab and baked salmon skin, and drapes it with a whole eel and a sweet sauce.

This is American sushi.

It's big. It's bold. It's a little bit gaudy. It has about as much in common with the Japanese stuff as a Honda Civic has with a pimped out Cadillac Escalade.

And so what? This is a country that likes to do things its own way. (Or, more accurately, if you're going to make it in the sushi biz here, you better appeal to the corn-fed American palate.)

The American stuff tends to rank quantity over quality. I rarely saw plates of plain sushi, where a simple, diminutive slice of raw fish takes center stage, leave the sushi bar.
Instead, filling rolls, rich on rice and stuffed with fried shrimp and imitation crab, make the foundation of Fujiyama's business.

It's amazing to see a cuisine evolve so quickly. Mainstream America started eating sushi only about 20 years ago. Back then, the most exotic thing on the menu was the spartan California roll.

Then, we applied the same "How can I make this worse for me?" know-how that gave us the guacamole-bacon double cheeseburger with super-size fries. And voila! Now roll-crazy menus like Fujiama's are the norm.

At Fujiyama's bar, I ordered Lion King (fried shrimp and cucumber topped with avocado and a nest of shredded imitation crab and fish roe, $10) and a Something Wrong 69 (fried shrimp and fried soft-shell crab rolled and draped with a rainbow of red tuna, orange salmon and alabaster yellowtail, then covered in a spicy sauce, $14.50).

Both were tasty, and went well with wasabi-laced soy sauce. Despite the crowd of ingredients, each piece was bite-size - an increasingly rare thing.

Next came a flight of traditional nigiri: slivers of salmon, tuna, yellowtail and red snapper perched on pedestals of rice ($4-$5 for two pieces). It, too, was bite-size and good. The fish lacked that transcendent flavor of excellent fish, but it was fresh and well-cut.

A few things disappoint. The swatches of kelp swirling in the miso soup had a sliminess suggesting they had been swimming in the broth too long.

The grilled chicken skewers making up the yakitori ($4) lacked that lovely, crisp char you expect, and shared their skewers with slices of green pepper that made them taste more like backyard shish kabob than a classic Japanese bar food.

No one who loves elaborate rolls, though, will leave Fujiama disappointed or hungry. The service is attentive. The setting is cool, and the full bar makes it an attractive place for a weekend night out.

Six days a week, Michael Flynn flips on the kitchen lights in Manitou’s tiny Dutch Kitchen at about 6 a.m. and starts rolling out homemade pie dough.
By lunch, his fresh creations are cooling in the pantry, and the small white board that servers hand to customers while asking, “Did you save room?” is crammed with a list of delights: rhubarb crumble, honey-glazed blackberry-cherry, fresh strawberry cream, peach almondien, pecan chocolate and The Dutch Kitchen’s signature slice, buttermilk.
The Dutch Kitchen is Manitou’s oldest family restaurant. It has been 50 years since Flynn’s parents bought the place (and 60 since it originally opened).
“We haven’t really changed a whole lot. I still make the pies every day,” said Flynn during a recent lunch rush as he watched a fleet of sandwiches crisping on his grill. “That’s why people keep coming back. They like it the way it is.”
Flynn has held onto many of his parents’ quirky traditions. The cash register is older than most customers; Flynn rings an old bell when orders are up, like his dad did; and the restaurant is still closed Fridays — a practice that dates to when Flynn and his brother played high school basketball and football, and the parents decided to take the day off to go to the games.
The interior is old, knotty pine paneling with dim wall lamps and cozy booths from the era before so many Americans were supersized. And even though the room is decorated with windmills and little wooden shoes evoking Holland, the Dutch Kitchen does not have Dutch food. It serves mostly East Coast-
sandwiches. The name is from the guy, whose nickname was “Dutch,” who owned the Dutch Kitchen before the Flynns did. He, too, served deli sandwiches. As a yellowing 1949 ad tacked to the wall says, “Kosher corned beef, fancy cheeses, kosher dill pickles.”
The old school family place also has a dose of Manitou quirk. It is closed in winter. It takes only cash. And the requisite Charles Rockey landscape print hangs in the dining room.
There is a reason the sandwiches have stuck around so long. They are classically delicious and, under the skillful spatula of Flynn, artfully assembled.
Take the Dutch Diplomat ($8.35), a triple-decker sandwich with turkey, ham, good Swiss cheese and cool, crispy coleslaw, all pressed and grilled until the bread is little more than a light, crackly shell, yet, somehow, not the slightest bit greasy. It’s terrific.
The Dutch Treat ($7.95) — ham, American cheese and the Kitchen’s unique cabbage chutney on rye — shows the same deft deliciousness.
Anne Christensen, the last Gazette critic to review the Kitchen, said in 1997 that while the sandwiches were very good, she would give only three stars because “even a very good sandwich is not difficult to make.” But I’ve eaten a lot of bad Reubens, where the meat is greasy, the bread is oily, the cheese is overbearing, or liquid oozes from the ’kraut, making the whole thing a soggy mess. To take a bite of the Kitchen’s Reuben ($8.35) is to experience a perfectly proportioned sandwich.
“It’s not fancy,” a friend said as she took a bite. “It’s just tasty.”
Other things are good but not great. The enchiladas ($9.75) are fresh, from scratch and enticing, but a bit on the tame side. The tomato-noodle soup tastes like SpaghettiOs.
Our only real complaint is that the sandwich prices have almost doubled since Christensen was here. The Kitchen is not quite the deal it used to be.
But seriously, save room for dessert.
The pie ($3.75) has an impossibly ffiaky, delectable crust. And the insides ain’t bad either. The rhubarb is tangy with thick, fresh chunks of the stalk, cooked until tender, the sour notes tempered by sweet vanilla ice cream. The blackberrycherry steers clear of the cornstarch goop you get in most cherry pies; it’s buttery as well as tart. The chocolate-pecan is dense and rich. The strawberry has fresh berries sliced in half and covered in whipped cream. The banana cream is the real, unadulterated thing.
The simplest, and one of the best, is the buttermilk. It’s an obscure recipe Flynn’s dad cooked for decades. The flaky crust is filled with a sweet, lemony custard and baked until the filling is slightly irm and spongy. The whole thing has the taste and pliancy of a really fantastic, fresh sugar cookie.

The fishiest name in Colorado Springs restaurants recently got even more fallacious, and in the most felicitous way.
I’m alliterating here about English Dockside, a tiny hole in the wall just off Academy Boulevard.
It’s fishy because the name suggests a British-style chip shop where limey expats shower deep-fried cod with vinegar while downing pints of Boddington’s Pub Ale. In fact, the restaurant owes its name to the owner, Thomas English — an Alabama native with a flair for Cajun spices and no liquor license.
True, his Dockside does serve what is probably the best fried fish in the city — whole snapper, real Gulf and black tiger shrimp and sweet, rich blue crab — but even that part of the name is misleading because English has also started doing beef.
His menu boasts a list of steaks, which he smokes with applewood, then sears on a grill.
This red meat renaissance started when he was thinking about buying the Tabeguache Steak House in Woodland Park. He toured the restaurant and tried the steaks.
He ended up passing on buying the restaurant.
“I couldn’t do that, but they had the best steaks I ever had, so I got them to tell me where they were getting them, then I worked my magic on them to make them even better.”
Turns out, the steaks were coming from local processor Ranch Foods Direct. English started with its tasty hormone- and-antibioticfree beef and added his own flair.
When I ordered the 10-ounce rib-eye steak ($25), it hit the table tender and pink inside, and coated with an ebony veneer of spices rubbed on and darkened by the grill. The crust had a subtle smoky bite. And the pink inside was moist, tender and wonderfully rich, as Ranch Foods steaks tend to be. The Ranch Foods name is quickly becoming the leading sign of quality meat in the city.
To stop at the steaks is to miss out on English’s true magic. Good fish served in a casual, down-home atmosphere is hard to find in Colorado Springs. The Dockside feels like one of those shacks near the water you find while driving along the Gulf Coast, where the fish menu is as invitingly unfrilly as the dining room.
At Dockside, English gives diners a hearty welcome and points them to a few hard, wooden booths surrounded by light-blue walls strung with rope, nets, buoys and other coastal flotsam. The fish list is just as straightforward and welcoming.
The red snapper filet ($19) — which comes with a choice of sides like buttery garlic rice or a light, spring-greens salad — is real Gulf snapper, English said, warning that most places serve an Asian snapper cousin.
The filet is a good 2 inches thick, moist and flaky, and as good as you could get in any coastal shack. You can get it grilled, blackened or fried. I went with fried, and it arrived in a thin, crisp jacket of breading that was not the least bit greasy.
For folks who feel like $19 is a bit much for a fish fry, try the fish and chips ($13) or the Pollack lunch special ($7).
The same price range and decadence can be found in English’s excellent po’ boys. These New Orleans sandwiches come on a chewy, dense baguette slathered with rich, sweet and spicy remoulade, sprinkled with shredded lettuce and stufied with your choice of deep-fried things from the sea: oysters, shrimp, fish, crab or crawfish.
In keeping with his new venture, he has a New York strip steak po’ boy, too, but he was out of steak the day we tried to order it. Instead, we went with what the server (English’s daughter, Jasmine) recommended: fried crawfish tails ($13). When the sandwich arrived, it was a good 14 inches long, hanging ofi both sides of the plate and steadied by a generous pile of fries.
“This is definitely not on my diet,” a friend said when the plate landed in front of him. “But it looks so good, I don’t care.”
It was.
English Dockside is not for dieters. It is for indulging. The crab po’ boy, spilling over with fresh, real blue crab ($18) , is one of the great sandwiches in the city. English also offers half sandwiches for people with more reasonable appetites.
Nearly everything comes with a generous sprinkle of English’s secret Cajun spice mix, which — and I’m just guessing here since no one with a secret spice mix will give you any hints — seems to have a lot of paprika, cayenne and garlic powder. It is on the fried fish, naturally, and the delicious crawfish tails. But it is also on the crabmeat salad ($16), the clam chowder ($10), the rice, the fries, even the corn on the cob. I ordered a side salad just to see if the greens would come with the tell-tale dusting of red.
They didn’t, but the rib-eye steak did, and the strong spices overpowered what was a very nice — and expensive — steak. English should make it clear that the steaks come with the spices, and give diners a chance to opt out.
The spice mix is very good, but using it so often makes everything taste the same. The kitchen should be sparing and put extra shakers on the tables for customers who want more.
These are small quibbles for an excellent place.
The fact that English cooks steaks as well as he does fish convinced me that his homemade cakes might be worth a shot, too. We ordered a tall, luscious piece of his red velvet cake ($4.95) and took it home.
One bite and I knew the man could bake as well as he cooks.

The fishiest name in Colorado Springs restaurants recently got even more fallacious, and in the most felicitous way.

I’m alliterating here about English Dockside, a tiny hole in the wall just off Academy Boulevard.
It’s fishy because the name suggests a British-style chip shop where limey expats shower deep-fried cod with vinegar while downing pints of Boddington’s Pub Ale. In fact, the restaurant owes its name to the owner, Thomas English — an Alabama native with a flair for Cajun spices and no liquor license.
True, his Dockside does serve what is probably the best fried fish in the city — whole snapper, real Gulf and black tiger shrimp and sweet, rich blue crab — but even that part of the name is misleading because English has also started doing beef.
His menu boasts a list of steaks, which he smokes with applewood, then sears on a grill.
This red meat renaissance started when he was thinking about buying the Tabeguache Steak House in Woodland Park. He toured the restaurant and tried the steaks.
He ended up passing on buying the restaurant.
“I couldn’t do that, but they had the best steaks I ever had, so I got them to tell me where they were getting them, then I worked my magic on them to make them even better.”
Turns out, the steaks were coming from local processor Ranch Foods Direct. English started with its tasty hormone- and-antibioticfree beef and added his own flair.
When I ordered the 10-ounce rib-eye steak ($25), it hit the table tender and pink inside, and coated with an ebony veneer of spices rubbed on and darkened by the grill. The crust had a subtle smoky bite. And the pink inside was moist, tender and wonderfully rich, as Ranch Foods steaks tend to be. The Ranch Foods name is quickly becoming the leading sign of quality meat in the city.
To stop at the steaks is to miss out on English’s true magic. Good fish served in a casual, down-home atmosphere is hard to find in Colorado Springs. The Dockside feels like one of those shacks near the water you find while driving along the Gulf Coast, where the fish menu is as invitingly unfrilly as the dining room.
At Dockside, English gives diners a hearty welcome and points them to a few hard, wooden booths surrounded by light-blue walls strung with rope, nets, buoys and other coastal flotsam. The fish list is just as straightforward and welcoming.
The red snapper filet ($19) — which comes with a choice of sides like buttery garlic rice or a light, spring-greens salad — is real Gulf snapper, English said, warning that most places serve an Asian snapper cousin.
The filet is a good 2 inches thick, moist and flaky, and as good as you could get in any coastal shack. You can get it grilled, blackened or fried. I went with fried, and it arrived in a thin, crisp jacket of breading that was not the least bit greasy.
For folks who feel like $19 is a bit much for a fish fry, try the fish and chips ($13) or the Pollack lunch special ($7).
The same price range and decadence can be found in English’s excellent po’ boys. These New Orleans sandwiches come on a chewy, dense baguette slathered with rich, sweet and spicy remoulade, sprinkled with shredded lettuce and stufied with your choice of deep-fried things from the sea: oysters, shrimp, fish, crab or crawfish.
In keeping with his new venture, he has a New York strip steak po’ boy, too, but he was out of steak the day we tried to order it. Instead, we went with what the server (English’s daughter, Jasmine) recommended: fried crawfish tails ($13). When the sandwich arrived, it was a good 14 inches long, hanging ofi both sides of the plate and steadied by a generous pile of fries.
“This is definitely not on my diet,” a friend said when the plate landed in front of him. “But it looks so good, I don’t care.”
It was.
English Dockside is not for dieters. It is for indulging. The crab po’ boy, spilling over with fresh, real blue crab ($18) , is one of the great sandwiches in the city. English also offers half sandwiches for people with more reasonable appetites.
Nearly everything comes with a generous sprinkle of English’s secret Cajun spice mix, which — and I’m just guessing here since no one with a secret spice mix will give you any hints — seems to have a lot of paprika, cayenne and garlic powder. It is on the fried fish, naturally, and the delicious crawfish tails. But it is also on the crabmeat salad ($16), the clam chowder ($10), the rice, the fries, even the corn on the cob. I ordered a side salad just to see if the greens would come with the tell-tale dusting of red.
They didn’t, but the rib-eye steak did, and the strong spices overpowered what was a very nice — and expensive — steak. English should make it clear that the steaks come with the spices, and give diners a chance to opt out.
The spice mix is very good, but using it so often makes everything taste the same. The kitchen should be sparing and put extra shakers on the tables for customers who want more.
These are small quibbles for an excellent place.
The fact that English cooks steaks as well as he does fish convinced me that his homemade cakes might be worth a shot, too. We ordered a tall, luscious piece of his red velvet cake ($4.95) and took it home.
One bite and I knew the man could bake as well as he cooks.

On a sunny stretch of blacktop on Manitou Avenue last week, I was confronted with the best of Berlin’s street food: a sloppy, gloppy, greasy, gleaming, wonderful concoction known as a currywurst.
It was handed to me from the window of one of those boxy white carnival stands that usually sell cotton candy, pork chopon-a-stick, and the venerable funnel cake.
This time it was serving a warm bratwurst snuggled against a bed of hot fries under a blanket of bright red sauce ($4).
“It is one of our most famous snack foods in Germany, and I’ve been wanting to serve it for years because it is so good,” said Uwe Dethlefsen, the curry wagon’s owner and founder of Uwe’s, one of the best German restaurants in town.
The currywurst is to Berlin what a good hot dog is to Chicago, or the right pizza slice is to New York — the fast, ubiquitous hometown gut bomb served on seemingly every corner, where the only thing more pervasive than the similarity of one joint to the next is locals’ appetite for debating which is actually the best one.
Let there be no debate in the Pikes Peak region. Uwe’s is the best currywurst stand around. In fact, it is the only currywurst stand in the Pikes Peak region … or the state for that matter … or, very likely, in the entire Intermountain West.
After all, Colorado is not known for great street food. It’s not that we don’t love our snacks greasy, saucy, hot and fast. It’s just that, as good Americans, we don’t walk anywhere. Therefore, there are almost no walk-up restaurants. Instead, we breeze through drive-throughs.
And so, really, good street food only pops up when immigrants are involved. I’m talking about the excellent taco trucks on Federal Boulevard in Denver and their morning counterparts: the Hispanic women selling green chili breakfast burritos quietly out of coolers in their trunks. I’m talking about the Vietnamese guys who deliver spicy báhn mì sand- wiches to Colorado Springs once a week.
And I’m talking about Dethlefsen, who, after decades in the Springs, wanted to bring a little bit of old Berlin to his new hometown.
The currywurst got started in the 1940s and quickly became a staple of Berlin’s Schnellimbisse (fast lunch) stands. Today, Germans eat about 800 million currywursts every year, according to Berlin’s new Currywurst Museum (“The multimedia monument to Germany’s traditional snack”).
“After jaegerschnitzel, it is probably our most popular snack food,” Dethlefsen said.
It’s pretty simple. A sauce, usually made from ketchup, paprika, curry powder and other spices, is heated up and sloshed over a traditional German wurst, which is usually cut up in pieces so it can be munched on the street with a tiny wooden fork. (The local version is uncut and served with a plastic fork and knife.) The whole thing is then dusted with more curry powder. It has that street-food badbut-good addictiveness.
At Dethlefsen’s stand, the sausage hails from the very good Sara Sausages in Monument. You have your choice of the smoked bratwurst or veal brat. I went with veal.
It wasn’t delicate or nuanced or sophisticated. But boy howdy, was it good. I should have asked for extra curry sauce for the fries.
The curry wagon also serves other things: both traditional German and traditional carnival.
The thin, breaded pork schnitzel ($5) is deep fried and served with curry sauce or as a sandwich (also with curry sauce). It’s not bad, but hardly the best schnitzel in the region.
The absurdly giant smoked turkey legs ($6), which are pretty tough and not all that tasty, do have the advantage of acting as an effective defensive club, in case you happen to be mugged while eating one.
There is a chicken version of the currywurst, for people who don’t do sausage.
But for my money, the wurst is the best.
Just thinking about it now makes me want to go get one.

Antlers’ brunch better than bar, but only a selection of offerings shine
Judge Baldwin’s Brew Pub and Antlers Grille
An electric sign above the bar in Judge Baldwin’s Brew Pub at Antlers Hilton hotel that reads “__ Kegs Sold” might be a bellwether for the hotel’s two restaurants, which I recently checked out.
The sign has been turned off but not taken down. Evidence of past ambition sits everywhere in both restaurants among current mediocrity. Things are changing for the better, but they are not there yet.
Judge Baldwin’s opened in 1991 as part of a face-lift of the downtown hotel. At the time, it was lively and hip: The first pub in town to brew beer on site, with a sophisticated-sounding name taken from the stumbling town drunk from Colorado Springs’ pioneer era, who got his title, as the story goes, from judging a sheep contest. The place even had commercials (I can still picture them in my head) where the ghost of Judge Baldwin would try to drink customers’ half-yards of ale.
Things went downhill over the years. Baldwin’s no longer serves half yards. The beer hasn’t been good for years (it earns mostly C’s and D’s from Beeradvocate. com), the food is so-so.
Locals have all but abandoned the place, and on a recent visit, even a gaggle of name-tag-wearing businessmen staying at the hotel were discussing whether they should search for a better bar on “Tee-john” Street.
The hotel’s formal dining room, Antlers Grille, has succumbed to a similar fate.
In 2008, the hotel hired a local dream team of chefs, Ryan Blanchard from Plate World Cuisine and Jay Gust from Ritz Grill, to rebuild these burned-out eateries.
“My first week here I was a little shocked. It was bad. They were using instant mashed potatoes,” Gust said. “But it is coming around.”
In the year Gust and Blanchard have been at the hotel, they have taken a number of steps in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go.
This is clear as soon as you order a pint
— in the brewpub.
“This beer is an affront to my senses,” one friend said on a recent evening when our pints arrived after a long wait. We had ordered an amber lager, a wheat and a pale ale. We spent several minutes arguing over which was which. Finally, we decided the one that tasted like old iced tea was the wheat. The others we never figured out. We didn’t finish them either.
The food was better.
Gust revamped the menu, keeping a few classics like fish and chips, but throwing out other odd balls like lobster ravioli in favor of more familiar pub fare. Basically, the bar does everything Phantom Canyon Brewing Co., across the street, does — but not as well. The room has the forced familiarity of an airport bar. The menu is not much different. Nachos, wings, rings and burgers all make an appearance.
The cheese steak ($7) was a generous pile of shaved sirloin and melted cheese, flecked with peppers and onions, but it was finished under a broiler, which dried out the roll and made it impossible to fold. I ate it with a fork.
The grilled mahi-mahi ($12) with cilantro-lime rice and pico de gallo was wellcooked, and had a good balance of flavor, but came swimming in a pool of butter, which most diners who order grilled ffsh are probably trying to avoid.
Two nice surprises were the beer-cheese soup ($4) and calamari ($7) — both additions by Blanchard and Gust.
The soup is not too thick, bright with the bitterness of the beer, and sprinkled with a playful garnish of popcorn.
The calamari is a bountiful mound of small rings and many-tentacled ends, lightly battered and served with a trio of spicy marinara, lemon aioli and cilantrolime cream.
The Sunday brunch buffet ($23.95) at Antlers Grille was better, but, as at the bar, diners could look to the wall to see a metaphor of lingering problems.
The dark, elegant room is full of old photographs of the stately former Antlers — a 1901 architectural masterpiece festooned with colonnades, balconies and twin stone towers framing Pikes Peak. It was torn down in 1964 and replaced with the bland modern box you see today. The brunch, at times, sufiers from the same bland modern homogenization.
But it also has high points.
Blanchard and Gust have turned brunch into an international affair, with the cuisine of a different spot on the globe featured each week, with everything from Geman hassenpfeffer to deep, dark mole from the ancient Toltecs. All recipes are whipped up by Gust. Much of it is quite good, but the underlying breakfast fare has the food-service feel of Anywhere, USA.
I visited on Brazilian day and found such delights as spicy coconut shrimp soup, chicken in a peanut and banana sauce over aromatic rice, rich black beans and tender pork with spicy smoked sausage.
Many of the more traditional brunch offerings are just as enticing.
A pile of ice holds thumb-size pink shrimp, perfectly cooked and tossed with a hint of dill. Next door is tender poached and smoked salmon.
Just around the corner, beef tenderloin is served delectably rare.
Since Antlers Grille is not very popular, there is no elbowing to get to these premium items.
The down-home breakfast line yields light, flaky biscuits and sausage gravy. No brunch would be complete without a little cantaloupe. Here it is, ripe and fresh, scattered in generous platters of fruit, cheese and cold cuts.
With such fancy ofierings, a number of cheap shortcuts seem particularly jarring.
Blintzes come covered in a gooey cherry topping that seems to have been squeezed from a Hostess pie.
Bagels and croissants all seem to be baked far, far away and designed for shelf life rather than taste.
The omelet bar is good but inconsistent.
Sometimes the cook was there, sometimes she wasn’t.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that the Antlers — Colorado Springs’ oldest hotel — offers fresh-made waffles, but serves them with fake maple syrup. I’d trade it for the real stufl on an Eggo any day.
Gust agreed that the bread and pastries are weak. It is one of the things, he said, with which they still need to make progress.
He said once brunch is dialed in, the Grille will look at opening for dinner.
“First we have to get service prim and proper, and get the back of the house prim and proper,” he said. “Then we can look at all these little things and make them better and better.”

Antlers’ brunch better than bar, but only a selection of offerings shine
Judge Baldwin’s Brew Pub and Antlers Grille
An electric sign above the bar in Judge Baldwin’s Brew Pub at Antlers Hilton hotel that reads “__ Kegs Sold” might be a bellwether for the hotel’s two restaurants, which I recently checked out.
The sign has been turned off but not taken down. Evidence of past ambition sits everywhere in both restaurants among current mediocrity. Things are changing for the better, but they are not there yet.
Judge Baldwin’s opened in 1991 as part of a face-lift of the downtown hotel. At the time, it was lively and hip: The first pub in town to brew beer on site, with a sophisticated-sounding name taken from the stumbling town drunk from Colorado Springs’ pioneer era, who got his title, as the story goes, from judging a sheep contest. The place even had commercials (I can still picture them in my head) where the ghost of Judge Baldwin would try to drink customers’ half-yards of ale.
Things went downhill over the years. Baldwin’s no longer serves half yards. The beer hasn’t been good for years (it earns mostly C’s and D’s from Beeradvocate. com), the food is so-so.
Locals have all but abandoned the place, and on a recent visit, even a gaggle of name-tag-wearing businessmen staying at the hotel were discussing whether they should search for a better bar on “Tee-john” Street.
The hotel’s formal dining room, Antlers Grille, has succumbed to a similar fate.
In 2008, the hotel hired a local dream team of chefs, Ryan Blanchard from Plate World Cuisine and Jay Gust from Ritz Grill, to rebuild these burned-out eateries.
“My first week here I was a little shocked. It was bad. They were using instant mashed potatoes,” Gust said. “But it is coming around.”
In the year Gust and Blanchard have been at the hotel, they have taken a number of steps in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go.
This is clear as soon as you order a pint
— in the brewpub.
“This beer is an affront to my senses,” one friend said on a recent evening when our pints arrived after a long wait. We had ordered an amber lager, a wheat and a pale ale. We spent several minutes arguing over which was which. Finally, we decided the one that tasted like old iced tea was the wheat. The others we never figured out. We didn’t finish them either.
The food was better.
Gust revamped the menu, keeping a few classics like fish and chips, but throwing out other odd balls like lobster ravioli in favor of more familiar pub fare. Basically, the bar does everything Phantom Canyon Brewing Co., across the street, does — but not as well. The room has the forced familiarity of an airport bar. The menu is not much different. Nachos, wings, rings and burgers all make an appearance.
The cheese steak ($7) was a generous pile of shaved sirloin and melted cheese, flecked with peppers and onions, but it was finished under a broiler, which dried out the roll and made it impossible to fold. I ate it with a fork.
The grilled mahi-mahi ($12) with cilantro-lime rice and pico de gallo was wellcooked, and had a good balance of flavor, but came swimming in a pool of butter, which most diners who order grilled ffsh are probably trying to avoid.
Two nice surprises were the beer-cheese soup ($4) and calamari ($7) — both additions by Blanchard and Gust.
The soup is not too thick, bright with the bitterness of the beer, and sprinkled with a playful garnish of popcorn.
The calamari is a bountiful mound of small rings and many-tentacled ends, lightly battered and served with a trio of spicy marinara, lemon aioli and cilantrolime cream.
The Sunday brunch buffet ($23.95) at Antlers Grille was better, but, as at the bar, diners could look to the wall to see a metaphor of lingering problems.
The dark, elegant room is full of old photographs of the stately former Antlers — a 1901 architectural masterpiece festooned with colonnades, balconies and twin stone towers framing Pikes Peak. It was torn down in 1964 and replaced with the bland modern box you see today. The brunch, at times, sufiers from the same bland modern homogenization.
But it also has high points.
Blanchard and Gust have turned brunch into an international affair, with the cuisine of a different spot on the globe featured each week, with everything from Geman hassenpfeffer to deep, dark mole from the ancient Toltecs. All recipes are whipped up by Gust. Much of it is quite good, but the underlying breakfast fare has the food-service feel of Anywhere, USA.
I visited on Brazilian day and found such delights as spicy coconut shrimp soup, chicken in a peanut and banana sauce over aromatic rice, rich black beans and tender pork with spicy smoked sausage.
Many of the more traditional brunch offerings are just as enticing.
A pile of ice holds thumb-size pink shrimp, perfectly cooked and tossed with a hint of dill. Next door is tender poached and smoked salmon.
Just around the corner, beef tenderloin is served delectably rare.
Since Antlers Grille is not very popular, there is no elbowing to get to these premium items.
The down-home breakfast line yields light, flaky biscuits and sausage gravy. No brunch would be complete without a little cantaloupe. Here it is, ripe and fresh, scattered in generous platters of fruit, cheese and cold cuts.
With such fancy ofierings, a number of cheap shortcuts seem particularly jarring.
Blintzes come covered in a gooey cherry topping that seems to have been squeezed from a Hostess pie.
Bagels and croissants all seem to be baked far, far away and designed for shelf life rather than taste.
The omelet bar is good but inconsistent.
Sometimes the cook was there, sometimes she wasn’t.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that the Antlers — Colorado Springs’ oldest hotel — offers fresh-made waffles, but serves them with fake maple syrup. I’d trade it for the real stufl on an Eggo any day.
Gust agreed that the bread and pastries are weak. It is one of the things, he said, with which they still need to make progress.
He said once brunch is dialed in, the Grille will look at opening for dinner.
“First we have to get service prim and proper, and get the back of the house prim and proper,” he said. “Then we can look at all these little things and make them better and better.”

Find greek delights at Jake and Telly’s
One glance at Jake and Telly’s menu tells you that Jake and Telly Topakas, the Greek-American brothers who own this Old Colorado City institution, aren’t out to do just another gyro joint.
Oven roasted lamb shank with a tangy roasted tomato glaze sits next to bone-in pork loin marinated in lemon and oregano. Of course, you can order a traditional gyro or a plate of olives and feta cheese. But Jake and Telly also offer wild Sockeye salmon with dill and capers, or pork medallions in a sweet white wine.
Which is to say, this is not your average Greek.
Jake and Telly’s started as a bar with a few food items in 1997 and has grown more and more sophisticated, to the point where the brothers now regularly win The Gazette’s Best Greek award, get two stars in the Mobil Travel Guide and host four-course wine dinners. Call it Greek chic.
Even so, it is best to navigate the menu with caution. While no dish even approaches bad, some are better values than others.
The best way to get acquainted with the place is to grab a spot on the long, shady balcony, which overlooks Colorado Avenue, and order the Mixed Mezze ($15), a platter strewn with rich, crispy spinach spanakopita, Greek meatballs in a tangy lamb and roasted tomato sauce, tender grape leaves stuffed with seasoned rice, savory gyro meat, toasted pita bread, spicy humus and real, delicious Greek olives. One plate could easily sate two.
The Kalamari ($11) — bright, fresh rings of squid swimming with a school of capers, olives, spinach and onions in a tangy tomato and wine broth — is so excellent that I found myself slurping the broth long after the squid was gone.
I have to admit, I was too embarrassed to order the Saganaki ($10) — a plate of mild sheep’s milk cheese, delivered to the table on fire by a server who then claps and yells “OPAH!” But, judging by how many tables order it, it must be very tasty.
Nibblers would be wise to pair the platter with one of a long list of good Greek wines the brothers Topakas offer. If the Aegean varietals seem mystifying (Assyrtico anyone?), don’t worry, the terrific servers will never steer you wrong.
Staying for a full dinner brings a leisurely parade of delights. The slowroasted lamb shank ($22) is so tender you don’t need a knife; it’s covered in a tangy tomato slather from an old family recipe.
The fish of the day (we had halibut) was perfectly moist and flaky, perched on a column of seasoned rice and nicely sautéed squash.
The Souvlaki ($19) — simple pork tenderloin skewers in a zesty marinade — were expertly cooked and delicious, but they hint at the one thing at Jake and Telly’s that can stick in diners’ craws. Some of the meals feel inexplicably pricey. Should pork skewers with simple rice and sautéed veggies cost $20?
I had the same question for the very good, but not really fancy, Chicken Mavrodaphne ($19) — a pan-fried chicken breast in a sweet Greek wine sauce over pasta. It’s good, but it’s pasta and chicken. Charge $15. Anyone showing up for lunch hoping to find the dish discounted will be disappointed.
Lunch does have a number of values, including a too-big-for-its-own-plate Greek salad ($7) and a busting-out-of-its-ownpita Gyro ($9).
Desserts too, are delicious and homemade. The chocolate mousse ($6) is the real, deep, dark, deal. The best thing on the menu might be saragli, Greek nut roll. It’s like a rolled up cousin of baklava.
The restaurant has a strong following of regulars, most of whom have probably ffgured out the answer to the central question: Where have the Topakas truly raised the bar on local Greek cuisine, and where have they just raised the price?

“The Manitou Pancake House? That place is for tourists,” a friend and longtime Manitou Springs local told me when she declined an invitation to go there with me for breakfast.
That certainly is the reputation for the place. In the summer, when the RVs roll in, the parking lot is full. In winter, spots are always available. But, the same is true of a lot of Manitou restaurants, including tasty classics like The Loop or Dutch Kitchen. Just because the Texans like it doesn’t mean locals can’t.
So we went to check out the Manitou Pancake & Steak House on a recent weekend morning.
I had been prodded by regular calls from Joseph Freyre, who told me it was too good not to review.
Freyre, an impeccably dressed Peruvian immigrant, has a long history in the Colorado Springs restaurant scene. For 10 years he was the maitre d’hotel of the Penrose Room at The Broadmoor hotel. He owned Joseph’s Hatch Cover and last year opened a very good little bistro on Eighth Street called Joseph’s Fine Dining.
I figured with Freyre at the helm, the Pancake & Steak House would be a step above. It turns out I should have listened to the locals. There is nothing truly disastrous about the restaurant, but nothing really fantastic about it either.
When we arrived on a Sunday morning, the place was jumping. Freyre flitted about so energetically and meticulously coiffedflirst thing in the morning, I had to wonder whether he’d ever gone home after a night searing pepper steaks at his bistro.
He showed us to a wooden booth, and a young server soon came with coffee.
I scanned the menu in the deranged way only restaurant reviewers do — not looking for what I want to eat, but for out-of-the-ordinary or “signature” stuff that sounded weird enough to be interesting. There was nothing. Nothing at all. Think Denny’s 20 years ago: omelets, pancakes, biscuits, waffles.
Manitou Pancake & Steak House is best known for its all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet ($11), which includes all that stuff, plus potato pancakes, sausage, bacon, sweet rolls and fruit. It seems nice enough, but a little expensive for what you get, and the discount for kids (younger than 12, $7.69; younger than 6, $5.59) is not much of an incentive. I mean, how many eggs can a 6-year-old eat?
We ordered French Toast ($7.69) and a spinach-and-tomato omelet ($7.89), and they came out before we’d finished our first cup of weak diner coffee. Both were competently made — crisp bacon, just-right over-easy eggs — but unremarkable. They could have been from anywhere.
The service at the Pancake & Steak House is excellent. Whatever Freyre learned at the Penrose Room, he brought with him. No coffee cup ever goes unfilled. The dining area is a little dated but spotlessly clean. And best of all, when I tried to order the Chicken BLT ($8.29), the server kindly shooed me away from a dish she knew was a dog and steered me, instead, to the much-better Santa Fe Turkey Sandwich ($6.79).
Lunch, like breakfast, is classic diner fare that has some nice touches but lacks distinction.
The only steak on the menu, a rib-eye ($9.39) — tender, and even a little pink, served on toast with real, homemade mashed potatoes on the side — was the best steak dinner I’ve ever had for $10.
The Philly Cheese Steak ($7.89) arrived value-challenged in comparison. The small sandwich had only a few shavings of beef, laid ffat on a deflated roll with a dice of onions and peppers. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t much.
A better deal is one of the burgers, or the good, gooey, patty melt.
Don’t go near the Cobb salad ($7.29). The menu promised “seasonal greens.” The plate delivered a small pile of chopped romaine buried in shaved turkey, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, prefab guacamole and a generous blizzard of blue cheese crumbles.
I had never tested my theory that blue cheese and guacamole don’t go together. Now I have.
There is a niche for a place like the Pancake & Steak House. It is convenient, not too expensive, and you can usually get a table. If you have family in town and a limited amount of time to grab a bite before taking the train up Pikes Peak, a buffet is a nice option.
And it serves another purpose. It gives the tourists someplace to go, freeing up tables at other breakfast spots in Manitou.

Nawlins in Falcon serves a mean jambalaya and other Southern faves

It’s hard to find good things that came out of Hurricane Katrina.
But if you live in Falcon, Nawlins Bar B Q & Cajun Cuisine is one of them. The storm drove Louisiana native and New Orleans cook Martin Allred out of the Big Easy to this high-plains crossroads, where his restaurant Nawlins turns out very good, authentic New Orleans cuisine.
Allred learned how to whip up a lot of dishes from his stepfather, the legendary Cajun fiddler Allen Fontenot. He does not cut corners, and the results are delicious.
You can immediately see it in his Creole-style jambalaya ($10 at dinner), which sings with a tangy tomato base, instead of a traditional brown roux, and the New Orleans trinity of onion, celery and green pepper. Big chunks of smoked chicken and smoky sausage swim in the perfectly cooked rice. Often ordering this dish brings a soupy mush. Here, it is divine.
Nawlins is worth a visit just for the sausage, handmade at tiny Poche’s Market in the Cajun town of Breaux Bridge, La.
The sausage platter is laden with huge wheels of andouille, 2 inches across and packed chunky with coarse-ground pork and a delicious blend of red pepper, brown sugar, garlic and paprika.
The plate has two other spicy links, including the hot and heavily smoked chaurice, flecked inside with chives.
On the side, a link of Poche’s famous boudin stufled with rice, pork, liver, onions and spices, is a truly authentic treat.
The restaurant also has a smattering of po’ boy sandwiches and breakfast beignets that I didn’t get to try. Prices are lower at breakfast and lunch.
Nawlins also does barbecue — all slow smoked with pecan wood.
I tried a heaping BBQ Sampler ($16). The ribs have a dry rub so thick and laden with paprika that they look upholstered in red velvet.
The pulled pork (co-owner Jackie Hine’s favorite) is moist and tender. Though not very smoky or flavorful, it is a nice match for the three kinds of barbecue sauce (sweet, hot and standard) on every table.
The sampler comes with slaw and beans, which are both OK but not great, and tasty jalapeño hush puppies.
The only dog on the barbecue plate is the brisket. When we ordered it, it looked as though it had been pre-sliced long before, then rewarmed for our plate.
Like any good Southern-themed restaurant, Nawlins serves alligator. Specifically, Nawlin’s has tenderized alligator tail meat, slaked in a great seasoned cornmeal crust and flash-fried. Alligator tastes a lot like rattlesnake or guinea pig, which is to say, “tastes like chicken.” You can get your gator solo or as part of the intimidating Swamp Platter ($23) — a deep-fried Mardi Gras mound of alligator, soft-shell crab, catfish and frog legs — which, the owner says, is the most popular dish. (I’m skeptical.)
Like its namesake city, Nawlins has some real problems if you go beyond the good food. The décor is strip mall stark with sallow fluorescent lighting and naked tables that hardly scream “come spend $23-a-plate on dinner.”
Most of the business at night is in the adjoining bar, and on poker nights (Tuesdays and Thursdays), it spills its Falcon ex-urban high-plains weirdness all over the dining room.
The service on one night we visited was deplorable. The server did not know the menu, forgot our side salads, and delivered an appetizer of blackened shrimp last instead of first. She was new, and other servers are much better, but it is no excuse.
Nawlins plans to open a new location on Powers this summer. Let’s hope it can pair the authentic cuisine with a more inviting experience.

Pair drink with buffalo, pork or beef and an unrivaled atmosphere
Wines of Colorado, a cool little restaurant and tasting room at the base of the Pikes Peak Highway in Cascade, causes almost everyone driving by to do a double take.
After all, “wine” and “Colorado” are not two words most people put together.
It’s a bit like ski resorts in Kentucky. Most people are surprised to find they exist at all, and are doubtful they are much good.
“I moved here from California,” said the man pouring us samples from a row of cabernets. “And when I saw the sign that said Wines of Colorado here, I thought, boy, that must be one tiny store.”
In fact, Colorado has 750 acres of vineyards and 64 licensed wineries. It has been producing wines for more than 100 years, and some really good wine for about a decade. (Colorado Springs founder William Jackson Palmer is thought to have dabbled in viticulture.)
Wines of Colorado has brought together most of the state’s wineries in one place with good, affordable food and one of the best patios in the region.
Most of the building is devoted to selling bottles. Stacked cases of bold Palisade tempranillo, crisp viognier, choke cherry merlot and spiced mead made from fermented honey make aisles around a bar where customers can sample flights of wine before buying.
Many of the offerings are quite good. The biggest obstacle to really falling in love with Colorado wines is the price.
At one end of the tasting room is a small, eclectically decorated dining room. At the other end is a sprawling, multilevel patio that goes right down to the pine-shaded banks of Fountain Creek.
The menu is anything but snooty. Owner Marv Parliament, the one-time marketing manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins, always wanted a roadside barbecue joint, and he’s come up with something similar.
The only things more revered by local diners than the choice tables on his patio are his burgers.
The juicy Colorado Wine Burger on a fresh kaiser roll ($8.50) is so stuffed with juicy grilled onions, roasted green chiles and sautéed mushrooms that toppings tumble out at almost every bite. It’s delicious.
Parliament is not using freshly roasted green chiles, but he is not using the slimy, tasteless canned version either. He gets very nice, thick, flavorful peppers frozen from Hatch, N.M. They are particularly delicious matched with the buffalo burger ($9.50), which is juicy with a nice hint of gaminess. Parliament recommends pairing it with a nice cabernet sauvignon.
For the very good Smoked Pork Tenderloin Sandwich ($8.50), topped with Swiss cheese, grilled onions, roasted chiles and a sweet but spicy red chili sauce (tastes like Sriracha), he recommends a glass of fumé blanc. But the sandwich is so tasty, it would be good with just about anything.
The thin, tender slices of pork Parliament smokes on the patio are an apt escort for roasted chiles. The whole thing is pressed and grilled like a panino to make a gooey, warm mess worth raising a glass to.
Other things are only OK, and some things are worth avoiding. The Stuffed Portabello Ravioli Salad ($9) was a nice mix of spinach, tomatoes, slivered almonds and red onion topped with rich, savory ravioli; but what sounded like a vegetarian dish came with bits of bacon lurking about.
The chicken tortilla soup — which should have been a thin, spicy broth — was actually a thick, somewhat bland chickenwhite-bean chili. And at $6 for a mug, it was overpriced.
The grilled, 12-ounce rib-eye with two sides ($20) is the most expensive thing on the menu. Rib-eyes are supposed to be a little fatty, but this one pushed the limit. When I ordered it rare, it came with only the slightest hint of pink. It wasn’t bad, but there are better places to drop an Andrew Jackson on a steak.
Smart diners will be rewarded by sticking to sandwiches and house favorites such as the made-from-scratch Chicken Pot Pie ($8.50). Dessert is mostly cake slices made elsewhere — pretty good but not worth breaking your diet for.
The sweetest thing is the experience as a whole: To be able to have a great burger or sandwich in a gorgeous mountain setting, listening to the song of the nearby creek and sampling new wines is a great way to spend a few warm summer hours.
A toast to Wines of Colorado for making it possible.

White collars welcome at downtown Slayton’s
If there can be such a thing as whitecollar barbecue, the new Slayton’s Tejon Street Barbecue is the place.
Instead of big rolls of paper towels on the table for mopping up sauce splatters, Slayton’s has cloth serviettes.
Instead of pictures of customers’ dogs, or no pictures at all on the wall (the decorating schemes of two other local barbecue joints), Slayton’s has a row of elegant mirrors over ornate, dark wood paneling and tastefully understated sconces. I’d wager it has been a long time since barbecue and sconces appeared in the same review.
The tables are packed with starched shirts doing business over ribs.
A large portrait of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis hangs at one end of the new restaurant, his eyebrow raised as if to wonder what to make of the whole scene. But rest assured, Mr. Davis, a big smoker packed with hickory chugs out back, where ribs and brisket sizzle slow and low. Plates of charred-black ends with cornbread and ribs slathered in red sauce go by in the narrow alley of a dining room. There is Shiner Bock on tap. This white collar has some bona fide barbecue sauce on it.
Slayton’s is the invention and extension of Randy Price, who opened the original Slayton’s (a paper-napkin place) in 2005 in Rockrimmon, and also owns Salsa Brava (two locations) and Sonterra Grill.
From sauce to style, Slayton’s is based heavily on the Kansas City native’s favorite hometown barbecue place, Jack Stack.
It works. As Pablo Picasso once said, (possibly lifting a line from Marcel Duchamp) “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.”
Some of the food at Slayton’s approaches the level of art. The pulled pork sandwich ($9) is neither too soggy nor too dry, and the smoky, moist bits that range in color and flavor reward every bite. Ask for spicy or mild Kansas Citystyle sauce on the side, and douse to your heart’s content.
The chicken-fried steak ($11) is unequivocally the best in town, with a truly crispy crust over top sirloin with fresh, peppery white gravy. Look out, Mason Jar.
The burnt-end combo ($10), with a hard-to-distinguish jumble of luscious, slightly caramelized beef and pork, is a barbecue lover’s delight — all meat and mess with two sides. We recommend the onion rings, and mac and cheese.
The desserts are divine. Do whatever you have to in order to save room for the hot, fresh berry cobbler with cold, rich vanilla ice cream. Then figure out how you can also choke down the bread pudding drizzled with a rich, lemon-tinged cream.
When a waitress tried to entice us with the bread pudding, a friend muttered under her breath, “No one’s is as good as my bread pudding.” When the Slayton’s version arrived, she stopped muttering.
Other dishes are just OK. The ribs ($12-16) fell apart with succulent gasps of steam, but when we tried them, they did not have that delicious, slightly crackly outer veneer good ribs can attain after hours in the smoker.
The sliced brisket sandwich ($9 for three slices) was stingy, and the beef didn’t have as much luscious smokiness as the pulled pork.
The beans are too close in flavor to the barbecue sauce, and the coleslaw did not have much fiavor at all.
The roasted chicken, flecked with thyme, was mushy on the outside and mealy on the inside.
These quibbles are easily sidestepped by great service in a cool space, and extras most paper-napkin barbecue dens don’t have, such as a good wine-by-theglass list, smoked salmon and four nice salads to placate the less-carnivorous diner.
It’s well worth parking your white collar at one of Slayton’s tables. And it’s perfectly OK to tuck in one of the cloth serviettes like a bib.

Smashburger sizzles with fresh meat, upscale atmosphere
In the city that inspired the book “Fast Food Nation,” who would have thought there would be room for another hamburger place, let alone several? But I’m here to tell you to prepare yourself for the bourgeois burger blitz.
A high-end burger battle is starting.
It’s a delicious bombardment of a different kind of burger chain than you probably are used to. America’s first burger invasion (McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s) valued efficiency and uniformity above all. In this new wave, the ultimate prize is a better burger.
It’s all part of a nationwide trend of celebrity-chef-inspired burger gentrification that is doing for the lowly patty what Chipotle did for the burrito.
The first salvo was upscale West Coast franchise Fatburger, which started offering juicy, grilled, 1/3-pound burgers on North Academy Boulevard in 2005. Then East Coast powerhouse (and Michelle Obama favorite) Five Guys Burgers and Fries opened across the street late in 2008 and easily overwhelmed Fatburger with the shock, awe and deliciousness of its old school fresh ingredients and awesome potatoes. The line is regularly out the door at Five Guys.
Now comes a truly worthy contender: Smashburger.
The chic space, full of red retro booths and cool modern lighting, opened just off Powers Boulevard in March.
The Denver-based franchise does hamburgers on a whole new level. It’s a place that treats the patty as more than just a piece of meat. There is respect for this American classic, even … decorum.
You can get metal silverware at Smashburger. You can get a glass of white wine or a bottle of beer. You can get fries tossed in olive oil, rosemary and thyme. And if you are feeling especially snooty you can get an order of veggie frites (though I wouldn’t recommend it). All this would be annoyingly pretentious if you couldn’t also get one of the best burgers in the city.
Order a burger, and a never-frozen ball of fresh beef (either third of a pound or half a pound) is smashed flat on the hot grill. The theory is that squashing the meat creates a crust that seals in juicy flavor. And it seems to be true.
I ordered the classic Smashburger (mustard, ketchup, red onion, pickles and secret Smashburger sauce, $5), and it was delivered to my table open-faced, showing off a smashed patty as misshapen as Pangea — vaguely round, but full of inlets and valleys where the condiments could congregate.
The patty sported the deep brown crust of a good backyard burger and glistened with a molten slice of good old gooey American cheese — the perfect low-brow accessory for a true cheeseburger.
The fresh, crunchy pickles are the kind you might encounter in a kosher deli. The bun is a chewy egg roll: substantial without being too voluminous. They didn’t skimp on the mustard.
One bite and I was in love.
Don’t get me wrong. You pay for everything you get at Smashburger. Small burger, fries and drink will run you $10. But it is worth it. This is the burger you’ve been dreaming of.
You can upgrade in all sorts of ways — by adding guacamole, Applewood Smoked Bacon, superthin and deep-fried Haystack Onions, or spicy Pepper Jack cheese — but the plain burger is the most elegant attraction. When we visited, the extras on the Mushroom Swiss Burger ($6) were too greasy and salty.
Not everything at the burger boutique is so phenomenal. The Smashfries ($2.79), with their olive oil and herbs, are very good but taste frozen, so they don’t approach the fresh-cut goodness diners can find at Five Guys.
The Veggie Frites ($4) are a glistening jumble of green beans, asparagus and carrot sticks fried long enough to make them greasy but not long enough that they are actually cooked.
But other offerings are fantastic.
The shakes ($4) are made with hand-dipped Häagen-Daz, not soft serve, which means, besides tasting great, they don’t have all the gums and stabilizers of soft serve. So the shake can be thick and still suckable through a straw.
The Smashdog ($4) is split and grilled, then dressed with all the good toppings.
If you want a true Chicago dog, this is the place.
Smashburger also has a very cool takeout box.
It’s a wide, paper rectangle with top flaps that fold open, giving diners on-the-go an impromptu plate more fltting for such an elegant burger than just some paper wrapper.
It keeps the secret sauce off your lap, too.
But I don’t recommend getting burgers to go. The boutique Smashburger deserves to be enjoyed hot and fresh at a table, possibly with silverware.
You can raise your pinkie while eating it if you wish.

“Arharn” is Thai for “food,” and it is a fitting title for this humble, wholesome, well-priced, delicious little restaurant that recently sprang up near the Super Target on Powers Boulevard.
Dishes such as steaming-hot, spicy lemongrass soup swimming with shrimp and fresh chopped cilantro ($6), and deep-orange Panang Curry — tart with fresh basil and kaffir lime leaves — offer traditional Thai food without flourishes or shortcuts.
“We make it the way Thai should be,” said owner Doungsamorn Peanvanvanich, who with her cousin moved from Denver to open the cheerfully bright Arharn in February. That means recipes they learned from their families. And while Peanvanvanich goes by the simplified name Pong, she takes no Americanized shortcuts with the food.
Take the Pad Thai Ho Kai ($7.90). The dish wraps the traditional, simple Pad Thai stir-fry of rice noodles; egg; fish, shrimp or chicken; crushed peanuts; and cilantro, and wraps it in a paperthin omelet.
This “Thai-style burrito,” Pong said, is a popular street food in Thailand, “but nobody serves it here because it is too difficult.”
Too bad. It’s fantastic. Do not leave the restaurant without ordering this dish.
The green curry ($6.70) brims with the same allegiance to true Thai cooking. American versions often slide toward being too rich with coconut milk or too sweet with sugar, masking the more interesting flavors of spice and fish sauce. At Arharn, rich and sweet take a back seat, aromatic spices drive, and musky, salty fish sauce shares shotgun with fresh fronds of Thai basil.
Pong says the green curry is a favorite dish with military customers who have developed a taste for real Thai overseas.
A better starter curry might be the sweeter, milder Panang ($6.70) made from, among other things, galangal root, lemongrass, coriander root, coriander, cumin, peanuts, garlic and salt. It comes swimming with a choice of meat, thin rounds of zucchini, julienned carrots and more of that lovely basil. Pour a little over white rice. It is fantastic.
The pairing of wide ribbons of rice noodles, lemongrass and fish sauce in the Drunken Noodles ($6.60) offers a bright and delicious balance.
The supremely simple dessert of ripe mango and sticky rice cooked in sweet coconut ($4) is not to be missed.
A word about spice. Every Thai restaurant gives you the option of how spicy you want to make your dish, but there is no standard. “Hot” at one place may be mildly spicy, and at another place may be, to quote Lisa Simpson, hot enough to make you “see through time.” At Arharn, they don’t mess around. Medium has a decent punch. Hot may cause pain. And Thai hot is a straight-out cage fight.
I ran into only one disappointment: I ordered two deep-fried appetizers for takeout — seasoned fish cakes ($4) and shrimp on a stick, wrapped in rice noodles, then fried ($4) — both were cold and rubbery by the time I ate them. Anything fried should be eaten right away.
Arharn is worth a sit-down meal. The room is bright and modern, but cozy and full of plants. The service is quick and friendly without being rushed.
The fans it wins over (and I expect they will be many) are well-deserved.

Try the chicken-fried steak.
That is what everybody says whenever The Mason Jar comes up in conversation, and sometimes even when it doesn’t.
A woman leaned over to me at a busy downtown restaurant last week when she saw a plate of chicken-fried steak slathered in country gravy in front of me and said, in a what-the-heck-are-you-doing-here tone, “Have you been to the Mason Jar? Theirs is awesome.”
I have been to the Mason Jar. When I was a kid, my sister and I were allowed to pick the place to go out to eat on our birthdays, and the Jar was in a small and highly esteemed rotation with Fargo’s Pizza and a now-defunct Chinese place.
I doubted the menu had changed at all. And judging by the always crowded parking lot, neither has the popularity.
Recently, the Mason Jar, which opened its original location in 1982, opened a new location up north, so I figured it was time to go back and see.
The new spot is in the old New South Wales. What had been a not very good Australian-themed surfand-turf place has been countryfried with antique jars and lanterns, a wagon wheel or two and, yes, surprisingly realistic log cabin wallpaper.
Drinks come in mason jars. You half-expect the servers to wear overalls. Think “Hee Haw,” but without the corny jokes. The dining room is quite comfortable and has a stunning view of Pikes Peak. We piled into a comfy booth and ordered appetiz- ers as soon as the server greeted us.
The menu is just as it was back in the day. So, of course, chicken-fried steak was in order.
For the uninitiated, chicken-fried steak is a beef flank steak, pounded thin and tender, slaked in seasoned batter, then deep fried. It is thought to be a Texas version of Wiener schnitzel cooked up by German immigrants who came to the South. It is almost always pinned under rich, peppery country gravy with mashed potatoes on the side. In the city, they sometimes call it country fried steak. Never order chicken-fried steak from someone who calls it that.
Anyway, the name comes from the fact that it is battered and fried like fried chicken, and it gave rise to a redundant offshoot, chicken-fried chicken, which is not the same as fried chicken. Order it sometime and see for yourself.
Since Mason Jar opened its first restaurant on the west side in 1982, chains such as Cracker Barrel and Black-eyed Pea have come along to compete in its down-home niche. The Mason Jar still stands up to the corporate country folks by serving almost everything fresh and homemade.
A combo appetizer plate ($7.29) arrived with the first hand-battered fried cheese sticks I’ve seen (they usually come frozen in a bag), next to equally fresh fried mushrooms and slices of zucchini. My plan had been to sample just a few, but the plate was so delicious, four of us quickly polished it off.
The dinners showed the same by-hand prep.
Shrimp escorting an 8-ounce prime rib ($15) were hand butterflied and breaded, then expertly fried.
The chicken-fried steak ($9.89 for the small, $12 for the large) and chicken-fried chicken ($10 for the small, $12.49 for the large) both sported a thick, peppery, crunchy breading that is deservedly famous in town, covered with a rich, comforting gravy.
This food is not hip or healthful (the closest thing to a vegetable on the plates was small dishes of packaged corn) but it’s pretty darn good and you get a lot.
Stray too far from the chicken-fried part of the menu and disappointment waits. The prime rib tended toward too dry on one side, too fatty on the other. The Lemon Broiled Shrimp ($11.49) were tough and overdone. But what do you expect? No one ever says, “Have you been to the Mason Jar? Their shrimp are awesome.”
Dessert did its best to make amends. It’s hard to dwell over bad shrimp with homemade, hot blackberry cobbler in front of you.

A good diner is not about surprises.
A good diner is not about surprises.
A good diner always has a booth that is empty and a coffee cup that isn’t. The shakes come with a straw but are too thick for one.
It is a place you can grab a quick bite if you are in a hurry or linger for hours over a stack of newspapers if you are not.
At a good diner, the food is 100 percent American — which means it is Greek, sometimes Mexican, a little Irish or German, but always with good burgers. And if you want eggs any time of the day, no one will say a darn thing.
A good diner is not fancy at all, but it is well-priced and dependable.
In other words, a good diner is comforting, even when times are not.
In all respects, Stevie Ray’s Eastside Grill is a good diner.
The former Ruby’s Diner, rebranded by owner Steve Link in January, is a buoy of independence bobbing in the corporate shark tank of northern Powers Boulevard — dangerous waters for any nonchain business, but Stevie Ray’s seems to be doing well. The space is huge. You will always get a table. And it also manages to be cozy and bright, with enough nooks and windows to keep it from feeling like a gymnasium.
The gleaming red-and-white 1950s Ruby’s décor has been toned down to a tasteful range of contemporary blacks, grays and browns. But the menu is still pure diner (and largely still Ruby’s).
The fluffy multigrain pancakes ($7.50) come stacked three-high, with a classic dome of whipped butter slowly melting in the center and dribbling down to the plate. The syrup, of course, is fake. But the perfectly cooked eggs, ordered over easy, show the acumen of a short-order chef who can time an egg perfectly no matter how many tickets are waiting above the griddle.
The same skill shows in the veggie omelet ($8.50). The fluffy robe of eggs wraps around a nice dice of mushrooms, tomato and spinach covered (but not too covered) in melted cheddar and jack cheese. The whole thing, the server told me, is cooked on the griddle, then ufnished under a broiler to avoid inner uncooked goo.
It’s not art, but it’s dependable.
The same is true for lunch and dinner, although, since you can order most items all day, breakfast, lunch and dinner become blurred concepts differentiated only by menu headings and the advent of happy hour. (In a very un-diner move, Stevie Ray’s has a liquor licence.) The big burgers come on nice, light rolls with all the fixings. I couldn’t help but order the Stevie Ray’s Favorite — a bacon cheeseburger with a smear of creamy peanut butter. The burger was juicy and delicious. The peanut butter was subtle but kind of creepy. Perhaps in good diners it is best to stick to the standards. The fries on the side were decent.
The Southwestern Chicken Wrap ($8), is more what you’d expect: fried chicken tenders wrapped in a flour tortilla with black beans, pico de gallo, a bit of cheese and taco sauce. It’s tasty, if a bit too salty. So what if most of the ingredients were prepared far away?
This is a diner. You want local? Go to the farmers market.
Stevie Ray’s also has a small dinner menu (again, available whenever) with items such as chicken fried steak ($11), pot roast ($10.50) and chicken broccoli alfredo ($12).
We went for the JT’s Mac Attack — a big bowl of mac and cheese laced with bacon, ground beef, jalapeños and topped with pico de gallo ($10). It sounded awesome, and at the price, we were really expecting something.
Unfortunately, the mac and cheese is a little bland, the peppers were few and far between, and the pico de gallo was a fairly flavorless dice of unripe tomatoes, onions and peppers. It was a bad deal, especially when Phantom Canyon and Metropolitain both have fancier mac at lower prices.
Still, a good diner shouldn’t leave you talking about the food. For the most part the menu is tasty food at good prices.
Stevie Ray’s will ffll you, and give you a clean, well-lighted, kid-friendly space to chat with friends. And if you order a chocolate malt to go, it will come with a tiny crown of whipped cream, a cherry, and a special long spoon, angled at the end for scooping deep into the cup for the last bits of creamy goodness.
Now, that’s a good diner.

German cafe reigns when it comes
It’s helpful to have a healthy suspicion of self-proclaimed kings, even schnitzel kings, but when I cracked open a menu in this humble Fountain restaurant, it was obvious the chef had a legitimate claim to the crown.
The menu listed no fewer than 15 schnitzels for $9.90 each, from the basic pounded, breaded and fried pork cutlet Wiener schnitzel, on which all other schnitzels are based, to the uber-decadent Robber Schnitzel, sprinkled with crispy bacon and sloshed in a fresh, rich German hollandaise.
There is schnitzel topped with an egg, schnitzel with Swiss, Hawaiian schnitzel with pineapple. “I have more schnitzels than anybody. You can’t get this many schnitzels in Germany,” the owner and chef, Sigfried Herbst, told me.
Like most Germans in Colorado Springs, Herbst traces his path to the United States through the Cold War military buildup in Germany. For decades almost a million troops were stationed in what was then Western Germany. They met locals, fell in love, and married. Many were then stationed in Colorado Springs. Hundreds still live here. That was the story of Herbst’s sister.
Four years ago, after his sister had pestered the future king for years to join her in the States, Herbst made the move and opened his tiny restaurant.
Through the front door, a simple array of tables and booths wait under somewhat dour faux-wood paneled walls. It’s dark and a bit gloomy. In other words, it looks almost exactly like local favorite German restaurant Uwe’s. They must be
— channeling the same Teutonic décor.
The food is absolutely authentic. Herbst cuts, pounds and breads each cutlet to order. He mixes all the sauces daily and makes the eggy spaetzel noodles by hand. Plates overflowing with huge portions hit the table with the thud of a caloric blitzkrieg. Make a plan ahead of time to take most of it home.
The crisp Jaeger Schnitzel comes submerged in a sea of rich brown portobello mushroom gravy. The only hint of vegetables is a slight mince of parsley over the top. On the side you can order good fried potatoes, but Herbst will almost certainly talk you into the spaetzel instead, since the noodles are perfect with gravy.
The Robber Schnitzel’s layers of fried pork, bacon (the other fried pork), and intense hollandaise are as good for your taste buds as they are bad for your heart. When stumbling out the door after nearly finishing one, a friend said, “That is, like, the best thing I have ever had. . . I’m glad I can’t eat it every day.”
I tried to order light once by asking for the chicken schnitzel with tarragon sauce.
“It’s pretty good,” Herbst said with a disdainful shrug. “But I really only have it for those people who don’t like pork.”
Instead, he steered me toward the bratwurst ($9.90) — two huge pork sausages expertly seared and served with fried potatoes and sweet, tangy red cabbage. They were excellent and a terrific value.
The Schnitzel King also does specials. Herbst may have goulash or sauerbraten on any given day. He has a scattering of steaks ($15-$17), which I did not try. For holidays, such as this Easter Sunday, he makes a special rouladen. But in general, he said, he sticks with the schnitzel.
“I am only one man in here,” he told me. “People all the time ask me to make the other German food. They ask me if I can make the soup. I say I am not the Soup King, I am the Schnitzel King. That is what I do, and I do it better than anybody.”
I’m inclined to agree.

In my forays into food, I’ve munched on grasshoppers tossed in salt and chili that a woman was selling from a basket balanced on her head in Oaxaca, Mexico. I’ve slurped quinoa-and-guinea pig stew with the whole rodent heads still bobbing in the broth in the Andes. I’ve even ordered pizza at McDonald’s.
But none of these foodie feats prepared me for a meal caused by a mistranslation at the lunch counter of Fruteria Guadalajara that ended with a Mexican woman in an apron handing me a glistening, tangled mound of pickled pig skins.
Fruteria Guadalajara is the latest in a bunch of grocery/butcher shop/taco places that pepper Colorado Springs’ “Taco Triangle.” The Triangle is a swath of town — roughly between the intersections of Union Boulevard and Platte Avenue, Platte and Academy Boulevard, and Academy and Airport Road — where almost all of the city’s truly authentic Mexican food is served. The grocery/butcher shops are spots Triangle.
And Fruteria Guadalajara is one of the most authentic of them all.
The aisles are piled with exotic delights: Spineless, edible cactus pads, the daggerlike leaves of blue agave plants, which must figure into some dish I can’t even conceive of, bunches of epazote, yerba buena and other hard-to-find herbs, candied prickly pear fruit, five types of bananas and 12 types of dried chiles.
It really is almost like being in a market in Mexico.
In the back, a butcher singing in falsetto to loud tuba music at a broad meat counter offers Mexican cuts of beef, pork and goat. To the side, another counter serves tacos, burritos, fresh fruit juice and smoothies, and, yes, pickled pig skin. Outside, there’s often a guy grilling whole chickens.
The first time I visited, I played it safe, ordering two tacos filled with carnitas (braised pork shoulder) and adobada (pork marinated in mild red chili). They arrived in typical Triangle style: A double layer of small, soft corn tortillas with a small amount of meat. At the nearby salsa station, I topped them with spicy, delicious tomatillo sauce, cilantro, onions, lettuce and a fresh lime.
Guadalajara doesn’t have the best salsa station in town. Some have a whole troop of different salsas, shredded cabbage and thin, spicy, wonderful avocado sauce. But on the whole, the tacos are very good. And at $4.50 for four, they are priced right.
A friend ordered a carne asada (chopped grilled beef ) burrito “smothered.” In Colorado-style Mexican restaurants, “smothered” means doused in thick, gravylike chili. In the Triangle it generally means doused in a thin tomatillo salsa.
The burrito was huge, packed with rice and beans, topped with melted cheese, and served with real crema fresca (the Mexican version of sour cream, which you almost never see around here). Both humble, hearty, delicious meals primed us for our return two days later.
That’s when it happened.
I ordered in Spanish, which is not necessary, but I was trying to be accommodating — either that or trying to show off. Anyway, I asked for a plate of chicken flautas (shredded chicken rolled up in corn tortillas and fried), a pastor taco (marinated, grilled pork with pineapple) and a buche (pig tripe) taco, just to be daring, and a chile relleno.
“Chile relleno?” the woman behind the counter said, or at least that’s what I thought she said.
“Si,” I replied.
Turns out she had said “cueritos?”
Turns out cueritos are a heaping, wiggly pile of slimy pig skin cut into long, thin strips, then served on a giant tostada with shredded cabbage, slices of avocado and hot sauce.
I almost turned white.
“Oh, look at Mr. I-had-to-order-in-Spanish now,” a friend teased.
“Hey, you have to eat some of this, too,” I countered.
He shook his head.
“If you don’t at least try it, I will never, ever invite you to another review ever again,” I said.
“Small price to pay,” he said.
Seeing I was on my own, I scooped up a strip of pig skin — one with a lot of hot sauce — and slurped it down.
It wasn’t that bad. It had the firm chewiness of calamari and almost no flavor beyond the hot sauce. I could see how someone might like it. But sometimes the notion of something taints the reality. I couldn’t enjoy it. After about five forced mouthfuls, I tossed the plate. I only got halfway through the pig-stomach taco, too (It was surprisingly musky).
Most of you are probably reading this and thinking, “Gross!” but I know there are some adventurous foodies out there who hear about stomach tacos and pickled skin tostadas and think, “Cool!” For those foodies, Fruteria Guadalajara is a necessary stop. (I also recommend the Thai Market a few miles south for a can of “bird nest drink.”)
Guadalajara is absolutely authentic, friendly, tasty and exciting.

When I went to review La Baguette Bakery for its 25th anniversary, I realized I'd been snacking on the same few favorites off the menu for the majority of those 25 years.

Like most La Baguette regulars (and as a friend recently told me, "If you're not a regular you either haven't tried it or your priorities are out of whack"), I'd made a habit of savoring the crackly chew of real Old World crust in the French bakery's baguettes ($1.95). I'd plunged a spoon through the molten cheese crown of countless steaming ramekins of rich onion soup.

I'd repeatedly delighted at the flurry of buttery flakes that fall when you break open a fresh croissant just before dosing it with cool, sweet strawberry preserves.

But the rest of the menu?

It was a mystery.

So it was time to wander out of the comfortably familiar haunts of habit into new territory.

So I ordered the snails ($7.75) and most of the rest of the menu to find out what I'd been missing.

It's reasonable to think of 1984, the year La Baguette opened, as Year 1 in the local bread world.

Now shoppers can snag a good loaf at places like Marigold Cafe, Panera Bread and Whole Foods.

Before that, it was nearly impossible to get real, good, fresh French bread. In 1984, La Baguette was the only game in town.

It is still the most authentic.

La Baguette's founder, an obsessive amateur Chicago baker named Earl Turnipseed, learned from bakers in Paris when he decided to go pro.

He imported brick steam ovens from France for the baguettes. Another French specialty oven does only croissants.

He hewed almost religiously to traditional recipes from the Seine and studiously ignored modern American trends.

When I asked him during the low-carb craze of 2003 why he was not going to offer a low-carb bread he said, "Because it's a bunch of crap."

A no-nonsense attitude apparently makes for a good bakery, because nothing I found on my grand tour really disappointed.

The chicken salad served on a fresh croissant ($6.85) is classic French: lightly mixed with a touch of homemade mayonnaise and celery and heavy on fresh, licoricey tarragon.

(As Alice May Brock, of Alice's Restaurant fame, once said, "Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French.")

A friend who ordered the sandwich griped that it didn't fit her Colorado notion of good chicken salad - lots of raisins and apples - but as Turnipseed liked to say, "If you don't like it, start your own restaurant."

The omelets ($6.75) leave nothing to gripe about.

An expertly fluffy fold of three eggs comes stuffed (but not overstuffed) with fresh spinach and ricotta, tomatoes and herbs or ham and real, delicious Swiss cheese.

Most meals come with a very good roll and a side of fruit you'd actually want to eat (a novel idea).

The French onion soup ($5.75) - which is so popular on chilly spring days that the restaurant can resemble a New Deal-era soup line - is cooked for three days until onions, wine, pepper and chicken stock form a flavor as rich and complicated as a credit default swap trader.

Not everything on the menu is a tour de force.

Turnipseed sold the business in 2007 and La Baguette now has four independently owned shops.

All carry the same great bread and pastries baked at the original Old Colorado City address, but some offer other dishes that are, as the French say, "kinda lousy."

Downtown diners can get a very good French toast ($5) that is brought down by fake maple syrup (yuck) and a breakfast buffet-style sausage patty that would be more at home at Denny's.

The fondue, which I had never tried until a few days ago, cuts corners.

Instead of a classic stringy blend of Swiss cheeses, La Baguette uses a mix of fontina, eggs and half-and-half that speeds up the process.

It's not bad, but it's not the real thing.

And the snails?

I was suspect.

They arrived sunk in a steaming bath of butter, garlic and fresh parsley, with a skinny fork on the side.

I plucked a snail, which looked like a little brown mushroom, from the butter and took a bite.

The verdict: Invertebrates all seem to taste pretty good with enough butter and garlic.

The snails are no exception. They were delicious.

My favorite new discovery at La Baguette, though, is the owner of the Old Colorado City shop, Antoni Rog.

The 50-year-old Polish-born engineer lived in Chicago for decades and discovered La Baguette while on vacation years ago. He quickly became an out-of-state regular.

"We are so surprised in small Colorado they have so excellent bread and breakfast," he told me last week.

In 2007, he bought the place.

He has kept the old menu and added a few things, but he has also brought a new take to the classic recipes.

He is trying to be more local and more organic.

He already uses local honey in the delicious cinnamon croissant ($1.95), and is trying to reliably get Colorado apples, and local flour, eggs and butter.

"My goal is buy everything from local farmers," he said.

It's about the only thing that could make the best bread and pastries in the region even better.

When I went to review La Baguette Bakery for its 25th anniversary, I realized I'd been snacking on the same few favorites off the menu for the majority of those 25 years.

Like most La Baguette regulars (and as a friend recently told me, "If you're not a regular you either haven't tried it or your priorities are out of whack"), I'd made a habit of savoring the crackly chew of real Old World crust in the French bakery's baguettes ($1.95). I'd plunged a spoon through the molten cheese crown of countless steaming ramekins of rich onion soup.

I'd repeatedly delighted at the flurry of buttery flakes that fall when you break open a fresh croissant just before dosing it with cool, sweet strawberry preserves.

But the rest of the menu?

It was a mystery.

So it was time to wander out of the comfortably familiar haunts of habit into new territory.

So I ordered the snails ($7.75) and most of the rest of the menu to find out what I'd been missing.

It's reasonable to think of 1984, the year La Baguette opened, as Year 1 in the local bread world.

Now shoppers can snag a good loaf at places like Marigold Cafe, Panera Bread and Whole Foods.

Before that, it was nearly impossible to get real, good, fresh French bread. In 1984, La Baguette was the only game in town.

It is still the most authentic.

La Baguette's founder, an obsessive amateur Chicago baker named Earl Turnipseed, learned from bakers in Paris when he decided to go pro.

He imported brick steam ovens from France for the baguettes. Another French specialty oven does only croissants.

He hewed almost religiously to traditional recipes from the Seine and studiously ignored modern American trends.

When I asked him during the low-carb craze of 2003 why he was not going to offer a low-carb bread he said, "Because it's a bunch of crap."

A no-nonsense attitude apparently makes for a good bakery, because nothing I found on my grand tour really disappointed.

The chicken salad served on a fresh croissant ($6.85) is classic French: lightly mixed with a touch of homemade mayonnaise and celery and heavy on fresh, licoricey tarragon.

(As Alice May Brock, of Alice's Restaurant fame, once said, "Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French.")

A friend who ordered the sandwich griped that it didn't fit her Colorado notion of good chicken salad - lots of raisins and apples - but as Turnipseed liked to say, "If you don't like it, start your own restaurant."

The omelets ($6.75) leave nothing to gripe about.

An expertly fluffy fold of three eggs comes stuffed (but not overstuffed) with fresh spinach and ricotta, tomatoes and herbs or ham and real, delicious Swiss cheese.

Most meals come with a very good roll and a side of fruit you'd actually want to eat (a novel idea).

The French onion soup ($5.75) - which is so popular on chilly spring days that the restaurant can resemble a New Deal-era soup line - is cooked for three days until onions, wine, pepper and chicken stock form a flavor as rich and complicated as a credit default swap trader.

Not everything on the menu is a tour de force.

Turnipseed sold the business in 2007 and La Baguette now has four independently owned shops.

All carry the same great bread and pastries baked at the original Old Colorado City address, but some offer other dishes that are, as the French say, "kinda lousy."

Downtown diners can get a very good French toast ($5) that is brought down by fake maple syrup (yuck) and a breakfast buffet-style sausage patty that would be more at home at Denny's.

The fondue, which I had never tried until a few days ago, cuts corners.

Instead of a classic stringy blend of Swiss cheeses, La Baguette uses a mix of fontina, eggs and half-and-half that speeds up the process.

It's not bad, but it's not the real thing.

And the snails?

I was suspect.

They arrived sunk in a steaming bath of butter, garlic and fresh parsley, with a skinny fork on the side.

I plucked a snail, which looked like a little brown mushroom, from the butter and took a bite.

The verdict: Invertebrates all seem to taste pretty good with enough butter and garlic.

The snails are no exception. They were delicious.

My favorite new discovery at La Baguette, though, is the owner of the Old Colorado City shop, Antoni Rog.

The 50-year-old Polish-born engineer lived in Chicago for decades and discovered La Baguette while on vacation years ago. He quickly became an out-of-state regular.

"We are so surprised in small Colorado they have so excellent bread and breakfast," he told me last week.

In 2007, he bought the place.

He has kept the old menu and added a few things, but he has also brought a new take to the classic recipes.

He is trying to be more local and more organic.

He already uses local honey in the delicious cinnamon croissant ($1.95), and is trying to reliably get Colorado apples, and local flour, eggs and butter.

"My goal is buy everything from local farmers," he said.

It's about the only thing that could make the best bread and pastries in the region even better.

I ate the snails.
When I went to review La Baguette Bakery for its 25th anniversary, I realized I'd been snacking on the same few favorites off the menu for the majority of those 25 years.

Like most La Baguette regulars (and as a friend recently told me, "If you're not a regular you either haven't tried it or your priorities are out of whack"), I'd made a habit of savoring the crackly chew of real Old World crust in the French bakery's baguettes ($1.95). I'd plunged a spoon through the molten cheese crown of countless steaming ramekins of rich onion soup.

I'd repeatedly delighted at the flurry of buttery flakes that fall when you break open a fresh croissant just before dosing it with cool, sweet strawberry preserves.

But the rest of the menu?

It was a mystery.

So it was time to wander out of the comfortably familiar haunts of habit into new territory.

So I ordered the snails ($7.75) and most of the rest of the menu to find out what I'd been missing.

It's reasonable to think of 1984, the year La Baguette opened, as Year 1 in the local bread world.

Now shoppers can snag a good loaf at places like Marigold Cafe, Panera Bread and Whole Foods.

Before that, it was nearly impossible to get real, good, fresh French bread. In 1984, La Baguette was the only game in town.

It is still the most authentic.

La Baguette's founder, an obsessive amateur Chicago baker named Earl Turnipseed, learned from bakers in Paris when he decided to go pro.

He imported brick steam ovens from France for the baguettes. Another French specialty oven does only croissants.

He hewed almost religiously to traditional recipes from the Seine and studiously ignored modern American trends.

When I asked him during the low-carb craze of 2003 why he was not going to offer a low-carb bread he said, "Because it's a bunch of crap."

A no-nonsense attitude apparently makes for a good bakery, because nothing I found on my grand tour really disappointed.

The chicken salad served on a fresh croissant ($6.85) is classic French: lightly mixed with a touch of homemade mayonnaise and celery and heavy on fresh, licoricey tarragon.

(As Alice May Brock, of Alice's Restaurant fame, once said, "Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French.")

A friend who ordered the sandwich griped that it didn't fit her Colorado notion of good chicken salad - lots of raisins and apples - but as Turnipseed liked to say, "If you don't like it, start your own restaurant."

The omelets ($6.75) leave nothing to gripe about.

An expertly fluffy fold of three eggs comes stuffed (but not overstuffed) with fresh spinach and ricotta, tomatoes and herbs or ham and real, delicious Swiss cheese.

Most meals come with a very good roll and a side of fruit you'd actually want to eat (a novel idea).

The French onion soup ($5.75) - which is so popular on chilly spring days that the restaurant can resemble a New Deal-era soup line - is cooked for three days until onions, wine, pepper and chicken stock form a flavor as rich and complicated as a credit default swap trader.

Not everything on the menu is a tour de force.

Turnipseed sold the business in 2007 and La Baguette now has four independently owned shops.

All carry the same great bread and pastries baked at the original Old Colorado City address, but some offer other dishes that are, as the French say, "kinda lousy."

Downtown diners can get a very good French toast ($5) that is brought down by fake maple syrup (yuck) and a breakfast buffet-style sausage patty that would be more at home at Denny's.

The fondue, which I had never tried until a few days ago, cuts corners.

Instead of a classic stringy blend of Swiss cheeses, La Baguette uses a mix of fontina, eggs and half-and-half that speeds up the process.

It's not bad, but it's not the real thing.

And the snails?

I was suspect.

They arrived sunk in a steaming bath of butter, garlic and fresh parsley, with a skinny fork on the side.

I plucked a snail, which looked like a little brown mushroom, from the butter and took a bite.

The verdict: Invertebrates all seem to taste pretty good with enough butter and garlic.

The snails are no exception. They were delicious.

My favorite new discovery at La Baguette, though, is the owner of the Old Colorado City shop, Antoni Rog.

The 50-year-old Polish-born engineer lived in Chicago for decades and discovered La Baguette while on vacation years ago. He quickly became an out-of-state regular.

"We are so surprised in small Colorado they have so excellent bread and breakfast," he told me last week.

In 2007, he bought the place.

He has kept the old menu and added a few things, but he has also brought a new take to the classic recipes.

He is trying to be more local and more organic.

He already uses local honey in the delicious cinnamon croissant ($1.95), and is trying to reliably get Colorado apples, and local flour, eggs and butter.

"My goal is buy everything from local farmers," he said.

It's about the only thing that could make the best bread and pastries in the region even better.

I ate the snails.
When I went to review La Baguette Bakery for its 25th anniversary, I realized I'd been snacking on the same few favorites off the menu for the majority of those 25 years.

Like most La Baguette regulars (and as a friend recently told me, "If you're not a regular you either haven't tried it or your priorities are out of whack"), I'd made a habit of savoring the crackly chew of real Old World crust in the French bakery's baguettes ($1.95). I'd plunged a spoon through the molten cheese crown of countless steaming ramekins of rich onion soup.

I'd repeatedly delighted at the flurry of buttery flakes that fall when you break open a fresh croissant just before dosing it with cool, sweet strawberry preserves.

But the rest of the menu?

It was a mystery.

So it was time to wander out of the comfortably familiar haunts of habit into new territory.

So I ordered the snails ($7.75) and most of the rest of the menu to find out what I'd been missing.

It's reasonable to think of 1984, the year La Baguette opened, as Year 1 in the local bread world.

Now shoppers can snag a good loaf at places like Marigold Cafe, Panera Bread and Whole Foods.

Before that, it was nearly impossible to get real, good, fresh French bread. In 1984, La Baguette was the only game in town.

It is still the most authentic.

La Baguette's founder, an obsessive amateur Chicago baker named Earl Turnipseed, learned from bakers in Paris when he decided to go pro.

He imported brick steam ovens from France for the baguettes. Another French specialty oven does only croissants.

He hewed almost religiously to traditional recipes from the Seine and studiously ignored modern American trends.

When I asked him during the low-carb craze of 2003 why he was not going to offer a low-carb bread he said, "Because it's a bunch of crap."

A no-nonsense attitude apparently makes for a good bakery, because nothing I found on my grand tour really disappointed.

The chicken salad served on a fresh croissant ($6.85) is classic French: lightly mixed with a touch of homemade mayonnaise and celery and heavy on fresh, licoricey tarragon.

(As Alice May Brock, of Alice's Restaurant fame, once said, "Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French.")

A friend who ordered the sandwich griped that it didn't fit her Colorado notion of good chicken salad - lots of raisins and apples - but as Turnipseed liked to say, "If you don't like it, start your own restaurant."

The omelets ($6.75) leave nothing to gripe about.

An expertly fluffy fold of three eggs comes stuffed (but not overstuffed) with fresh spinach and ricotta, tomatoes and herbs or ham and real, delicious Swiss cheese.

Most meals come with a very good roll and a side of fruit you'd actually want to eat (a novel idea).

The French onion soup ($5.75) - which is so popular on chilly spring days that the restaurant can resemble a New Deal-era soup line - is cooked for three days until onions, wine, pepper and chicken stock form a flavor as rich and complicated as a credit default swap trader.

Not everything on the menu is a tour de force.

Turnipseed sold the business in 2007 and La Baguette now has four independently owned shops.

All carry the same great bread and pastries baked at the original Old Colorado City address, but some offer other dishes that are, as the French say, "kinda lousy."

Downtown diners can get a very good French toast ($5) that is brought down by fake maple syrup (yuck) and a breakfast buffet-style sausage patty that would be more at home at Denny's.

The fondue, which I had never tried until a few days ago, cuts corners.

Instead of a classic stringy blend of Swiss cheeses, La Baguette uses a mix of fontina, eggs and half-and-half that speeds up the process.

It's not bad, but it's not the real thing.

And the snails?

I was suspect.

They arrived sunk in a steaming bath of butter, garlic and fresh parsley, with a skinny fork on the side.

I plucked a snail, which looked like a little brown mushroom, from the butter and took a bite.

The verdict: Invertebrates all seem to taste pretty good with enough butter and garlic.

The snails are no exception. They were delicious.

My favorite new discovery at La Baguette, though, is the owner of the Old Colorado City shop, Antoni Rog.

The 50-year-old Polish-born engineer lived in Chicago for decades and discovered La Baguette while on vacation years ago. He quickly became an out-of-state regular.

"We are so surprised in small Colorado they have so excellent bread and breakfast," he told me last week.

In 2007, he bought the place.

He has kept the old menu and added a few things, but he has also brought a new take to the classic recipes.

He is trying to be more local and more organic.

He already uses local honey in the delicious cinnamon croissant ($1.95), and is trying to reliably get Colorado apples, and local flour, eggs and butter.

"My goal is buy everything from local farmers," he said.

It's about the only thing that could make the best bread and pastries in the region even better.

Phantom Canyon still serves success after 15 busy years
Phantom Canyon Brewing Co. is such a stalwart of the downtown dining and carousing scene that it is hard to imagine a time before it was here.
It’s hard to imagine a time when its stately address, the Cheyenne Building, with its heavy oak doors, gorgeous local stone and high, tin ceilings, was slated for demolition in favor of a parking lot, until Phantom’s owner, geeky Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who was then just a geeky Denver brewer, bought the decrepit building, fixed it up, and used it to introduce the city to the relatively new concept of a microbrew pub.
I was mulling all this over a frothy pint of Phantom’s Anniversary Ale at the bar recently. It was a weeknight and the place was packed with both after-work drinkers and folks sitting down to cloth-napkin dinners. Servers navigated the perilously boisterous bar, hoisting trays of hot food. The bartender pulled fresh pints from an old beer engine. Upstairs, the clack of billiard balls mixed with the clink of glasses.
It’s been just over 15 years since Phantom opened, and what I find hardest to imagine is how the place has managed to not be haunted by the complacency of its own success. After so many years it could be just a phantom going through the motions. Instead, the place is always humming with energy and has kept its menu hip, relevant and, most importantly, delicious.
There is almost no occasion Phantom doesn’t fit.
Want to grab beers after work? With two floors you can probably get a table, even in the most packed happy hour. And the bar appetizers are terrific.
Want to get real food fast for lunch, such as a generous fire-roasted chicken salad with house-made walnut balsamic ($9.75) or mesquite-smoked pork chops with bacon-cheddar mashed potatoes and fried rings of poblano pepper ($8)? No problem.
Want to drop some serious coin on a dinner of pepper-crusted strip steak with bleu cheese and bacon tortellini ($24) or rare lamb chops served over barley risotto ($26)? Phantom has a surprisingly upscale nighttime menu.
I get the feeling that the upper reaches of the dinner menu are kept alive mostly by business travelers on expense accounts, since most people stuck with paying their own bill probably stick to the burgers, sandwiches, fish and chips and fried chicken on the pub menu ($7.50-$13). But whether you’re paying for it or not, the dinners are reliably tasty and upscale without being stuffy.
The delicious fettuccini and wild mushrooms in a ridiculously rich braised leek and mascarpone cream sauce ($13), proves that a dish can be both vegetarian and bad for you.
The lamb chops are just as good, and just as rich. Three butter-seared chops arrived perfectly medium rare under a tangled toupee of fiash-fried green onion strips, on a bed of calorie-intense, gouda-infused barley.
The one let-down was a port wine syrup that was supposed to grace the plate. It had been replaced by a St. Patrick’s Day green clarified butter that nudged an already lipid-heavy meal over the top. This is an exception to my Phantom experiences, where service was always good and food was well conceived and executed.
The fish and chips ($12.75) here are some of the best you’ll find. Atlantic cod is jacketed in a light, crispy batter and served with a big slice of lemon and a very good, homemade tartar sauce flecked with sweet gherkins.
Buttermilk fried chicken, a huge chicken breast slaked in a lemon-Tabasco sauce, served with sharp gorgonzola and garlic mashed potatoes ($9.75) is delicious and a terrific deal.
Even the simple pub salad ($5) is lavished with extras like grated sharp cheddar, homemade pretzel croutons and very good dressings made right in the back.
Desserts are full of homemade touches. The apple turnover ($5) was a cut, personal pie of fresh, flaky crust enveloping tart, hand-sliced Granny Smith apples. The hot bread pudding ($4.25), which most restaurants have, comes with a glorious, traditional hard sauce, which most restaurants don’t. And the sauce is so deliciously hard diners should get carded if they order it.
The beer? Well, it’s not bad. I’ve argued with friends (usually over beers) about whether it can hold a mug to local brew stars like Bristol or Trinity. Either way, to have a cold, handmade beer in at a centuryold bar in a century-old building, decorated with contemporary, local art, buzzing with people and bright with the smell of great food makes it taste that much better.
I raise my glass to 15 years. And here’s to 15 more.

Ephraim’s BBQ is quirky, but food
is seriously good.
The squat, shabby buildings that surround Ephraim’s BBQ on Platte Place at first glance seem like an unlikely spot to find some of the most authentic Texas barbecue in town.
The light industrial backwater is full of small warehouses and crime statistics that spill over from nearby Platte Avenue.
But since the crime rate is high, the rents are low, and so the neighborhood is full of quirky small businesses that are there because they can afford to pursue passions that don’t necessarily produce a ton of profit.
William Ephraim’s passion is brisket.
The 73-year-old Colorado Springs reverend with a thick frizz of white hair and an easy smile has been barbecuing over mesquite since he was a kid in Pecos, Texas.
“I don’t claim really to know how to barbecue at all; I just do what my uncles did,” he told me recently with a wry chuckle. “But it turns out pretty good.”
Ephraim has honed his craft at countless church cookouts.
He marinades his brisket for two days in a secret mix he said “I learned up from a woman in Amarillo who gave me her recipe since she saw I was a preacher.”
Then he slow smokes it for eight hours until a deep red smoke ring penetrates an inch into the juicy, tender meat.
The result ($8.50) is divine: rich and biting with mesquite, and not the slightest bit dry.
“I don’t believe anybody in town got brisket like me,” he said.
After sitting down at one of his booths, I’m inclined to agree.
Ephraim’s is as quirky as the surrounding neighborhood. The service is slow. The dining room, in the old El Nopal Mexican restaurant, is a little down at the heel. The windows could use washing.
But the food is first-rate.
Aside from the brisket, which should go on every local foodie’s checklist, the wonderful ribs ($8.50) are tender inside with a crackly veneer of smoke and spices on the outside.
The hotlinks and more mild Texas sausage ($6.75) are bursting with the same smoky flavor.
When I asked Ephraim what being a preacher and a barbecue master have in common, he laughed and said, “Well, you have to be consistent … and patient.”
The chicken, ($7.50) when I tried it, was a bit dry, but slow smoking and chicken breast seem to rarely go well together.
The classic soul food sides are a delight. The collard greens are fresh, tender and not over salted. The mac and cheese has the stringy strands of cheese trailing from the fork that guarantee it is from scratch.
The red beans and rice are swimming with hearty rounds of smoked sausage.
The peach cobbler arrives as a messy, delicious pile of goop lurking with chewy chunks of homemade crust.
For a recent lunch, I invited my friend Mr. Barbecue, who grew up smoking hogs at big family pig pickin’s in South Carolina. He was disappointed that there was no pulled pork on the menu but was quickly won over.
“With my barbecue provenance, I’d expect some pulled pork. But, oh man, this guy’s brisket is something,” he said.
Everything is cooked dry but served wet in homemade, sticky red Texas sauce. Diners who prefer their meat naked can ask for sauce on the side.
Do not, I repeat, do not leave without having a piece of the sweet potato pie.
Mr. Barbecue started to say something about how it wasn’t quite as good as the pie from his aunt’s sweet potato farm, but I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. His mouth was too full.

Service, dining area stand out more than flavor at popular Silver Pond
Silver Pond has been voted “Best Chinese Restaurant” by Gazette readers for 10 years in a row, and has been The Gazette’s top choice almost as long.
Critics come and go. Asian fusion and low-carb fads fall in and out of fashion. But every year this North Academy spot tacks up yet another Best of the Springs plaque. A row of them dating to the Clinton administration hangs above a huge fish tank by the door.
But the annual accolades can be tricky. Restaurant critics who nibble through the city week in and week out still can’t know everything. The Readers’ Choice category in the annual Best of the Springs edition, like the “ask the audience” option on “Who wants to be a Millionaire,” sometimes has a better record than the critics.
But sometimes both can let you down. Readers regularly send e-mails pointing out what a culinary knucklehead I am. And the readers? Well, let’s just say every year the readers’ pick for “Best Seafood” is Red Lobster.
For me, Silver Pond was a mystery. In all the time I’ve lived in the Springs I’ve never once broken chopsticks at the Pond. Was it stuck in the same Readers’ Choice trap as Red Lobster? I decided to go find out.
Before going, I’d already phoned a friend for help, and he had assured me Silver Pond was a step above.
“They have some unusual dishes you won’t find anywhere else, like the strawberry chicken. It’s fabulous,” he said.
With that in mind, four of us grabbed a table in the half-full dining room on a recent Friday night and cracked open the menus. It was basically the same menu I’ve ordered Chinese takeout from in every town I’ve lived in: fried rice, lo mein, sweet and sour chicken, Happy Family and the venerable pu pu platter.
A few curiosities stood out, such as Kung Pao lamb, a flock of seafood and duck dishes (including Peking duck, which requires 48 hours’ notice) and a
— list of “hot clay pots” filled with broth, noodles, vegetables and meat.
We tried to order on the exotic side and ran into mixed results.
The seafood clay pot ($17), a rich broth swimming with scallops, shrimp, squid, tiny Asian corn, pungent black mushrooms and clear rice noodles, was the favorite — generous on the shrimp without sacrificing quality.
The Shanghai sweet and sour pork ($13) also drew raves for almost supernaturally crispy breading with a thin confectionery gloss.
But the spicy duck with Peking sauce ($15) was pretty lame. Sliced duck breast came beautifully arranged on a crown of nicely steamed broccoli, but as one diner noted, the meat was dry, and the accompanying sauce not the slightest bit spicy. (Lack of heat in dishes marked “spicy” was a problem in all my visits.) Some dishes made clumsy departures from the norm. Moo shu chicken ($11) didn’t skimp on the meat and had the right blend of ginger and garlic, scallions and soy sauce with a nice, sloppy hoisin sauce. But the burritolike moo shu came already rolled up, instead of with sauce and tortillalike pancakes separate, so the sauce sopped through, making the last few more mushy.
A host of standard appetizers and soups we sampled ranged from passable to good, but not remarkable.
After we left, I spent the next day fretting. Superlative Silver Pond did not seem so super. Sure, the service was excellent and I could easily find things I’d enjoy ordering again. It had a nicer-than-average dining room. But did it really stand out from other good Chinese takeout places in town?
I had to change strategies. Instead of focusing on the exotic side of the menu, I phoned in takeout and ordered the dish I order every time I jones for Chinese takeout: General Tsao’s Chicken ($11.75). I know The General in and out. If Silver Pond was going to edge out the competition, I figured this would be its chance.
I threw on an order of the Strawberry Chicken ($12.75), just to see what it was all about. It seemed to be about a ketchupy red sweet and sour with strawberry halves in place of pineapple chunks.
But the real test was the General Tsao’s. And it was totally middle of the pack. Big chunks of dark meat sat in a thin, soggy breading with only a cameo of sour and not even a hint of heat.

East Coast franchise brings the real deal — and no extras — to the Springs

Five Guys Burgers and Fries is just that.
You got burgers. You got fries.
No nuggets. No drive-through. No gimmicks. No clowns.
The look is all retro red and white tile. The menu is just as old school.
How can the Washington, D.C.-based franchise recently landed in the thick of the fast food vortex that is North Academy Boulevard survive the onslaught of Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Carl’s Jr.’s, Good Times and Fat Burgers? By doing burgers and fries better than anyone else. Way better.
Five Guys is what burger joints were before corporate streamlining squeezed all the soul out them.
The kitchen is a gleaming steel galley frantic with cooks and sizzling meat. There are no computer screens or headsets. There is no freezer.
The hand-formed burger patties are fresh beef tossed on the hot steel when you order. You wait for your food instead of the other way around. And the fries — hand-cut, double-fried and served ridiculously hot, spilling from overfilled cups — are pure potato heaven.
Don’t get me wrong. I love McDonald’s fries, perfectly golden outside encasing a steamy, starchy mantle. But, as one friend said as we waited in line to order at Five Guys, “They’re more of an engineering feat than a potato.”
At Five Guys, the potato stars.
Heavy sacks of spuds waiting to become lunch are piled, bunker-style, in the dining room. A white board by the counter announces where that day’s potatoes were grown — always some tiny Idaho crossroads you’ve never heard of. The whole thing is kind of a shtick. But it’s a delicious shtick.
The burgers have no shtick. You can order a single irregularly shaped patty ($3.29) or a double ($4.39). Add the regular toppings, plus a choice of grilled mushrooms and onions, green peppers or sliced jalapeños for free. Bacon and cheese are $1.40 extra. Your burger goes on when you order, the grill master presses it down once after turning, then the slightly charred, juicy patty lands on a bun, which is wrapped in foil, which is dropped in a plain brown paper bag spotted with grease from overflowing servings of fries.
All this takes a few minutes, giving diners time to read the accolades from publications across the country tacked up on the walls.
Five Guys has more than 300 locations, mostly on the East Coast, and it piles up awards. When’s the last time you ate at a burger joint rated in Zagat?
Five Guys offers bulk boxes of peanuts to shell and nibble while you wait, which shows, in our peanutparanoid society, just how old school the place really is.
But who cares about all the retro handmade style and potato pedigrees unless the food is good?
Don’t worry, it is. The burgers have the real, meaty flavor of fresh beef.
When I asked a burger connoisseur wearing an In-n-Out Burger T-shirt at the table next to me if it was as good as the legendary West Coast burger chain, he took a minute to think while chewing a fry. Then said, “It’s probably better. Especially the fries.”
Seriously. These are true fries — some crispy bronze, some chewy ochre, some replete with their skins, and all available with every fry aficionado’s favorite condiment, malt vinegar. A regular ($2.59) is plenty for two. A large ($4.19) is ludicrous.
Five Guys also does a very nice hot dog, split long-ways, then grilled until slightly crisp along the cut.
The place costs more than its fast-food neighbors. A burger, fries and a drink will set you back $8. But judging by the crowds I’ve encountered at all hours, people think it’s a fair price for putting the old school soul back in burgers and fries

Restaurant’s chicken, steak and fish dinners win over Woodland Park
Like a fool, I put off going to Danny’s Corner Bistro in Woodland Park for almost a year.
Donut Mill aside, Woodland Park is not a great place to eat.
In the past decade, restaurants, often with the word “hut” in the name, have come and gone with little notice — at least to the city below.
No surprise. It’s hard for any ambitious eateries to thrive in a bedroom community next to a much larger city that’s sucking away dining dollars faster than the economy’s sucking away my 401(k).
So I put off going to Danny’s, thinking it would just be a waste of time. A bistro could never survive in a town dominated by fast food. And I’d just be kicking the chef when he’s down.
Imagine my surprise when I walked in on a recent, snowy evening in the middle of the week and found the dining room half-full, people chatting at the bar, and a menu rife with fish, steaks and lovingly prepared chicken dishes that suggested the little white-tablecloth bistro was not in its death throes but had successfully won over a number of locals.
Danny’s tiny corner bistro, owned by St. Louis native and mountain transplant Daniel Kubiak, serves its own quirky take on fine dining.
It includes classics such as a grilled steak tenderloin topped with lump crab and a creamy onion drizzle ($22) and grilled swordfish under citrus basil pesto ($18), but also novelties that include the appetizers we picked: flash-fried spinach ($7) and fried green tomatoes ($6).
The spinach is exactly as it sounds: deep fried to an ethereal potato chip crispness, salted and served with a wedge of lemon, so it tastes a bit like salt and vinegar chips.
One friend, after crunching down several dozen leaves, said: “This makes eating spinach fun.”
The fried green tomatoes? Not so much. Though they came under a lovely peach, scallion and ginger chutney, the rounds of tomato were cut too thick, so the hot pan never softened most of the stiff, starchy fruit.
Dinner was more even-keeled.
I loved the seared Ahi Tuna ($16), sliced thin, ruby red, and laid down on the plate like a straight flush in a sweet soy glaze around a green dome of sinus-clearing wasabi mashed potatoes. It was missing the pickled ginger that the menu promised, but I didn’t miss it.
Chicken Spedini — chicken breasts rolled around in spinach and Provel cheese, broiled and slaked in a white wine tarragon sauce — was moist and tasty.
Provel is one of those weird regional processed foods, like New Jersey pork roll or Vermont creamies, that locals in different parts of the country are crazy about. The mix of cheddar, Swiss, and provolone cheeses is essential for St. Louis-style pizza, but almost never seen outside Missouri. We were sold on it.
The same old-school Midwest Italian accents seemed to show up in the veal marsala ($19). Almost no one serves veal marsala anymore. It’s about as fashionable as naming a baby girl Edna.
But one taste brings back why the dish was once so popular. The sweet, almost nutty wine, swirled in a pan sauce of herbs, was a delightful escort for the tender veal.
All meals came with a light escort of sugar snap peas — a nice touch.
Danny’s also serves a more modest lunch menu based primarily on sandwiches ($8-$12).
The desserts at Danny’s are typical and only OK. A croissant bread pudding ($6.99) came crammed with dried cranberries that turned off most of the table. The crême brulée ($5.99) lacked flavor.
Danny’s would have a hard time competing against similarly priced but more sophisticated and creative bistros in the Springs, such as Marigold Café. It is not inventive enough to warrant a 50-mile round trip. But the place seems to have found a happy niche in Woodland Park’s heart. It could be the beginning of a great relationship.

Selection of dishes with a difference helps Vietnamese garden stand out
Most Vietnamese menus in the United States are striking in how similar they are. You got your summer rolls and your spring rolls, your steaming bowls of pho and the ubiquitous combination noodle bowl.
Even though Vietnamese cuisine is wildly diverse and highly regional, its Americanmenu counterpart is often so uniform you get the impression that somewhere there is a bureau of Vietnameserestaurant conformity. In Colorado you have to hunt South Federal Street in Denver to find Vietnamese-food menus that dare to be different.
Or so I thought until I grabbed dinner at Vietnamese Garden.
The menu in this small wood house on the West Side (former home of Coda Café, Las Enchiladas and Sweet Georgia Brown) has all the standards, and when I tried them I felt sure that the place was destined to join the list of closed restaurants that had come before it.
But Vietnamese Garden also has a string of unusual and delicious dishes I had never tried before and quickly grew to love.
The white seaweed soup ($2.75) was the first to catch my eye. A steaming bowl of clear, light broth swimming with chicken, diced scallion and crinkly white fins of seaweed that offer that unmistakable underwater crunch, manages to be soothing and unusual in the same spoonful. It is wonderful on a brisk February evening.
Even better are the potato fritters ($7.75). Owner Dung My Tram shreds carrot and yam, then fries it to make a crunchy sweet potato hash brown. Diners wrap chunks of the hot, sweet, wonderful fritter in cool robes of lettuce and tassels of Thai basil and mint.
“It’s nice to have an appetizer that is both deep-fried and a salad,” a friend said as we munched.
The dish is an instant favorite. I can’t help but think America would be slightly better off if we all irst wrapped our biggie fries in salad.
Lemon Grass Chicken ($7.95) was another nice surprise. Though the entree shows up on most Vietnamese menus, it usually boasts a Chinese takeout kind of thick sauce.
Here the entree is di erent and probably more authentic. The chicken comes with no noticeable sauce but you can sense the blast of fresh lemongrass long before fork reaches mouth. It is intense, astringent, fantastic stuff, best tempered with the light white rice on the side.
Stir-fried eggplant ($7.95), made with long, slender Asian eggplant with tofu in a rich, basily sauce, was also a hit.
With so many good things, I was surprisingly disappointed by the standards I tried.
The broth in the pho, a classic beef and noodle soup ($7.55), lacked the slow, complex notes of cinnamon, star anise, and charred ginger that a good pho packs. The accompanying pile of peppers, herbs and limes was stingy, and worst of all, the thin shavings of raw beef diners traditionally mix into the steaming broth came already cooked in the bowl.
The combination noodle bowl ($9.25) suffered from a similar blandness and stingy greens. There are better noodle bowls to be had for the same price, most notably at Saigon Café.
Still, there is much to like about Vietnamese Garden. The service has been excellent every time. The quiet setting lends itself to conversation (and free tables during the lunch rush).
Prices are good, and, most of all, the unique dishes are enough to make this a regular stop for west-side diners.

New Orleans-syle eatery serves authentic cuisine, but some dishes need a bit of work

“W— hat the heck is a banyeah?” a friend muttered across the table at Taste of New Orleans when I mentioned that I didn’t see any beignets (spelled this way, pronounced that way) on the menu.
I asked the owner, New Orleans native Beth Mell, whether she served them.
“Oh, of course,” she said.
“So what’s a banyeah?” my friend insisted.
“It’s a Cajun doughnut,” she said.
Which is sort of true, and sort of not. Yes, the little, puffy bits of dough are fried in oil and delicious with coffee. No, beignets don’t have a hole in the middle or a special relationship with cops. They are more hearty sopaipilla than holeless doughnut. They’re very hard to ffnd in Colorado.
And they can be addictive. The first time I visited New Orleans, I dragged my wife down to the famous sticky tables of Café du Monde (the world’s best-known beignet place) three times in one day, including a trip just before midnight, so I could get another fix of those sumptuous, sugary snacks.
I couldn’t wait to try them at Taste of New Orleans. But business ffrst, we ordered lunch.
Taste of New Orleans opened in a small space in Old Colorado City that briefly held an Italian restaurant called Tuscan Sun. Much of Tuscan Sun’s décor still lingers, with a few plastic beads thrown in to add Mardi Gras fiare.
The menu is classic Crescent City: gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, and New Orleans-style po’ boy sandwiches. Mell also has breakfast dishes that appear on some menus but not others.
Some plates are pretty good. Others are worth missing. The service can be slow, and 20 percent of the people I visited with had their drink spilled on them by the owner. But if you pine for New Orleans food, this is the real thing.
The shrimp po’ boy ($7.50), served “dressed” on a big, doughy roll with lettuce, tomato and mayo, had sweet, delicious shrimp in a crunchy, peppery batter. It was delicious, but the massive sandwich came with only about eight shrimp — a little more po’ than I would have liked and a far cry from the overflowing po’ boys you get at favorite po’ boy bars such as Domilise’s in New Orleans.
A spicy sausage po’ boy ($6.50) proved more generous.
The Red Beans and Rice ($6.50) had good things going for it. The smoky flavor of ham and the half an andouille sausage floating in the beans gave it welcome heat, but the rice was mushy both times we visited.
Same with the jambalaya ($6.50). It’s lovely stuff, with more of that spicy sausage stewed together with chicken in a hearty brown rue. It’s one of the few versions of this Creole dish I’ve ever had that was not swimming in too much salt, but again, the rice was overcooked to near disintegration.
Pecan-crusted French toast ($4.75) was a bigger disappointment. The innards of the rounds of sliced po’ boy roll were drastically undercooked and had only the slightest sprinkling of pecans.
I was happy to work through these things, though, to get to the beignets.
They came fresh from the fryer: three golden brown, puffed up pillows, too hot to touch, and slaked in powdered sugar.
When they landed on the table, there was no need to explain to my friend. Fried pastries are a universal language.
But there was something not quite right. These beignets were big. Very big. And so the insides weren’t fully cooked by the time the outside was golden brown. It left them dense and bready — more like a hush puppy than a light, puffy dessert.
After gushing about beignets all through the meal, I ate in silence.
“These are not bad,” my friend said.
It’s about all you could say.

The theory behind Garlic Jim’s, a new pizza franchise off Powers Boulevard, is this: Gourmet pizza places rarely deliver, and delivery pizza places are rarely gourmet.
In the middle is Garlic Jim’s (Motto: “Gourmet, right away!”). Signs in the tiny takeout restaurant (three stools, no tables) tout the pizza’s epicurean origins. The sauce, the signs say, is from fresh tomatoes, not tomato paste. The mozzarella is from whole milk, not the partial-skim stuff most chains use because grated bags of the cheese don’t clump. And the toppings include roasted garlic, chipotle pesto and cashews. Garlic Jim’s also offers gluten-free crust for all those wheat-intolerant folks.
I decided to test the place out with two diners at opposite extremes: my friend Megan and me. Megan is one of those people who is willing to eat fewer and fewer types of things all the time. First meat got the hook. Now wheat? I will eat anything, and delight in trying new (often weird) stuff. Spicy tripe menudo? Sure. Peruvian beef heart on a stick? Yes. Grasshoppers coated in hot chile flakes and fried? Por favor. Even cashews on pizza didn’t seem too out of line.
We phoned in a stack of medium pizzas: a baseline cheese and basil ($17.24); a Hawaiian on thin crust ($15.50); a glutenfree gourmet garlic ($19) piled with basil pesto sauce, marinated artichoke hearts, roasted garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, red onions and feta cheese; and the Nutty Chipotle — chipotle pesto topped with spicy Italian sausage, pepperoni, red onions, tomatoes and cashews ($16).
We added a side salad ($4, for Megan) and hot wings ($7, for me).
Total bill: $78.74. Suggested amendment to the motto: “Gourmet, right away, but you pay!”
For the most part, it was worth it. The pizzas are generally a step up from chain delivery, and the eccentric roster of toppings offered some lovely results.
There were even a few bargains on the menu. Chief among them was the side salad. The huge plastic crate overflowing with fresh spring greens, ripe roma tomatoes, and a sprinkling of red onion, cheddar cheese and croutons was enough to feed four and have leftovers. Newman’s Own dressing came on the side.
“This is way more than I’d expect from a pizza place salad,” Megan said.
She also had praises for the gluten-free crust.
Making crust without gluten is a trick, since gluten is the stuff that makes dough doughy. People have tried subbing in various ingredients, but the resulting crust generally tastes similar to the box it was delivered in.
Garlic Jim’s uses — according to the first location to offer it, in Washington — chickpea ffour, white and brown rice flour, eggs, sorghum syrup, almond meal, olive oil, potato starch, xanthan gum, sea salt, yeast, apple cider vinegar, beet molasses and guar gum.
And with excellent roasted garlic, artichoke hearts and feta cheese on top, it’s darn good. “I definitely want to order from this place,” Megan said. The same deft touch makes the Hawaiian pizza shine. The pineapple is not so moist that it bogs down the whole pie. The edges of the thin rounds of ham curl and burn just slightly in the oven until they have delightful, crisp edges, and the whole thing is scattered with slivered almonds.
Garlic Jim’s has a way of surprising you. Even the topping riot on the chipotle pesto, sausage, pepperoni, onion, tomato and cashew pizza, which I ordered simply because it sounded like a disaster that would be fun to make fun of on paper, turned out to be very nice — the pesto had a spicy, bright freshness I wasn’t expecting, and though most of the cashews rolled off, the ones I ate were great.
Only the cheese and basil pizza didn’t earn kind words. The standard crust was too spongy. The cheese was unremarkable. And the basil had little flavor.
Cheese pizza aficionados would do well to stick with Borriello Brothers, but for those who want to push the envelope, or have wheat allergies, Garlic Jim’s is well worth a call.

High-end bistro boasts delectable meat and sauces bearing chef’s flair
I will never eat at Amuzé Bistro again.
The service was too good.
The room was too charming.
The wine list was too creative and wellpriced.
The hot, fresh cornbread madelines shaped like elegant shells, laced with rich, ground pine nuts and set on the table next to marble-size globes of soft, sage-flecked butter shortly after we sat down, were too humbly, deliciously brilliant.
So was the rest of our three-hour meal, from the tiny cups of vanilla-infused cream of tomato soup to the seared wild duck in huckleberry habanero pan sauce. I’d rank it in the top 10 dinners I’ve ever had.
Anywhere.
So I’ll never eat there again — not because I’m not dying to or because I haven’t been gushing randomly about Amuzé’s sauces while driving with my wife or folding laundry. I’ll never eat there again because the tiny Palmer Lake bistro has only four tables, and once I’m done spilling my guts about how fantastic it is, I’ll probably never be able to get one of them again.
The restaurant opened quietly this fall in an old stationmaster’s cottage in Palmer Lake. The somewhat ramshackle exterior explodes as you open the door into bright red walls splashed with contemporary watercolors, framing four impeccably set tables. (This is one of the few bistros in town with a decent wine glass.)
To the right, a swinging door leads to the kitchen, where you’ll find the owner and chef, Bill Sherman.
For most of his life, Sherman was a closet chef. An engineer by training, he spent 18 years designing parts for fighter jets, but he found himself increasingly sneaking off to do food. His kitchen was cluttered with more than 300 cookbooks. He catered the company picnic every year. He quietly snuck in vacation time to go to cooking school.
“Finally, I realized I had to become a chef and quit,” he told me recently.

Swanky-looking Mexican joint serves humble fare
A riffle of excitement shot through my taste buds when I noticed that the front door of El Padrino Mexican Restaurant was emblazoned with the name of the executive chef.
Finally, I thought, this is the place.
For years I’ve wondered why no restaurant in town has pulled off high-end Mexican cuisine. Sure, there are plenty of places serving very good traditional Mexican and New Mexican dishes, and a handful have come close. But no one has consistently done creative, white tablecloth takes on the pantheon of salsas and chilis welling up from our neighbors to the south.
El Padrino, which anchors a new strip mall in Glen Eagle, looks like the restaurant I’d been waiting for. In the entryway, water flows down the glowing glass of a sleek, modern fountain. A host greets you from an elegant wood podium. Beyond, archways open to a stylish dining room lined with cozy booths, and an alluringly dim lounge with a big, horseshoe bar lit by hip halogen lamps. Outside, a sprawling patio (closed for the winter) boasts a big gas fire pit.
This is definitely the place, I thought, walking in.
Then we opened our menus, and it definitely was not. At least, not yet.
Not that the food is bad, just old-fashioned and humbly regional in a way that doesn’t fit expectations raised by the building or the sign out front.
The menu is basically old school Pueblo — that is, it serves the green-chili- and cheese-laden crew of rellenos, burritos and tacos typical of the Steel City. The chiles in its chile rellenos ($7.95 at lunch) are long, slender Anaheimstyle peppers you only see in Colorado and New Mexico, not the fat poblanos usually used in Texas and points south. The salsa is a thin red, tomatoey brew that took me back to the city’s Mexican restaurants in the 1970s.
And some plates come with a side of calavacitas — an ancient, pre-Columbian mix of chiles, corn and summer squash that is a traditional meal in Hispanic homes of the San Luis Valley.
I couldn’t figure out how such humble, old-style food could end up in such a new, swanky place. It looked less like food cooked up by an executive chef and more like food cooked up by someone’s mama in Walsenburg. Then I talked to the owner, Darin Vasquez.
“You’ve got to be from Pueblo,” I said.
“Nope, we’re from right here. Our family’s been cooking in Colorado Springs for over 40 years,” he said. “We also own the Bean Bandit. We use all the same family recipes here, with a few tweaks.”
Aha! That explained it. It was someone’s mama’s food. The Bean Bandit is known for good, handmade, plain-Jane, Colorado-style Mexican dishes served by Vasquez’s mom, Marg (who is from Pueblo) at appetizing prices. It never rates high in Gazette reader surveys, but having been open more than 40 years, it must be doing something right.
Vasquez wants to slowly add fancier and fancier options to the menu until he “does for Mexican what P.F. Chang’s did for Chinese.” But right now, because of issues with the kitchen, he’s sticking with the old Pueblo-style Bean Bandit standbys, plus a few steaks, salads and fish tacos to jazz things up.
Folks in Pueblo tend to judge the best Mexican restaurants simply on their green chili. Everything else on the menu is just a delivery device. At El Padrino, the pork green chili is a rich, thick, beige gravy — more pork than chiles and a little heavy on the salt, but not bad. And it is served on nearly everything.
The pork and avocado burrito ($7.95 at lunch), which wraps slow-cooked chunks of seasoned pork and handmade guacamole in a flour tortilla, then drowns it in chili, is perhaps the best match with the chili. However, order it “hot” and you may be disappointed. I didn’t even break a sweat.
Some of the traditional dishes are not so great. The chile relleno, which comes in a spongy, egg-batter jacket and a blanket of more of that pork green chili, is a little bland and soggy.
The menu has flourishes the Bean Bandit lacks.
The fajitas ($13.99) show the skill of the chef. Often fajitas arrive oily and too full of green peppers. At El Padrino, grilled strips of chicken breast with only a kiss of oil dominate. They’re great.
The flatiron steak ($16.99), served in a red-chile sauce, is also worth ordering. The big, tender steak is seared to perfection. On the side, a light, lovely mix of calavacitas used zucchini instead of squat, light-green cavacita squash, but it was lifted to the next level by bits of fresh bacon. This side dish may be the best thing on the menu. Although the painfully hot sopapillas cooled with honey come close.
Even if the food isn’t quite as ambitious as the setting, El Padrino has a lot going for it. The comfy booths and great service should make it a top choice for people in the neighborhood, and the elegant bar, which has big TVs and a good list of happy hour appetizer specials, is a welcome hangout in a neighborhood desperately needing one.

Sisters' Sri Lankan dishes sing with fresh spices and careful preparation.
At first glance, the Sri Lankan dishes at The Curry Leaf, a bright eight-table downtown restaurant, look a lot like Indian cuisine: different curries with rice, pasty lentil dahl and thin, tortillalike bread called roti.
Then you order the chicken curry ($5.49. All prices are for lunch; expect to pay $1 more at dinner), mix a spoonful with rice and taste. The fiery, floral blend of turmeric, coriander, cinnamon, ground chiles and about a dozen other spices is washed away from the Indian mainland by the unmistakable taste of coconut.
There are other differences: the wide use of obscure Sri Lankan ingredients such as rumpe – a dried stalk that tastes similar to bay leaves – and a sour, dried fruit called garaka. But coconut is the main theme. It is everywhere — in the curry, in the dahl, even in the desserts. It shows how the kitchens of Sri Lanka, an island just off India’s southern tip, were inffuenced by Malay and Thai neighbors to the east as well as Indian neighbors to the north. Spice traders from Europe who used Sri Lanka’s ports for centuries added their own flavors.
The resulting mongrel cuisine (the best kind) — combined with loving preparation of fresh ingredients — is wonderful. Almost everything here is delicious. The prices are right. The service is friendly and nearly flawless. I can’t wait to go back.
The restaurant is the creation of Lara Linander and Lana Hillstrom, sisters of Sri Lankan parents who grew up in Minnesota, ended up in Colorado Springs, and, with no experience in the restaurant business, opened a place serving their family recipes.
Duck your head into the little kitchen and you’ll probably see them peeling fresh mangos for chutney, trimming fresh green beans for vegetarian curry, and hand-kneading roti dough. Everything here is made from scratch.
The curries are tailored to each dish. The potato curry ($3.49) is light and glowing yellow with turmeric, while the chicken curry uses Sri Lanka’s “black curry” — a mix of spices roasted until they produce a complex, brown sauce. Almost everything gets a dose of coconut, but it is powdered coconut, so the results are not as dense and sweet as some Thai dishes.
Curry Leaf also serves a list of “deviled” dishes: spicy stir-fries with a Sri Lankan accent. And yes, The Curry Leaf kitchen is full of fresh, peppery curry leaves, which flavor nearly every dish.
The food is rich and intense — probably packing more aromatic spices per spoonful than most Americans eat in a week. Stuff the main dish down your gullet all at once, and you’ll likely be overwhelmed. These dishes are designed to be eaten Sri Lankan-style, Linander told me.
“We put a pile of rice in the middle of the plate, then put spoonfuls of curry around the outside and then mix rice and curry in every bite,” she said.
The rice cuts the richness and makes the flavors sing. The best way to savor Linander’s advice is to go with friends, order several a la carte dishes, then spoon out a smorgasbord on your plate.
The small menu is packed with enticements. The eggplant curry ($6.49) may be the ugliest plate ever served in the city, but more than makes up for it in taste. The brown mush swimming with black, leathery skins looks as if the kitchen had stewed an especially large beetle. One bite, however, will have you addicted. Eggplants are deep-fried until the starches start turning to sugar and the sugar starts to caramelize. Then the sweet, savory mash is mixed with spices. It’s heaven.
The cutlets ($5.95), similar to Thai fish cakes except the minced ffsh is mixed with potato and spices before being formed in small patties and fried, are just as wonderful.
The only dish I wasn’t thrilled to carry back to my fridge was the fish curry ($6.49). The type of fish changes daily, and I showed up on salmon day. Salmon is a rich fish, and, even with rice, seemed too much for the rich, spicy sauce.
I tried unsuccessfully to get out without dessert, but the sisters can be persuasive. I ended up digging a spoon into coconut caramel custard ($3.95) — a flan lavored with coconut, cinnamon, clove and cardamom.
Yes, it’s as good as it sounds. So is the whole place. Go

Chef-owned Fratelli aces italian
One of the best, yet leastknown, Italian restaurants in the city hides in plain sight.
Its plain brick face on Nevada Avenue is forgettable. Throngs of hungry people shuffle past the lacy curtains each day.
But step inside Fratelli Ristorante Italiano, a chef-owned h i d e a w a y where nearly everything has been made from scratch for years, and you’ll likely have a meal that is hard to forget.
Fratelli seems tucked in a time warp. Step in offl the busy street and the minutes slow. The air becomes calm and quiet. You are whisked back to an era when meals were meant to be lingered over, with second helpings of conversation. From the small tables, you can hear chef Armando Palomba steadily chopping and mixing in the back, as he has since the place opened in 1994.
He makes his own mozzarella. He bakes his own bread. He mixes his own sauces. And he has made a steady following in town.
I first knew that Fratelli was someplace special when a plate of crostini arrived topped not with the normal toque of chopped tomato and basil in oil, but with a creamy swipe of mascarpone cheese mixed with pumpkin and crowned with a sweet sliver of roasted red pepper.
The one d r a w b a c k of Fratelli is that the handcrafted dishes are a bit on the pricey side. No one should charge $20 for pasta. But by showing up at lunch or for an early dinner on most weeknights, diners can sample some of the goods without dropping too much coin.
Lunch offers a luscious array of pasta dishes at half the dinner price. The pasta al forno ($10) bakes perfectly cooked ziti rigate in a casserole dish with P a r m e s a n , mozzarella, veal, Italian sausage and beef in a chunky tomato and Bardolino red wine sauce, then tops the whole thing in a bubbling crown of Parmesan and mozzarella.
The steamy dish tastes like the best lasagna you’ve ever had.
The Rigatoni Alla Vodka with rose cream, Parmesan cheese and peas ($10) offers a brighter, lighter lunch.
Early diners can save by showing up for the Chianti Sunset Special ($16.95, served 5 p.m.-6:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays).
The menu, which changes quarterly, currently includes bruschetta, soup or salad, vegetable sides and a choice of Fettuccine Bolognese, Pollo
— Alfredo, or Italian Sausage in Primavera.
The classic dishes, devoid of flashy gimmicks, are lofted up by little touches such as a terrific sausage stuffed with pork and fresh fennel bulb.
The same is true of the fullpriced dinners.
The antipasto misto ($14 for two) is what an antipasto was meant to be. The plate is spread with delicate olives, sweet red peppers roasted in the kitchen, fresh fennel, strong, musky Genoa salami, real Proscuitto di Parma, and delicious wedges of aged provolone and rich fontina cheese. Italian restaurants have made an industry of finding cheaper, less interesting versions of these delicacies. Palomba chooses instead to go for the real thing.
In each dish you can see the work of a quiet craftsman.
The Melenzane Rollatine ($20), eggplant wrapped around sweet ricotta cheese and herbs with fresh tomato sauce, then baked in casserole with fontina cheese, manages to be both light and rich at once.
You can taste that the handformed potato gnocci ($20) are made from scratch each day.
The pounded cutlets in the veal picatta ($24) are cooked in butter, capers, fresh lemon and a touch of Pinot Grigio to give the petite medallions of meat a lovely balance of flavor.
Chef Palomba’s Brasciole, an occasional special, is worth trying to catch. He pounds flank steak into a thin sheet, then wraps it around pine nuts, white raisins, basil, herbs and Reggiano cheese. Then he slow cooks it in a ragu sauce rich with wine and serves it over sturdy egg noodles. It’s fantastic.
The practiced servers float in and out, drawing little attention. Time slows. You find yourself savoring each forkful.
Kym Palomba, who runs the front of the house, rarely lets diners go without a cappuccino and dessert. Take her advice on the limoncello cake. The dense, sweet pound cake is shot through with Italian lemon liqueur.
You eat and talk and eat and talk — hours pass as you enjoy a meal in a way that is downright Old World — and you start to realize why the place doesn’t bring more attention to itself. It doesn’t need to.

Montague’s adds shot of taste to south Tejon with great food, drinks.
Montague’s Coffee House has a sense of history and a sense of humor.
The sense of history comes from the fact that when owners Dave McIntosh and Jeff Weller opened the place in 1997, they named it after the business that had been in its small, brick building for 37 years — a place called Monty’s Inn.
The sense of humor comes from the fact that, aside from the name, Monty’s and Montague’s couldn’t be more different.
Montague’s is a refined tea and coffee emporium where ladies tend to chat by the fire over scones and blackberry tea while sitting in Victorian tapestried wing chairs.
Monty’s catered to a slightly less cultured crowd. A 1989 Gazette article described it as “a rough, biker bar where hard-drinking, hard-brawling types go to let ofi some steam.” Police pulled up under the bar’s dingy Hamm’s beer sign repeatedly to respond to fights, reports of bartenders serving the obviously intoxicated and one incident in which a couple tried to sell their child to guys drinking at the bar for $50.
“We actually bought Monty’s because we owned the antiques store next door, and we wanted to put it out of business because I was tired of getting my car stolen,” Weller said.
The more-refined Montague’s has a lot going for it.
The tall glass jars of 80 kinds of loose tea in fiavors such as vanilla almond and Victorian rose, and the elaborate teacups and teapots for sale make it feel almost like a head shop for serious users of Camellia sinensis.
But Montague’s is more than just a teahead’s emporium. The good breakfasts, lunches and desserts make it a nice spot for almost everyone. Plus, it’s open late, making it a good place to meet friends over something other than a beer or martini.
On a recent weekend breakfast, we discovered light, chewy French toast stuffed with a touch of cream cheese, and raspberry jam and pancakes with fresh blueberries ($6.50 each) served with great, locally roasted coffee.
The pancakes were a little underdone (perfectly cooking cakes with cold berries in them is a trick) and both plates came with fake maple syrup, but the laid-back, quiet atmosphere and small breakfast crowd make it a good choice if you want to linger over breakfast conversation.
Lunch is more hectic. My wife and I nabbed the last table at noon on a busy weekday and ordered a chicken salad croissant, an artichoke and parmesan quiche ($7.95 each), and a cup of tomato pumpkin soup ($3.25). Some restaurants appeal to one gender more than the other. On a recent visit to The Firehouse barbecue, the whole place was men. Montague’s, with its tea and quiche and good, fresh salads, is just the opposite. Let’s just say the biker crew from Monty’s probably wouldn’t like it.
“There are a few men here,” my wife said, peering around the room of cozy, stuffed chairs and small tables. “But they are all here with women, who probably brought them here.”
Message to other men: Don’t fight it. Montague’s does a good lunch.
The service is good, and the setting is great — especially on a cold winter day.
The chicken salad was sweet with poppy dressing and full of fresh, crispy celery. Its companion croissant tasted squishy and massproduced, but it did the job.
The quiche was much better. It was individual — not sliced from a larger pie — so it arrived hot and fresh, with just a small suggestion of crust clinging to a delicious mix of eggs, herbs, artichokes and cheese.
Both plates came with good house salads and bottles of salad dressing on the side, so you could put on as much as you wanted but not waste any.
The soup offers a delicious balance of mellow pumpkin and bright, acidic tomatoes, with big chunks of celery and red pepper adding flavor.
Save room for dessert, or better yet, come back late at night to sate a sugar craving. Tall slices of cake wait under glass domes. The homemade coconut cake is particularly decadent. Homemade scones, coffeecake and peanut butter bars cover the counter.
I’m not saying they’re good enough to sell your child for, but they’re certainly good enough to accompany Montague’s cultured coffees and teas, which is saying something

Firehouse’s moist, smoky meals have power to please discerning diners
You can smell the slowburning mesquite coals in the Volkswagen-size smoker at The Firehouse as soon as you pull into the parking lot. The smoky incense wafts over West Colorado Avenue — sweet and smoldering like the first sip of an anejo mescal, but sharp and fresh like the hot border deserts where the wood was grown.
The passenger in my car raised his nose — silence for a few moments — then turned with the grin of a 6-year-old about to tear open Christmas presents and said, “Boy howdy, that smells good! Let’s eat.”
I had brought my friend, Mr. Barbecue, to test the city’s newest smoked-meat boutique, just as I had brought him to every pork and brisket joint I’ve ever reviewed. I brought him because he grew up ’cueing whole hogs at pig pickins on a tobacco farm in the Carolinas.
Since then, he has seemingly stopped at every pulled pork shack between here and there and can discuss, at length, their regional merits.
He says he can tell a good brisket by how it hits the counter.
His rulings on barbecue aren’t always nice, but they’re usually right.
We pushed through the doors of The Firehouse’s converted — wait for it — firehouse. Joe and Kari Tresner opened the place in October to serve the Texas-style smoky barbecue Joe had been perfecting for years in his backyard.
It was lunchtime and the place was packed. The word must be out, I thought.
Under glaring, bare lights, people crowded around small tables covered with red-checkered tablecloths with upright spools of paper towels rising from the centers like big white candles.
We opened the menus. After much hemming and hawing and a side story about how his grandma told him how to pick the right okra from the garden (it should be the size of your little finger), Mr. Barbecue ordered a platter with smoked chicken, brisket and pulled pork ($13.49). I went for the ribs, ($10.49), and my wife (who met us there) chose fried (the menu calls it Broasted) chicken ($8.49).
There was the matter of choosing sides (fried green beans, coleslaw, beans, etc.), but, Mr. Barbecue said as he leered from table to table, sizing up the meat, “It doesn’t really matter. That’s not why you’re here.”
Barbecue is probably the most argued-over cuisine in the country, fraught with regional partisans who debate the merits Carolina mop sauce or dry Memphis ribs.
Want silent comfort food consensus? Serve mac and cheese.
Want endless debate? Get Texas and Kansas City ’cue disciples to list the proper protocols for what they consider “real barbecue.”
“Some people will sauce it up too much,” Mr. Barbecue said as we waited for our plates.
“I say, don’t be messin’ with my barbecue. If it’s good, it doesn’t need sauce. Just serve a little on the side.”
Just then our plates arrived. Piles of pork, chicken and beef glistened gloriously unsauced on Mr. Barbecue’s platter. He tore in.
The slow-smoked pork butt looked like good pulled pig should: disparate strands, some pale and moist, some tough and ruddy brown, a few spots almost black from the smoker, each contributing its own character. It was delicious. And with a splash of the vinegary mustard sauce on the table, it was even better.
Most local barbecue places slice their brisket. Here the brisket pulls an all-nighter in the smoker, then is torn ragged until you could almost twirl it up with a fork like spaghetti.
“Boy that is really good,” Mr. Barbecue said between bites. “It’s rich. It’s almost shiny. Oh, man. I like that.”
The smoked chicken didn’t fare as well. The breast was dry. I’ve never thought a smoker did good things to chicken.
But the fried chicken is some of the best in town. The perfectly crispy crust was not too salty or greasy, and hid a delicious, moist flesh.
Ribs rate highly, too. The slender, lean pork ribs have a lot of surface area to soak up maximum smoke, and a crispy, delicious amber veneer forms from hours on the grill. The ribs are served with a touch of sauce (not truly wet, but damp) — and the sauce here, which has the sweet bite of apple cider vinegar and fresh spices, is a worthy escort.
There are other delights hiding on this large menu.
The green chile chicken soup, a Texas spinoff of classic Mexican Sopa Azteca, is a fiery treat packed with fresh chiles, crispy tortilla strips and slices of scallion and avocado.
I’m kicking myself for not seeing the soft tacos on the takeout menu I stuffed in my pocket until I got home. (My editor says they’re great … and the first tacos he’s topped with barbecue sauce. They come with either beef or pork, or both.)
There are few criticisms you can aim at Firehouse. The service is as good as the food. The pies in the dessert case are homemade. I’d like better lighting and some booths, but barbecue often thrives in Spartan settings.
On the way out, I asked Mr. Barbecue for his ruling.
“Whoooo boy, that’s tough,” he said. He debated the virtues of every barbecue place in town, one by one, then rebutted himself. Then started again. He wouldn’t give a straight answer.
You got the feeling, watching, that ’cue lovers argue so much because it give them an excuse to go back and test the meat again.

Salsa Latina is a hole-in-the-wall Colorado-style Mexican joint that is like another hole-in-the-wall Colorado-style Mexican joint, El Taco Rey, in almost every mystifying, maddening, wonderful way.
For as long as I can remember, Latina’s owner Danny Aguilar was the man behind the counter at El Taco Rey, doling out jokes and Styrofoam boxes of green chili pork-avocado burritos.
And for as long as I can remember, I have been perplexed by how Rey seemed to thrive in spite of itself. It had almost no seating, almost no parking, didn’t take credit cards, didn’t serve dinner, was closed on weekends and had the maddening habit (from the point of view of a guy jonesing for a pork-avo burrito) of closing for weeks on end for something called “el taco rest.”
Still, the line was out the door, and the Aguilar family, which has run the place for generations, seemed happy as ever. (Rey recently expanded its hours slightly and began taking credit cards, but remains cramped and sometimes closed.)
For years I would scheme about all the inconveniences I would smooth away if I were running things.
So, when Danny, a member of the family, went off on his own, (“Not really with my parents’ blessing,” he said) opening Salsa Latina less than a mile away, I figured he was tired of the eccentricities and wanted to do be more conventional.
Instead, he did the same thing. The menu is full of the same hearty tacos and burritos. The place doesn’t take credit cards. It has limited seating (although it did recently expand beyond counter service), and it is closed on weekends.
Needless to say, the line is out the door.
I’m tempted to think the two restaurants have cooked up the culinary version of the diamond cartel, creating value by intentionally crafting scarcity: You want the pork-avo burrito because it’s so hard

Excitement over Trinity Brewing Co. started to bubble among local beer connoisseurs long before the place poured its first pint in August.
Trinity seemed like an ale and lager version of fantasy football: Pick and choose the best parts of the local brew scene and put them together for a dream team. Part 1: Jason Yester, the dreadlocked genius who was brewmaster at Bristol Brewing Co. for five years, churning out one blue ribbon beer after another. Part 2: Todd Walton, former owner of Kinfolks Mountain Outfitters in Manitou, which has a tiny bar in the back serving hard-to-find artisan beers.
Put them together in a ZIP code desperately in need of a good brewpub, add environmentally friendly practices such as giving a discount to customers who ride or walk to the brewery, and top it off with a menu celebrating natural, local and organic food, and you have a restaurant deserving of all its buzz.
Every time I go, the place is packed. The mountain bikes of pedal-to-work dudes from nearby bike-partsmaker Sram crowd the rack as the dudes perch, pint-in-hand, on the patio. Inside, a row of about 30 taps lines a long, illuminated bar made of recycled glass. Vast chalkboards above display food and beer options. A long, hallwaylike file of tables leads to a back room full of comfy couches. The Grateful Dead plays on the iPod. Dreadlocked employees ferry frothy mugs of excellent stout and amber to standing gangs of after-work drinkers and those lucky enough to score a seat. Trays whisk through the crowd carrying sizzling Belgian-style fries, vegan hot wings and steaming bowls of beer-cheese soup.
It’s a lovely scene, and people clearly treasure it, but in the few months it has been open, Trinity has yet to live up to its potential. Service is clunky and uneven.

A few months ago, when local longtime New York-slice slinger Mama Trino’s Pizzeria — one of the region’s better pizza joints — moved to the gentrified SoDo block of South Tejon Street, someone must have decided the place needed to be more hip.
After all, it was opening on one of the coolest blocks in town, a stretch with happening bars and coffee shops, nightclubs and a scooter boutique. To fft in with the young, urban vibe, Mama Trino’s Pizzeria set up in a sleek, industrial-looking shop and shortened its name to Trino’s.
The menu remains unchanged. Anyone who loved Trino’s pizza, sandwiches and pasta at its old South Nevada location will find the same good stuff waiting in the new, hipper atmosphere.
Call it post-industrial, bourgeois chic: Inviting glass garage doors at the front of the shop open onto the sidewalk. Inside, stylish raw brick walls shelter long, wood benches and a scattering of tables on raw concrete floors. The huge garage doors and a New York City subway map on the wall serve as a subtle reminder that this century-old brick building was originally the garage for the city’s streetcars.
Behind the counter stands the brick oven that bakes Trino’s pizzas. Through its open mouth, you can see big gas flames dance as pies glisten in the heat.
Order by the slice ($2.39) or a whole pie ($13.89-$20.69).
Ask for a slice and, in true New York fashion, a wedge of a recently cooked pizza is tossed back in the oven for a few minutes.
What comes out is also true to the Big Apple: a thin, floppy slice.
“Maybe a little too floppy,” a friend said at a recent lunch. Even after he folded one of the big, hot slices lengthwise, the tip sagged, spilling cheese, toppings and sauce all over his plate. This pizza is best kept simple. Get too many toppings and it could fail entirely.
Trino’s takes pains to make a good pie. Sauce and dough are made from scratch every day. Most of the toppings are up to par, but some details of the operation need updating with the name.
I ordered a lunch slice that came with one topping. From a list of goodies ranging from anchovies to grilled chicken, I chose basil. I assumed, since it counted as a topping, it was sweet, fresh, anisey
— basil leaves. The slice arrived, instead, covered in the dried stuff. The toppings list could use some renovation.
The nonpizza menu relies heavily on pizza stock. An antipasto salad ($6.49) capable of feeding four, was bolstered by lettuce with black olives, ham, pepperoni, cheese and other pizza toppings. The good pastas, made when you order, seem to use sauces (white or red) found on the pizzas, too. This works because the pizzas have a good sauce.
Trino’s meatballs, whether with pasta or in a gooey sub ($5.99), are homemade, full of oregano, and more meaty than many sandwich-grade meatballs, which use ffllers such as bread crumbs.
Trino’s SoDo makeover is a hit. The cool new space is welcoming, the service is good, and the place is open until the bars close on weekends, so it makes a perfect past-midnight snack.
Pizza connoisseurs will likely never stop arguing over who makes the best New York slice in town, but Trino’s is a worthwhile stop in that ongoing debate.

The first thing a restaurant has to be is a storyteller. Whether it is through the name an owner picks, the ads that run or the façade that greets the street, a place must quickly, convincingly tell its story. What is it? What does it serve? How much does it cost? There should be intriguing clues at every step. If not, good luck getting people in the door.
That is the first problem with Metropolis, but by no means the last.
From the outside, the place a mystery: A big grayish box (formerly a video store and auction house) with drawn blinds, and a sign with a cityscape below and a rainbow above that reads “Metropolis.”
Is it a Greek place whose owners love “The Wizard of Oz”? A chic urban bistro with a Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” theme? A weird homage to Superman’s hometown specializing in Hawaiian food? We’re left to guess.
Booths line the wall. An ornate bar sits at the back. Small tables gather around a central dance fioor made of campy black, teal and yellow tiles under a big, turning disco ball. When we walked in, the otherwise empty restaurant was filled by bouncy House music.
My editor dined at Metropolis weeks before I did. He said he had a nice prime rib, decent soup and finallyfiigured out what the place was — a gay club.
He put an encouraging note on The Gazette’s dining blog saying “Maybe it’ll take up where (longtime west-side gay club) Hide & Seek left off.”
The owners saw the post and called The Gazette and talked to an editor at the Colorado Springs Independent, insisting that the place was not a gay bar but was “here for everybody.” The Independent wrote a snarky column suggesting The Gazette should get “a functioning gaydar.” But the same time, the Indy was running an announcement that the annual local Gay and Lesbian film festival would have its after party at Metropolis. Confusing.
Even part owner Jeff Chevalier is vague about the vision. “I don’t want it just to be a bar. I want it to be an experience — more upscale,” he said this week.
I’m telling you this not to argue that a place should be either gay or straight. I’m just saying if the owners and every food writer in town are confused about what it is, good luck to anyone else.
The mystery might not hurt if the place had the culinary chops, but the food ranges from OK bar fare to just plain bad.
The menu is already starting to implode under lack of business and chef turnover.
We tried to order mac and cheese from the kids menu but were told there no longer is a kids menu. I saw the breakfast menu on the back but was told breakfast was gone, too.
“I guess I’ll have the grilled ham and cheese,” my wife said.
“That’s gone, too,” the waiter shrugged.
So we waltzed through the remaining menu ordering a Philly cheese steak ($7.75), a guacamole burger ($8.95), French onion soup with salad ($7.75), bacon-wrapped jalapeños ($5.95) and chicken parmesan ($13).
Some things were better than others. None was worth coming back for. The burger with fresh guacamole packed with onions, and the Philly — both on massive French bread halves — were good enough. The French onion soup was no La Baguette, but it wasn’t bad. And the jalapeños were freshly made, not just food service freezer-to-fryer numbers. But from there, things went downhill.
The salad ($6.50), which was supposed to come with mixed greens, instead offered aging iceberg — and so little of it that it felt as if it were made by a lettuceaverse 8-year-old. The chicken sat on a bed of fettuccine, topped with a red sauce dominated by dried oregano.
Chevalier, who worked for years at the Penrose Room, says he plans big changes. He’s going to scrap the whole menu next month and start serving haute cuisine with table-side Caesar salad and Chateaubriand. He also has live music and dinner theater in the works. The first show’s theme is the Titanic. Let’s hope it isn’t a metaphor for the new menu.

King’s Chef Diner has gained a cult following based on three factors: the kitschy, 13-seat, castle-shape 1955 diner it calls home; the heaping plates of good, greasy food; and the idiosyncrasies of owner Gary Geiser, who for more than 10 years has ladled out oddly endearing helpings of verbal abuse as if the stuff were on the menu.
People love it. Geiser — a vocal Republican (or at least anti-Democrat) mountain bike racer — does a greasy spoon-insult comic routine as he wipes down counters and serves up burgers and big plates of eggs and hand-grated hash browns.
In the years I’ve been bellying up to his old counter, he has called me a hack, a nancy boy, and most recently, a liberal (the ultimate Colorado Springs insult). He has eaten fries off my plate while passing by, and admonished me for not cleaning my plate. (If you clean your plate, you get a piece of candy and a sticker saying you are a member of the Clean Plate Club.)
This is par for the course. Geiser dishes it if he thinks you can take it, and he’s outrageously funny (usually at your expense).
This summer, he opened a second, larger version of the diner, and I started to wonder whether the King’s Chef formula would work without all three factors.
The answer is yes. While the new domain by Acacia Park lacks the castle-kitsch factor, it has other enticements, most notably seating.
Geiser’s done a nice job of giving the space formerly occupied by Big City Burrito a retro-diner feel. The kitchen is surrounded by an L-shape formica counter with swiveling vinyl stools, just as in the first location, but beyond the counter wait several tables. Geiser still flits around, filling coffee, flipping burgers, slinging insults. The difference is that a front-row seat at the Geiser show is no longer obligatory. If you just want to eat in peace, you can get a quiet table in the back.
The first-time I visited, for breakfast, I went for the counter. Before I sat down, Geiser asked, “Coffee?” and filled a big mug. I ordered a plate of hash browns, two eggs, bacon and toast ($5.95). I could see Geiser’s first mate furiously grating whole potatoes over the grill in the back and cracking eggs to one side. There is no egg mix here; if you order scrambled, the cooks scramble it with a fork.
Before I could scan the first page of the newspaper, the plate hit the counter. This diner is fast. There were some corners cut. The bacon seemed as if it were deep-fried long before I arrived, then warmed up. But the generous piles of fresh hash browns and the perfect over-easy eggs made up for it.
The food at King’s Chef primarily comes in big piles with funny names. There’s The Grump: hash browns, sausage, eggs and cheese covered with good, peppery country gravy ($7.95). There’s The Thing: toast, eggs, sausage, cheese and hash browns smothered in fiery green chili ($7.95). There’s also an assortment of sandwiches and a nod to salads, though I’ve never, in many visits, seen anyone order a salad.
The burgers ($4) are big, thick and juicy, served with fat slices of onion and tomato. The fries are plentiful and hand-cut — not as crisp as the frozen food-service version, but with more real potato flavor. To get a Clean Plate Club sticker after a burger-and-fries combo is to really accomplish something.
Geiser opened his new location primarily so he could have a kitchen big enough to sell the famous King’s Chef green chili commercially. The chili doesn’t mess around. Few people have ordered a bowl of the incendiary sauce and earned a Clean Plate Club sticker. Many have incurred the “I told you so” ridicule of the owner.
“I took my dad here once; he ordered the chili, and Gary refused to give it to him,” a friend said recently when we ate lunch at one of King’s Chef ’s new abundance of tables. “He said it was too hot.”
(Wednesday’s Food section will feature more on Geiser’s chili.)
My friend ordered a half-order of the Grump ($5.95). He called the warm, savory pile of breakfast “the ultimate hangover food.” Indeed, King’s Chef has always been popular with rough-looking Colorado College students rolling in for breakfast at 1 p.m.
My friend got about three quarters of the way through it before giving up.
“No sticker for you!” a young, female server told him.
Geiser seems to have adjusted well to his new location. (The old castle is still open, serving the same menu.) The Bijou Street spot is bigger, to accommodate the crowds that love his food and banter. And the larger space allows him to be louder.
The corner location is not quite as cool as the original but serves two purposes: Those who loved the well-priced, hearty food can now get it (with a searing helping of sarcasm) at a place they are likely to get a seat. Those who loved the old castle but avoided it because it was too crowded now stand a much higher chance of scoring a stool.
Everyone wins. Now shut up and eat.

Open the door of Smiley’s Bakery and Cafe and a blast of fresh-baked bread hits you — not the bready smell of most bakeries, but the real, sweet, warm smell you usually get only when you bake bread in your own kitchen.
It only gets better from there.
This tiny bakery, cooked up by Amy Graham, who years ago owned Amy’s Bakery and Cafe on the west side, is packed with delicious, homemade goodies that rise above the pastry pack. Plates of cookies, muffins and brownies crowd the modest glass case at the counter. Fresh pies cool on pedestals above. The smell of fresh bread battles the smell of good coffee. The cafe itself, speckled with mismatched chairs and tables, rusted tin pie plates tacked to the wall, and a shelf of children’s books is so sweet and homey that it almost feels like confection.
I didn’t quite get the bakery’s name until I was greeted at the counter on an early morning by Graham, whose smile is as sweet and genuine as her strawberry rhubarb pie.
“I just like to make people happy,” she said recently, taking a break from baking. “When you make them good food and give them a nice place to hang out, it just makes my day.”
That first visit was for breakfast, and it left us dying to come back for lunch.
The French toast ($4.95) was bolstered by a robust, crusty white bread (homemade, of course) with a few sesame seeds sprinkled on the crust. It was perfect — somehow dancing between airy levity and custardy richness. I’m kind of bummed that Graham doesn’t offer real maple syrup for a surcharge, but real syrup is so rare anywhere in this town she can hardly be faulted.
Other breakfast choices are just as good. A delicate cinnamon twist ($1.95) slaked in sugar was so light and flaky that it practically dissolved on the tongue.
In a world where muffins tend to be dense, doughy and bland, Smiley’s cranberry walnut version ($1.95) was packed with fresh berries and huge chunks of nut suspended in a lovely cornmeal concoction.
It’s a good place to linger over coffee, baked goods and the newspaper. The music wanders between scratchy old Edith Piaf and scratchy new John-Alex Mason. There is free Wi-Fi and an effortlessly hip atmosphere that led my wife to say, “You know, this is basically a breakfast

In a way, you can thank Joseph Stalin for the excellent German food at Edelweiss.
Not that the Soviet head honcho knew schnitzel from Shinola, but when he took over Eastern Europe after World War II, it caused America to station 300,000 troops in West Germany, which caused a lot of young American GIs to fall in love with German girls, which caused a lot of marriages, which caused a lot of German women to move to Colorado Springs.
Consequently, there are a lot of ladies around here who know their schnitzel. And since a restaurant is usually only as good as its customers’ expectations, there is some darn fine kartoffel pfannkuchen around town.
“We have several regulars who are Germans married to military guys,” a server told me on a recent visit to Edelweiss. “In fact, we have several waitresses who did the same thing.”
So you know when you find your way through the warren of different rooms at Edelweiss and sit down to a plate of zigeunerschnitzel or sauerbraten that you’re going to get the real thing. (This is also true of local Korean fare, for similar reasons. The Cold War was kind to the local restaurant scene.)
German cuisine can have a bit of an image problem. The plates are almost universally brown food and can be overloaded with gravy and syllables. Let’s face it, sauerkraut is not hip.
But the food at Edelweiss is so well done, with great service and a fun setting, that it’s hip to be square.
A meal typically starts with a veteran

While eating my fifth or sixth piece of pizza at CiCi’s Pizza’s allyou-can-eat buffet, I had an epiphany about why kids like buffets so much.
The chain on North Academy Boulevard was packed with families on a weeknight — some running around the small game room, some at utilitarian tables in the spare, easy-to-scrub-down dining room, and some passing yet again through the line of salad, pasta and about a dozen pizzas.
I’d already quizzed several parents about why they liked the place, and most said they didn’t, but their kids did. (Full disclosure: I don’t have kids.)
On a scale of one to 10, one mom gave the pizza a one. The small pieces come on ready-made crust in kid-friendly flavors including mac and cheese. They’re not bad, just bland.
“But she really likes it,” the mom said, motioning to her 5-year-old daughter in the game room, who was wearing a spotted cow costume and cat ears. (Full disclosure: She got to pick out her own outfit that morning.) “And if we can get 20 minutes of peace at dinner, I’m all for it.”
Almost every other parent I talked to said the same. This was less about a piece of pizza than just plain peace. Plus, at only $5 a pop, a mom could please the kids without going broke.
And the more I thought about it, the more I saw the appeal on the kids’ side, too. It’s all about autonomy. Think about it. Going out to eat at a restaurant to have someone else cook, wait on you, and do the dishes is no big deal when you’re 6. You get that every day at home. But to get to pick what YOU really want — that’s a treat.
Not surprisingly, CiCi’s has proved very popular. The franchise chain has more than 700 locations spread across the nation’s midsection. (Full disclosure: All-youcan-eat pizza is probably the last thing the nation’s midsection needs.)
So I tried to judge the food from a kid’s perspective. I tried the spinach pizza, the pepperoni, the mac and cheese, and, by accident, the buffalo chicken. Most were perfect for a child’s palate. (Full disclosure: From ages 6 to 8, I wanted to eat only Cheerios.)
Still, it’s a bleak buffet. The Romaine in the salad bar was brown with frost nip.
Think about it. going out to eat
at a restaurant to have someone
else cook, wait on you, and do the dishes is no big deal when you’re
6. You get that every day at home. But to get to pick what YOU really want — that’s a treat.
The rest of the salad bar was “not as good as Chuck-E-Cheese’s,” one mother noted.
The dozen or so pizzas aren’t labeled, so you don’t know you have the hot saucedrenched buffalo chicken pizza until you take the first bite. (Full disclosure: That could cause crying.)
The pizza is not bad. It’s hot and fresh if you pick one that’s popular enough to be replaced often, and the sauce and cheese ratios are good. I even found myself going back for a second piece of the mac and cheese pizza. (Full disclosure: I had skipped lunch and climbed the Incline before dinner.)
Would I pick it as a place to go out with friends? No.
Would I use it as a bargaining tool with 6-year-olds? Only if they’re good and clean their rooms.

When I met two friends in the disheveled parking lot of this tiny strip mall Mexican restaurant, the first thing they asked is, “How did you find this place?”
It’s a fair question.
El Jardin is a classic denizen of Colorado Springs’ Taco Triangle. The Triangle is a geographic wedge of aging sprawl between Galley Road, Academy Boulevard and Union Boulevard that is home to what seems like 95 percent of the city’s true Mexican restaurants — places owned by immigrants and catering to immigrants, where English is as rare as a counter that doesn’t sell phone cards.
Like the Bermuda Triangle, it’s a mystery to most.

The first time I walked into Nosh, just over a year ago, I fell in love. The new downtown restaurant, with its hip artfilled walls and smart servers padding around in red Crocs, operated under an inspired mission: Serve small plates of fantastic little delicacies at fair prices so diners can sample a lot without spending too much.
The kitchen conjured up such delights as seared lamb loin in a bright bonnet of mint and shallot salad, and tender bites of soy-splashed beef wrapped in tidy seaweed kimonos. No nosh was more than $10. All wines were half-price during happy hour, and every lunch, fish or fowl, was $7. I gave the place a top rating.
But over the winter, Nosh began to morph. Happy hour deals were whittled down, then whittled down again. Lunch split into a spectrum of fees. The owners, including Joseph Coleman, who owns The Blue Star, fired the chef. The plates got bigger; so did the prices, and the servers stopped wearing red Crocs.
It all made me wonder if the whole thing had been a crock. Was the place really worth five stars, or, in election season terms, had I given the thumbs-up without adequate vetting? So even though it had been only a year since I reviewed the place, I recently went back.
In four visits I found a restaurant whose initial splendor has been scuffed by economic realities, but still churns out many inspired eats with great service and a cool, city setting. In some ways it is still the same old Nosh. In some ways, it is closer to The Blue Star. In all, it is still one of the best downtown places to eat.
The menu is still mostly a landscape of small plates, but quality is all over the map. I started with Crispy Egg Rolls ($5) stuffed with ground pork, carrots, and scallions and set in a reflecting pool of honey chili and soy. Good sauce, great, meaty stuffing, but the rolls were more leathery than crispy. I wouldn’t order them again.
Next came Chimi Beef & Shrimp Skewers ($11), a protein platter of rare, delicious grilled beef, cut into ruby medallions and laid out like a royal flush under a tangy Chimichurri tincture (Argentina’s version of barbecue sauce) of fresh herbs, garlic and olive oil. The kitchen these days is going crazy with white balsamic, and I think they added that to the mix, too, though fresh lemon might give it a more summery bite.

When Larry Lafferty opened Bolo Bistro in May in Prestwick Village, it wasn’t just to fill a niche in the development’s mixed commercial and residential, new urbanism vision. He had a higher plan.
“I wanted to help women in crisis,” he said, as he wiped down a table the other day. So he created a simple cafe called Bolo Bistro to generate the needed funds.
Bolo stands for Breath of Life Outreach. It’s a Christian nonprofit that, Lafferty said, helps women by donating profits to Life Network and Maternity of Mary, two local and relatively low-profile antiabortion Christian organizations that seek to provide services to unwed mothers.
If you don’t want culture wars with your coffee, don’t sweat it; none of this is obvious walking into Bolo’s bright corner location (unless you visit during the monthly New Life Church karaoke night). The coffee shop sits among new, and still largely vacant, townhouses just south of downtown. The place has five tables, cushy couches for lounging, board games and newspapers for loitering, and a cluttered counter and kitchen in back.
“We wanted to create a nice place for the community to gather,” said Lafferty, who sings in a big band on the side.
The menu is simple: a few sandwiches, a few salads, hot dogs, three egg-based breakfast plates, pastries, cofiee and tea. More things are coming, including a $3 bargain menu with things such as biscuits and gravy and sliders.
Right now Lafferty and his employees work for free. They hope to expand the Bolo cause to a franchise of two dozen locations on the Front Range, employing, training and caring for women who need help.
They have a ways to go. While the idea of creating a nonprofft restaurant to feed your causes may be appetizing, most of the food isn’t.
The Chicago-style hot Italian beef sandwich ($4.95), which the menu said had a “bell pepper medley,” didn’t. It came on a nice, light and chewy ciabatta roll, but the meat inside, instead of the traditional thin-
details

Every community, no matter how small, seems to have a place where old guys gather in the early morning to mull over the world’s problems.
Sometimes it’s a corner table in a corner diner, sometimes it’s a counter in a country cafe. In the most rural places, it is often just two pickups nestled window to window while the drivers bloviate over steaming cups of weak gas station coffee.
In the tiny crossroads of Florissant, it’s Costello Street Coffee House, and I hope between the daily grumbling and prognostication, those gray-haired sages realize how good they have it.
The coffee served in this converted 1882 Victorian house is hot, fresh-ground espresso. The small, hardworking menu teems with delicious surprises, and the comfortable warren of dining rooms and sunny patios goes way beyond what most early morning gathering spots offer.
In all, it’s not just a good place for the local breakfast club, it deserves a stop from anyone looking for a good, quick bite while exploring Teller County. If you plan to go see the aspens turn in the next few weeks, a stop at Costello should be on your list.
The first time I walked through Costello’s door, into its floral, antiques-heavy dining room, I passed through a pod of graywhiskered fellows sipping coffee, and I swear one was shaking his head, saying, “I tell ya, the way things are today …”
I was sure this meant I’d find tired, uninspired dishes (one more thing to complain about). Instead, I found a quaint counter covered in colorful cakes, cookies and croissants.
“Do you bake all these here?” I asked with wide eyes.
“No, we get them from town,” said a woman on the other side of the mound of baked goods. “You try baking anything at 8,200 feet.”
Fair enough. Instead, they call in some talented pinch hitters. They order cakes from Little London Cake Shoppe, which The Gazette named “best cake” in our Best of the Springs magazine. The pastries and delicious lineup of all-butter tea cookies come from another Springs heavy hitter: Boonzaaijer’s.
The hot menu is hit and miss.
I ordered the biscuits and gravy (the breakfast club favorite, $3.35) with a side of scrambled eggs, and while the biscuit (fluffy, round, split, grilled and smothered in crispy, browned sausage and thick, beige gravy) was a gut-busting delight, the eggs (rubbery, overcooked, tasted as if they came from a carton) gave me the urge to join the crew by the door for a round of “they don’t make ’em like they used to.”
Lunch fared much better. Costello does a small list of panini and cold sandwiches in which meat takes center stage.
The Caboose sandwich ($7.95) paired a fat pile of ham and turkey with translucently thin slices of sweet tomato, havarti dill cheese, lettuce, red onion and a smear of garlic-basil-herb mayo on slender slices of rye bread. It was perfect.
The Chuckwagon ($7.95) has the same deft mix of fat and thin. A flavorful mound of roast beef is backed by a nuanced but well-chosen cast of cheddar cheese, tomato slivers and mayo, on sourdough bread brushed with garlic olive oil.
The sandwiches, which come with better-than-expected potato salad or pasta salad, are near perfect, and if you’re on a leaf-viewing trip, you can get them to go for a picnic under the aspens.
The best way to get to love Costello, though, is by having afternoon tea — or coffee if you prefer. Not only does Costello whip up a mean cappuccino ($2.80) and boast high-end, loose-leaf teas, but the array of rich little cookies (25-50 cents) you can order alongside are all fabulous. Some are covered in sugar and light as a cloud. Some are slaked with fresh cinnamon. Each is even better paired with a hot drink.
It’s a perfect afternoon snack that may even be good enough to convince the morning coffee cup pundits to change their schedules.

Sometimes it’s been months. Sometimes it has been years, but every time I walk through the door of Luigi’s — Colorado Springs’ definitive Italian restaurant — it feels like I was just there yesterday.
Nothing has changed. Not the red-and-white checkered tablecloths on the tiny tables. Not the dusty Chianti bottles hung on the walls. And thankfully, not the from scratch family recipes. This year, Luigi’s is celebrating 50 years of serving those dishes, making it the oldest family-owned eatery in the city. In the past half-century, it has stayed true to timeless American-Italian traditions that now make it the Godfather of the restaurant scene.
The owners say it’s the lack of change that crams the restaurant with loyal diners.
“Everything else in the world may change,” Gina Costley said by phone recently. “But the homemade tortelacci stays the same. That’s what people love.”
Costley’s parents opened the original Luigi’s (named for her grandfather) in an old service station next door in 1958. It was a tiny place with four tables on what was then the edge of town, serving pizza, a few pasta dishes, and 3.2 beer. Dad cooked, mom ran the front. Gina and her siblings helped and sometimes fell asleep on late nights under the big kitchen table in the back.
Luigi’s moved to the current address (another old gas station) in 1966 and expanded to a sit-down place.
“In 40 years, the menu hasn’t really changed,” said Costley, who now owns the restaurant with her husband, Les. (He cooks, she runs the front.) It starts with the original homemade sauces and family recipes. They make their own sausage and meatballs. They grate their own mozzarella like it’s 1958.
You can always expect Luigi’s to taste exactly the same. Just don’t expect it to be true Italian food. Lately, trendy Italian places have begun to showcase obscure regional specialties — Milanese risotto, Venetian seafood — that fancy chefs have ferreted from trans-Atlantic trips. Luigi’s serves Italian-American immigrant dishes.
“When people ask what region our menu comes from,” Costley said (and they often do because The Broadmoor has a habit of referring sophisticated guests), “I say, ‘Chicago.’ That’s where our family is from, and that’s where the recipes are from. If you have an Italian grandmother, chances are she makes food a lot like ours.”
My favorite is the tortelacci with a thick link of spicy, homemade Italian sausage ($15.85). The hand-formed bundles of pasta stuffed with cream cheese, salty Romano and fresh spinach arrive in a pipinghot dish smothered in old-school, Chicago red Italian meat sauce and sweet, creamy beciamella. It’s unbelievably rich.
Just as good, but lighter, is the Manicotti ($15.85), stuffed with ricotta cheese spiked with what tastes like a hint of nutmeg, then doused in the same duo of red and white sauces. (A vegetarian red also is available.) Luigi’s has a short list of appetizers, but most dishes come with a choice of a good house salad or a cup of thick, hearty minestrone, loaded with tomatoes, kale and beans, and all tables get a generous basket of warm, chewy bread, so there’s no need for appetizers.
Don’t skip the pizza, though ($6-$20). The thin, crisp crust is loaded to the breaking point with just-cut mushrooms, high-quality Italian meats and a super garlicky homemade sauce.
The cheese is extra rich and gooey. Most restaurants use a preshredded mozzarella. To keep the shreds from sticking, distributors use a part-skim cheese and dust the shreds with starch, making for a dryer, firmer melted cheese. Luigi’s grates its own, using whole-milk cheese that makes for a stringy, gooey, exquisite experience.
I’ve always thought the premade desserts at Luigi’s were worth skipping, but this year the family brought back a 50th Anniversary Spumoni. It’s a vintage ice cream recipe it served decades ago with the three bright retro colors of the Italian flag — campy and out of style, but absolutely delicious.
A few things have changed. The smoking section and veal Parmesan were both retired by changing tastes.
Costley says she would like to change other things, such as the cramped, rickety bar (I’d add the low, dated ceiling panels and faux wood on the walls), but she says she can’t get away with it.
“Our loyal customers won’t let us. This place is like a museum to them. Five years ago we bought new chairs and they were worried,” she said.
If it is a museum, it is one with a great permanent collection: family recipes that have pleased Springs diners for half a century. Here’s to the next half.

Some unseen force must be drawing them together. Something no one can explain. It was one shawarma shop. Then another. And another. Now downtown Colorado Springs is experiencing a bona fide shawarma explosion.
The first was Mediterranean Café, which technically serves gyros, not shawarma, but I’m lumping together any meat and pita concoction that comes with the option of falafel.
Then, in quick succession came Pita Pit, Persian Grill, Heart of Jerusalem and now Arabica Café — all concentrated in a small part of downtown as if by a mysterious supernatural force. Call it the Tahini Triangle.
Sure, it doesn’t make sense to have so much falafel in one neighborhood when most of the city has so little. Sure, it would make more business sense to set up elsewhere. But the paradoxical cluster doesn’t make the latest addition any less delicious.
Arabica brings something none of the others has: real shawarma prepared in the traditional way.
Instead of the sausagelike frozen gyro-pop found at most places, or the loose chunks of meat served by Heart of Jerusalem, Arabica’s Palestinian owner, Kamel Elwazeir, makes his shawarma fresh daily by marinating thin slices of beef in oil, vinegar and a Lebanese mix of spices. Then he stacks the slices on a tall spike and lets them slow cook as they rotate. When someone orders a shawarma sandwich ($5.95) Elwazeir shaves off the roasted outer bits, holding a soft pita like a mitt to catch the meat.
Then he tops it with other true-to-the-Middle East toppings: fresh parsely; rich, bitter tahini; lettuce; tomatoes; and long, pink, delicious spears of pickled turnip.
Try to find turnips at any other falafel place.
“I’m the only one who makes it the real way, from scratch,” said Elwazeir, a rail-thin bearded man, while working the counter during a recent lunch.
The only thing keeping it from being totally authentic is that you can’t get it with french fries (a lunch snack as popular in Syria and Saudia Arabia as it is around here.)
Everything at Arabica comes as a sandwich or a platter. The platter ($2 extra) comes with hummus or baba ghanoush (worth ordering just so you can say it), sliced pita, and sweet, nutty basmati rice, glowing yellow with turmeric.
Besides beef, Arabica serves chicken shawarma ($5.95), falafel ($5.50) shish kabab ($6.50) and a few lesser-knowns like kofta kabab ($6.50).
Everything is made from scratch.
Those straying from standard shawarma are rewarded. The kofta kabab turns out to be a Middle Eastern meatball, laced with spices, onion and fresh herbs, then grilled on a skewer. Served the standard way, with lettuce, tomato, hummus and pickles, it tastes like a better version of a hamburger.
The shish kabab gives the same treatment to 2-inch cubes of steak. I ordered it because I saw how gorgeous the meat looked when Elwazeir handed one to the guy in front of me. It looked too good to be true. I figured that much prime beef for $6.50 would be dry or over-tenderized, or a disaster in some other way. Instead, it was delicious — moist and full of flavor. It was a little tough. I had to fight for some bites, but otherwise, it was a hit.
Chicken shawarma also comes out moist and delicious. If you were picking shawarma shop based just on meat, this would be the place, but there are other considerations.
The counter service, when Elwazeir is not at the helm, comes with a generous side of apathy. The hummus has a lovely, lemon and garlic character that screams “homemade,” but the falafel is dense, undistinguished and not as crisp as some The pita is on the tough side, and I’ve heard people comment that the tahini is a bit too bitter. Maybe tahini is supposed
The hummus has a lovely, lemon and garlic character that screams “homemade,” but the falafel is dense, undistinguished and not as crisp as some.
to be bitter. Maybe the pita is a traditional style. Maybe it is all part of Elwazeir’s quest for the real thing, but if you don’t adjust a little to the American palate, the quest can end too quickly.
Perhaps the biggest concern is that Arabica often has trouble handling the downtown lunch crush. People at a place like this want to get in and get out. I went in once at noon and, while in line, saw friends sitting at a table waiting for their orders. Ten minutes later, when I had ordered a kofta kabab, I sat down with them. They got their plates in 15 minutes, ate, and then politely dawdled for a while. When I still didn’t have my lunch, they said they’d see me later. What should have been a half-hour lunch took twice as long.
Having so many shawarma places downtown gives diners the advantage of picking a favorite. While I like Arabica a lot, it’s not at the top of my list. The broader verdict will be based on whether Arabica can hang with the crowd.

When retired Air Force Col. Dave Brackett decided to open a restaurant serving artisan, wood-fired pizzas, he took on the mission with the same skill and precision he used for years flying F-16s as a fighter pilot.
No detail was left to chance. The lifelong amateur chef studied the art of traditional pizzamaking through the Italian Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. He learned to mix and stretch his dough by hand. He started making his own mozzarella from scratch. He was taught to navigate the sometimes hostile terrain of tending an 800-degree brick wood-fired oven.
And when Pizzeria Rustica opened in May, it was right on target.
I mean it. Every aspect of this restaurant is the bomb. Each thin, 12-inch pizza shoveled out of the glowing, pecan-wood oven is a masterpiece of high-end Italian flour and lovingly local toppings. The service is smart and precise. Diners laze in a timeless alleyway patio slaked in leafy shade by day and the twinkle of little lights by night.
I know I’ll get bombarded for giving a pizza place five stars when I’ve never given that rating to the fanciest fine-dining restaurants in the area, but for what it tries to be, this place is tops. Pizzeria Rustica is not just the best pizzeria of its kind in the region, it’s the best I’ve been to anywhere.
It’s surprising since the place was such a bad idea. Few people who love to cook and dream of opening a restaurant actually should. The grind of cranking out orders soon wears most of the love off cooking. Most of the business is really about business — advertising, balancing books, etc. — and most little hobby eateries just rack up debt before finally closing. As the saying goes, “If you want to make a small fortune in the restaurant business, start with a large one.”
Leave it to a fighter pilot to know the danger going in and do it anyway.
Rustica is superbly simple. There is no pasta, no burger, no chicken. There is just an antipasto plate, three sparse salads and eight pizzas. One could spend a lifetime appreciating these small things.
The antipasto ($6) is unmatched by any in town. The centerpiece swings between seafood and cured meat. I landed there on a seafood day to be enraptured by a tumble of springy squid rings, chewy octopus and sweet scallops in a tart lemon zest dressing. It is escorted by real Old World olives, sour caper berries and a mild, creamy asiago cheese that Brackett, who seems to always be patrolling the dining room tout- ing the ingredients, said owed its mellowness to being “medium aged.”
“A midlife crisis,” a dining partner leaned over and said, “but a delicious one.”
The pizzas are the only thing that could outgun a starter of that caliber.
Each plate-size pie ($10-$13) has a chewy, airy crust, singed, bubbled and slightly burned by the intense oven until it has a crackly veneer. The thin smear of sauce has the unmistakable bright ruby glow of fresh-diced tomatoes. You can spot them from 5 feet away.
The cheese has a sweet, almost floral, fresh-milk flavor. You can taste that it was made by hand, that day, just a few steps away.
The combined powers of the pizza brought all conversation at my table of three to a halt. Then, after a minute of chewing, with mouths still very full, here’s what was said.
“Oh, the cheese!”
“This crust!”
“No, this sauce!”
The simple pizzas are deceptively complex. Take the salami pizza. It’s just salami and cheese, but that salami is Tuscan finocchiona — a spicy, fennel-infused variety bursting with a slow, air-cured flavor that approaches the best prosciutto.
The sausage pizza is just sausage, but the sweet, local pork, paired with the amazing homemade mozzarella, has a beguiling blend of flavors I usually find only in a bottle of wine I can’t afford.
Even the plain cheese arrives on an artisan pedestal. It’s four cheeses: mozzarella, sharp provolone, fontina and some of that midlife asiago. The whole bubbling mass is sprinkled with fresh parsley and heavenly wood-roasted garlic.
At the end, Rustica offers truffle oil for crust dipping.
Dessert is small and simple, but should not be missed. Tiny scoops of spumoni gelato piled in a bowl ($5), loaded with the blended flavors of pistachio, chocolate and vanilla bean with a hint of dried cherries, soars above the typical sugar slurry you get at Italian places.
“Did you like it?” Brackett said on his third sortie past our table. “I put a little blood orange balsamic syrup on there that’s just awesome.”
On another night, Brackett came to the table talking up his special tiramisu. Normally, tiramisu is a dessert that restaurants hack from a frozen loaf made far away. Not here. Rustica’s arrived as a cloud of fresh, real whipped cream hiding homemade ladyfingers drenched in booze — deadly delicious.
Rustica isn’t cheap — with dessert and antipasto, look to pay $25 a person — but it is absolutely worth it. As one friend said, “This isn’t family-night pizza, it’s datenight pizza.” One way to save money is to curb curiosity over the $9-a-bottle Italian microbrew. It’s nothing special.
Not surprisingly, the place is packed on weekends. If Brackett set out to make a restaurant that would become a long-lived favorite, then mission accomplished.

Joseph Freyre wheeled a small cart through his restaurant on a recent evening and began the ceremony of preparing his almost legendary tableside pepper steak. He smeared an ample coat of butter in a sizzling pan. He plopped down a gorgeous, ruby-hued choice tenderloin that hissed when it hit the hot steel. He cracked pepper over the top — not too much. He’s been doing this for years, and has perfected it to an art.
As he worked, the friendly and dapper Peruvian owner of Joseph’s chatted about his long history of fine dining in Colorado Springs. He was manager of the Penrose Room for years, where he learned to appreciate old school haute cuisine, with all the French frills. He gained a rabid following when he brought that traditional flair (and its accompanying flames) to his own restaurant, Joseph’s Hatch Cover. He sold the Hatch Cover in 2002 and moved on, managing the restaurant at the
Embassy Suites, then buying the Manitou Pancake House, which he still owns.
The pancake house, he said as he cooked, is doing great. It makes plenty of money.
“But fine dining has always been my passion, so we try it one more time,” he said. With that, he poured a splash of French brandy into the pan and let it erupt into a 12-inch flame, leaving a precious demi-glacé.
Let’s be glad he did. The pepper steak was so tender it was almost a sorbet, and the demi-glacé and chutney draped over the pepper crust made it one of the best steaks I’ve ever tasted. Joseph’s is everything traditional Continental fine dining should be, served at a fair price, with a taste of the bygone Sybaritic panache of days when it was acceptable, even maybe expected, to start, and perhaps end, a meal with an icy martini.
Here’s the thing about great ideas: They tend to attract so many lousy copy cats that they quickly go out of style. But that just means it takes real skill to pull it off.
Joseph’s has what it takes. The menu, seasoned with old salts like Shrimp Scampi ($18.99) and Dover Sole ($24.99), could have landed on any starched white tablecloth 30 years ago, but none of it comes across as out of date. It’s more like playing one of mom and dad’s scratchy Sinatra records and realizing how cool it still is.
The calamari ($8.99) doesn’t slip into modern habits of using spongy strips of larger, cheaper squid. It’s the old-style rings and delectable clusters of curly tentacles, all crisply fried in a minimalist crust and served with a lemon wedge.
The Dover Sole gets treated like a cannoli. The light, flaky flesh is rolled around a rich salmon-and-bay scallop mousse, then bathed in a tart, wonderful champagne-and-tarragon cream sauce. Yes, cream sauce is still in style here, and you’ll find it everywhere, though Joseph’s occasionally goes light. The slender, green haricots verts on the side were gloriously naked and just barely blanched.
The restaurant doesn’t look like much from the outside, but inside are a nice bar and several cozy tables, generally filled with diners who have followed Joseph from one restaurant to another. It’s not unusual to see him going from table to table, greeting old friends.
Try the Hot Spinach Salad ($9.99 for two) and you’ll understand why. Joseph will once again whisk out the tableside cart. He’ll quickly sauté vinegar, shallots and a touch of raw cane sugar, then splash Pernod over the whole thing and let the flames from the licorice-flavor French liquor dance above the pan. He’ll add perfectly crisp bacon, then wilt the spinach just slightly, then serve it, still warm. It’s heaven. When he tells you, over the flames, that he spent years finding just the right combination of flavors, you can believe him.
But the tableside show doesn’t end there. Joseph does a mean bananas Foster ($8.99 for two) and, on a weeknight, if it’s not busy, he will perform his ultimate flaming feat, Coffee Valentino. It’s not on the menu. I was halfway through a heavenly Foster when he told me it exists, so I didn’t try it, but here’s how he explains it: He twists together lemon and orange peels, and fastens them with cloves until he has a foot-long serpentine citrus strip. Then he dangles the strip over fresh coffee, dribbles Frangelico down the peels and lights it on fire.
“It’s fantastic,” he said with a proud smile.
Joseph’s douses the flames at lunch, but the choices are still sizzling, the prices are good, and, in the style of the era, the server will probably ask if you’d like to start with a martini.
I say, go for it.
Also consider the buffalo cheeseburger with green chiles ($11.99). Buffalo is extremely lean, which is another way of saying it can taste like cardboard when not prepared well. Here it is juicy and tender, and served with real cheddar. The smokiness of the chiles adds a welcome bite.
If you hunger for a bit of the butter and cream of dinner dishes, the Mediterranean Trout ($10.99) is a worthy choice. Thin, pan-crisped trout swoons over a bed of wilted spinach and fresh garlic mashed potatoes, covered in a rich (i.e. butter), tangy sauce of capers, olives, and a dice of tomatoes kissed with olive oil and white balsamic vinegar. It’s a good argument for splurging at noon, and Joseph’s has the added enticement of being close enough to downtown for a business lunch, but with no parking meters and plenty of empty tables. The same is true at dinner. The dining room attracts older eaters early, but empties by 7:30, making it a great place for a spur-of-the-moment, no-reservation treat.
The place faltered only once during my visits. A Lower Manhattan Cheesecake ($5.99) offered our forks a soft, glueyness instead of the crumbliness of a good cheesecake, and came with a sugary strawberry drizzle you might find at Denny’s. But this is a small quibble, easily fixed, or overlooked entirely, in favor of the ultimate old school dessert, which Joseph, of course, still makes tableside with flames and pride: Cherries Jubilee.

Either I’m becoming a softie, or Colorado Springs is turning into a great place to eat.During winter and spring, I stumbled through one lame restaurant after another. I became so practiced in culinary insults that one reader wrote: “Maybe your bitterness in your reviews has to do with your personal life.”
How things change. In the past two weeks, I have raved about Café 36 and NaRai Thai. Now I’m surreptitiously sampling places I’ll write up in the next two weeks that also deserve high praise. And this week’s restaurant, Flavors on Tejon, isn’t giving me an outlet for my bitterness.
The spacious breakfast-and-lunch place does almost everything right, from simple French toast and burgers to the frilliest blue crab and tenderloin eggs Benedict. Prices can be steep, and service sometimes slow, but Flavors’ flavors will have you licking your plate.
The comfy dining room is decorated with local art, and the menu is decorated with local ingredients such as Great Harvest bread.
It’s all the creation of chef and owner Joe Ierisi and his wife, Sally, who ran the popular Joe’s Fireside Café in Fort Collins for 20 years before hanging up his apron.
“I swore I would never go in the kitchen again,” he said recently with a shrug. “Then last year I married a foodie.”
Diners should be glad he didn’t give up his post at the grill. Flavors costs more than a typical greasy spoon, but the plates coming out of the kitchen are a step above.
The Just French Toast ($7.50) really is just French toast with butter and syrup. No sausage, no fruit slices, no hippie 27-grain bread, but it is light and crispy and wonderful. I think it’s a sin that Flavors uses a blend of maple and corn syrup instead of the real, unadulterated stuff (ahh, bitterness, there you are), but I have a feeling that pure maple syrup, to the uninitiated, seems watery and strange, so maybe it’s a good compromise.
A big side of applewood-smoked bacon ($2.50) doesn’t compromise. It’s thick, perfectly leathery with crisp ends, and as smoky as good barbecue.
Ierisi designed the place for replication. It has a cutesy menu and the sleek feel of a Panera cafe-bakery. The owners plan to open more restaurants, but the best part seems to be the deft hand of Ierisi at the grill.
The omelets ($7.95-$10.50) prove Ierisi’s mad skills. The eggs arrive fluffy as a soufflé, holding such delights as aged gouda with fresh chives, or smoked salmon with caper and chive cream.
On a weekday morning, we waited 30 minutes for breakfast when the place was empty, but hopefully, the place will get its kinks worked out.
A quote from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Eat, Pray, Love” on the back of the menu warns that Flavors caters to ladies who lunch, but there are a few grease-laden guy options, such as the Green Chile Huevos ($9.50), smothered in mean Front Range-style green chili spiked with cumin, tomatoes and lots of shredded pork.
Details such as fresh-squeezed juices, great coffee, and plenty of seating and parking should make this the top downtown breakfast spot.
Lunch doesn’t slack either. Pistachiocrusted salmon swims past the heavy oiliness that traps many nut-crusted fish dishes. Here, the light, thin skin of seared pistachios lets the perfectly cooked salmon shine.
I invited a friend who used to have a gig as a Cuban-sandwich judge in Florida to test Flavors’ version. “This isn’t a true Cuban,” he said, noting the unorthodox pressed ciabatta roll clasping the traditional pork, pickle, Swiss and mustard, “but it’s very, very good.”
Lunches come with crispy, homemade potato chips, sweet potato fries or a lovely, light coleslaw.
The only place Flavors really stumbles is with the catfish and chips ($9.50). I’ve never been a catfish fan, but this came in a jacket of breading too salty to eat.
Dessert is the bargain. A huge slice of apple bread pudding costs $3.50 and is worth twice the price. A friend said she was surprised, in a place aimed toward ladies who lunch, that there was no chocolate dessert, but the rest of this dependably good restaurant softens the disappointment, even for bitter guys like me.

When we ordered the hot and sour Tom Yam Kum shrimp soup at NaRai Thai, a new Rockrimmon restaurant sure to become a neighborhood favorite, the server asked the most dreaded question in Thai cuisine.
“Do you want mild, medium, hot or Thai hot?”
It’s hard to know. There is no government bureau of Thai heat standards that gives ratings on the Scoville scale. Even if you know you want to sweat a little, the question is whether the kitchen has Americanized the spice levels so that “hot” really isn’t that hot, or whether, in true Thai fashion, ordering hot will result in a dish so spicy that, to quote Lisa Simpson, you can “see through time.”
“It’s like women’s clothing sizes,” a friend eating with me said. “Sometimes I’m a 2, sometimes I’m an 8.” We ordered the hot. “Are you sure? It’s pretty hot,” the server said with concern. Sure, we were sure. We wanted to sweat a little. “OK,” she said., “I’ll bring you some more water.” The soup arrived perfectly spiced and brimming with fresh ingredients that showed that NaRai is a place worth spending the time to find your right spice level. Good Thai is all about fresh ingredients in dishes made from scratch. That’s what is going on here. With good prices and a stylish dining room, NaRai Thai should be a regular stop for anyone living on the north side of town.
The clear Tom Yam Kum broth was perfumed with lime leaves, chunks of lemon grass stalk and thin slices of a wonderfully weird, somewhat soapy and astringent root called galangal, which makes for a magical broth. In it floated fresh mushrooms, crescents of pearly onion and shrimp, and had just enough heat to make me dab my brow.
The shrimp felt slightly overcooked, but it was a small detail in a delightful dish.
The rest of the menu is all Thai — no Chinese section or yakitori thrown in. Instead, you get hot-weather delicacies such as cool green papaya salad ($7.25) or translucent spring rolls stuffed with rice noodles and fresh sprigs of peppery Thai basil.
Thai basil is used to good effect in nearly every dish.
Pad Egg Plant ($8.95), a simple plate of eggplant stir-fried with beef (or your choice of proteins) in a simple black bean sauce, came swimming with schools of the pointy-leafed herb. (We ordered “medium,” which was mild.)
That unmistakably anise-y taste showed up, too, in the green curry ($8.95). Green curry can be a gamble. Often at Thai joints, it devolves to a sweet, bland, crowd-pleasing goo. Not at NaRai Thai. The steaming stew, full of slices of winter melon and limp basil sprigs, is light on sugar. Spices and herbs take center stage. (We ordered “hot,” which was pretty darned hot.) It’s wonderful sopped up by rice, and at Na-Rai, you can order brown rice, too.
The sweet flavor bomb here is the Massaman Curry, ($8.95) an Indian-influenced dish of potatoes and meat cooked in a rich, amber sauce of coconut milk, roasted peanuts, cardamom, cinnamon, fish sauce, sugar and a bright, acidic bite of tamarind. (We ordered “hot,” which was less hot than our other curry. Go figure.) A surprise on the menu was Gai Yan ($9.50), a half chicken marinaded in fish sauce, garlic, turmeric, coriander root, and pepper, then slow roasted until it almost falls off the bone. It was a deliciously tame escort to the spicy curries on the table.
Perfectly ripe mango with sticky coconut rice ($5.45) was a nice, light touch at the end. And thankfully, at dessert, you don’t have to decide your spice level.

“Art,” Pablo Picasso said, “is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”
This line came to mind on a recent visit to the Fine Arts Center’s Café 36 when a woman at the table next to me took the first bite of a dish of polenta drizzled with roasted tomato vinaigrette and blended basil.
The museum’s café has been through many versions in the last few years — none of them really worth hanging on your wall — but this time a small, smart menu by Garden of the Gods Gourmet has all the makings of a masterpiece.
The woman took a bite and settled into a deep, silent smile. I’m pretty sure her eyes rolled back in her head.
She leaned over to a friend and said, “You HAVE to try this.”
Strip the dish down to unburnished truth, and it was nothing more than a mush of Mesoamerican grain dropped in hot oil, then covered with a mash of fruits and leaves mixed with more oil and a little acetic acid.
But that’s not the truth it made this woman realize. The art of good food is that it can make anyone, no matter who, feel important or sexy or rich. It can rescue moods. It can end arguments. It can suspend time. The polenta, fried in four thin patties and stacked in a slender tower with layers of spiky mesclun in between had an unstuffy elegance and a wonderful flavor that, paired with the breezy art deco patio and unhurried service, seemed to say, “Hey, whatever else you have going on, you are here now. Enjoy it.”
I have no idea what the conversation was, but the woman leaned over to her friend and said, “If you’ve got it, you might as well live it up.”
Café 36 is a good place to start. The menu is full of fresh, delicious food presented with the visual flair befitting an art museum. The bill is a bit more hefty than most lunches, but order the threecourse, $20 prix fixe and you get a tremendous value. The cafe also does occasional pre-theater dinners, but a server explained it is “more banquet-style and not as good.”
I practically had to drag my wife to Café 36 after eating here under the last chef a year ago. His strategy was to hang all sorts of nouveau cuisine bobbles, frills and aioli on fancy and exhaustively described, but ultimately mediocre food that tasted, in her words, “Holiday Inn-esque.” I panned the restaurant. So did the Independent. The chef departed.
When we scanned the new menu full of things like “apple, potato and brie timbale watercress salad in tri-pepper vinaigrette” ($6) and “roasted red pepper soup finished with whipped crustacean butter” ($6), I thought, “here we go again.” But no. Everything I’ve tried here is fantastic.
That timbale thing with the watercress salad turns out to be a stack of thinly sliced potatoes alternated with brie, baked and set in a cool blend of savory apple sauce that lends heft to the light, delicious greens.
The soup’s “crustacean butter” is redolent with crab and lobster stock and packed with bits of lobster that add a sweet, rich swirl to the tart, red broth.
Behind the frills, chef Ben Hoffer, who worked for years at the Craftwood Inn, curates an inspired exhibit of dishes that draw inspiration from good ingredients and are vaulted to the next level by stylish preparation.
Take the new potatoes that come with the Brandied Mushroom Flat Iron Steak ($14.50). The small potatoes are boiled until light and floury inside, then smooshed until they burst slightly at the seams, flash fried to crisp them up and dusted with the slightest rumor of quatre épices, an almost forgotten French mix of ground pepper, cloves, nutmeg and ginger. They’re spectacular. And so is the 6-ounce steak they accompany. I recoiled when I saw the brandy and wild mushroom sauce. I’ve had too many bad, brown steak sauces. But this one is a work of art, with mushrooms, not thickeners, taking the lead, backed up by complementary shades of soy sauce and real maple syrup.
Then again, everything here is good. The Soft Shell Crab Verrine ($14.50) fills a large martini glass with layers of avocado and cevichelike lump crab and apple salad. Alone it would be a thing of beauty, but it comes with a crispy, delicious fried soft shell crab sitting on top of the whole thing like a lid, wearing a red splash of spicy aioli.
The Grilled Caesar Supreme of Chicken ($11) is a deconstructed salad, with a grilled free-range Statler breast surrounded by a long wedge of romaine and an even longer saber crispy crostini. It all rests on a canvas of toasted pine nuts and house-made dressing.
The menu ends as strong as it starts.
A dish of berries drizzled with honey and house crème fraiche ($6.50) is the perfect, cool dessert to savor on a hot day on the balcony.
The dark, rich dome of chocolate mousse with a pistachio meringue disk protruding from the top and a Jackson Pollock spatter of bright yellow mango coulis ($6.50) looked so good that the ladies next to me stopped, midconversation and stared longingly. The chilled chocolate tasted as good as it looked.
Even the Crème Brûlee ($6.50), which every restaurant in town serves, rises above.
I scrawled a few nitpicks in my notebook. On one visit, the server forgot to tell us the specials, leaving us to eavesdrop on the next table over. On another visit, a small part of the grilled chicken was a little too pink to eat, but overall, both service and food are exceptional.
On a day when the whole Downtown Partnership of Colorado Springs arrived en masse to try the food, the small staff seemed cool and collected and never neglected seemlingly less important guests like me.
The Fine Arts Center has proved to be a hard place to have a restaurant. Many have tried and failed. Let’s hope the latest version of Café 36 attracts a large enough base of customers to be added to the museum’s permanent collection.

The century-old Garden of the Gods Trading Post might seem like the last place to go looking for an authentic taste of the West. After all, the mock-pueblo trinket shop catering to hundreds of thousands of tourists a year is an honest-to-goodness rubber-tomahawk shop.
I actually found rubber tomahawks on a recent visit, next to the suction cup bowand-arrow sets. Growing cultural awareness or not, they were $1.99.
But the historical curio shop also holds some surprises. Back beyond the rubber tomahawks and tacky wolf T-shirts, a high-end gallery sells some beautiful work by local artists and real native crafts such as hand-carved Hopi Kachinas and $1,300 Navajo rugs.
So I figured the same might be true at the little cafe in the back of the trading post. Yes, it would probably have burgers and Slushees for the droves of tourists, but maybe it would serve a little of that real flavor you can get at little, roadside bluetarp stands on the reservations: fry bread and mutton stew or blue corn atole.
Turns out, the most interesting thing on the menu is the rubber tomahawk of “Western” cuisine: the buffalo burger. Among the sandwiches, wraps and salads, there are also buffalo bratwurst and buffalo chili.
“I haven’t seen this much buffalo since ‘Dances With Wolves,’” a friend said as we walked up to order.
He got the ultimate buffalo bacon cheeseburger ($8.75). I got the chili ($5.75). We grabbed a seat under the gorgeous, ancient cottonwood on the patio.
The burger wasn’t bad. Buffalo can be a bit lean and dry, but it was dressed up with a nice piece of cheddar and smoky, crisp bacon. Nothing worth crossing town for, but a good choice if you have to show Garden of the Gods to Uncle Jeb and Aunt Betsy, and they insist on taking you out to lunch here.
The same isn’t true with the chili. It’s a lunchroom-style Styrofoam bowl of canned beans, onions, green peppers with a buffalo-burger patty unceremoniously ripped up and tossed in. The whole thing is sprinkled with yellow, pre-shredded cheese, giving it a bland, Midwestern flavor equivalent to filming one of the “Dances With Wolves” bison-hunting scenes in a Kmart in Topeka, Kan.
Oh, well, know your customers.
The next day we tried again, ordering the Buffalo Bratwurst ($5.95) and a roast beef croissant ($5.95).
Both were disappointments. The brat was served on a doughy white hot dog bun with pickles and red onion on the side, but it wasn’t a bratwurst.
It was a spicy pink kielbasa. No explanations from the kitchen. I’m not even sure they noticed.
The roast beef arrived with a healthy pink blush and nice flavor, but it came on a croissant that left a waxy film in my mouth. I’m not sure if that means it was made with trans fats or tropical oils, but it didn’t taste or feel like real butter.
Nothing at the little cafe falls far short of its mark, but the mark is pretty low: snack bar food for out-of-towners looking for convenient food. The only true taste of the West at Garden of the Gods Trading Post comes from the lovely patio, where diners can enjoy the shade of the cottonwood while catching glimpses of the mountains through the leaves.
It’s not enough to make a trip worthwhile, but it’s a bit of compensation if you do end up here.

The best time to visit BJ’s Velvet Freez has always been on a hot summer night when the crickets chirp in concert with the rattling muffers along Union Boulevard, the stark glare of the fluorescent bulbs lighting the old drive-in and making everything look like an Edward Hopper painting. In the heat, only the most nimble and strategic tongues can keep up with towering cones of melting soft serve.
A steady line forms at the counter, where high school-age workers pass sundaes, slushees, icebergs, shakes, malts, floats, dips and sprinkle cones through the tiny window. Kids’ eyes grow wide at the gravity of having to choose between cherry-topped banana splits, red-whiteand-blue Bomb Pops or bright green Ninja Turtle treats with bubble gum eyes.
Fools and neophytes take their treats and retire to their cars to eat. The experienced fans of this much-loved vintage soft serve stand hunched forward in the muggy, dark parking lot, letting the ice cream drip where it may. Beware the brain freeze.
Not much has changed at the Velvet Freez over the years. The tiny drive-in opened in 1954 as the Tastee Freez, on what was then the eastern edge of town. A 1955 blackand-white photo shows a man in a crisp white uniform and paper hat leaning out the same window in a summer night under a sign that reads “Millionaire’s cone 25¢.” Prices have gone up since then, but only a little; $1.82 still buys you more soft serve ice cream than you could reasonably eat. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same.
The classic menu of frozen, mass-produced burgers, fries and onion rings whisks diners back to the automated, Space Age-Cold War 1950s — before the advent of modern annoyances like nut allergies and vegetarianism — when the U.S. had embraced new freezer-to-fryer technology that proved we were better than the Soviets. (You can bet those Commies didn’t have 25-cent Millionaire cones.) If we had kept on the path of food modernization that inspired people to squirt ice cream out of giant metal machines instead of scooping it, today we might be sitting down to those futuristic food capsules the Jetsons ate.
But the counterculture came along and derailed everything so that now the cutting edge of food (local, organic, handmade) looks more like the past than the future.
Not that any of that matters at the Velvet Freez. Here, the counterculture never happened. The place feels stuck in a time warp. Maybe it is no coincidence that it sits next to the only gas station in the city that still has full service.
And those Cold War goodies, served in plain, brown paper bags, are pretty good. The regular burgers here ($1.72) are small and plain but pleasing for small diners. The Giant BJ burger ($4.19), slathered in ketchup, mustard and mayo with lettuce, pickles and tomato, is a good grown-up escort to a thick chocolate malt.
The barbecue sandwich ($2.65), full of big, flavorful bits of chopped beef, is also a hit and so sloppy that it’s served in a paper dish with a fork.
The best choice, though, is the homemade pork tenderloin sandwich ($4.42), a Midwestern treat, pounded, breaded and fried, then served with all the BJ fixings.
The real reason to come to the Velvet Freez isn’t the food. It isn’t the long list of frozen treats. You can get similar stuff almost anywhere. Prices are low and service is good, but that’s not it either.
I’m almost certain that if the Velvet Freez tried to run the same business in a different location, it would falter. There is some intangible something at work. Restaurants that last this long become more than the sum of their parts. They get a personality. They become more like friends than businesses. The Velvet Freez is a lot like “The Velveteen Rabbit.” It once may have been a shiny and new novelty squirting out inexpensive automated ice cream. But it has been enjoyed by locals for generations until the shininess rubbed off.
It was left out, summer night after summer night, until it grew very old and shabby. And in doing so, it became real.

Chopsticks mixes up traditional Chinese, tasty fusion dishes

Chopsticks Asian Bistro is the rare Chinese restaurant that serves up terrific to-go boxes of Pacific Rim takeout while at the same time offering a number of reasons to stay.
The place has a welcoming stylishness rarely glimpsed in strip mall Chinese restaurants. Daily specials are scrawled on a chalkboard by the door. The owners greet you warmly as you walk in. Contemporary, comfy booths rest under dim, perfectly focused light, surrounded by natural-wood accents.
The décor has the sleek and minimalist lines of a Shinto temple. Salt and pepper shakers disguised as river stones feel as if they could have been stolen from a Zen master’s garden.
The service has the same spare, almost flawless grace. You are never left waiting but also don’t feel forced to make friends with the servers. There are wines chosen to complement the food, by the glass or bottle — rare at an Asian place.
At its best, Chopsticks’ menu lives up to this mindful, modern setting. In a few instances, dishes lend themselves more to the paper year-of-the-snake place mats and plastic-wrapped fortune cookies of more pedestrian Chinese restaurants.
The menu is a mix of Chinese-restaurant mainstays, Thai and Malaysian accents, and a few fusion concoctions such as beef, chicken and shrimp in a mushroom, green onion and burgundy sauce ($13.95), that put the “Bistro” in Chopsticks Asian Bistro.
Think of it as a more modest, nonchain P.F. Chang’s.
Husband-and-wife team Dave Bless and Kiyon Kim opened the place five years ago and quickly garnered a fierce following with the Broadmoor-neighborhood crowd. On my first visit, on a Saturday night, the place was packed. And with good reason.
This Asian Bistro is more Asian than bistro. The dishes don’t stray too far from what you might find at your average neighborhood Imperial Panda Bamboo Garden House of Wok. There is fried rice, there is Kung Pao chicken. There is Mongolian beef. What’s remarkable is not that this place is so different, it’s that the thousands of independent Imperial Panda Bamboo Garden House of Woks scattered across the country are so similar. You can order sesame chicken in San Jose with confidence that it will be nearly identical to one you had in Schenectady. It’s as if some stern People’s ministry of Food Conformity somewhere was making sure chefs don’t step out of line.
But, at times, Chopsticks does step out of line, and in a good way. The luscious seafood and almond fried rice ($12.95) is laced with golden raisins, basil and slivered almonds. Plump shrimp and perfectly cooked scallops rest in rice that is unmistakably fried, but not too oily from the wok.
The kitchen shows the same reserve with the Malaysian Chicken ($11.95). The dish of sautéed chicken breast with slices of eggplant, string beans and toasted cashews in a sweet and spicy coconut curry could have easily been a mess of sugary pan-Asian goo. Instead, it arrived with a light and complex sauce that was dynamite when soaked up by the spongy eggplant.
Wok-fried Szechuan green beans ($8.95) came speckled in caramelized garlic and ginger that added a wonderful bitter hint parried by sweet rice wine.
Appetizers are a hit, too. The pork filling in an order of dumplings ($6.95) was brimming with an almost astringent bouquet of ginger nicely off set by a mellow Thai peanut sauce.
But some things fall flat. The beef, chicken, shrimp and mushrooms in burgundy sauce had nice ingredients but no discernible red wine flavor, or much flavor in general.
The hot and sour seafood soup ($8.95) came with too much musky seafood taste, not enough sour, and a cornstarchinduced thickness that was undeserving of the price.
The Walnut Chicken ($11.95) came sprinkled in gorgeous, full walnut halves slaked with what tasted like a tweaked hoisin sauce; it tasted like good Chinese takeout but didn’t have the stylish bistro twist you might expect from a place like this.
On balance, though, good dishes outweigh bad. Consistency and great service make Chopsticks one of the best Asian restaurants in town. It’s worth staying to find out what’s good.

Mexican eatery offers diverse menu of disappointing dishes

Apparently, it pays to notice a restaurant’s neon “OPEN” sign.
They tend to have two settings besides off. Pull the chain once, the neon sign turns on. Pull it again and it starts flashing.
“If it’s flashing, it’s a sign of desperation,” a friend who has parents in the restaurant business told me as we walked across a barren shopping center parking lot toward the door of San Jose Family Mexican Restaurant.
The “OPEN” sign was definitely flashing.
The parking lot was definitely empty.
When we stepped through the door at the height of the dinner rush on a Saturday, we were definitely the only ones in there.
But so what? Desperation may make ghastly cologne, but it doesn’t always make for a bad meal. Some damn fine restaurants in this town have gone under waiting for enough customers while totally mediocre places have lines out the door.
“Maybe it is just San Jose’s location,” I thought as I pushed open the door. Maybe the depressing, slow death of the Kmart next door is snuffing out poor San Jose’s spark. Maybe a slouching restaurant critic with a salsa-stained notebook and the right turn of phrase can offer the struggling place a hand.
Or maybe I should have just listened to my friend, and the east-side dining public as a whole, because when the food arrived, it honestly made hanging out at Kmart on Saturday night seem like a more pleasant option.
The appetizer combo ($8) promised “a little bit of everything,” which, practically speaking, meant a small, sliced chicken taquito and tough, bland orange cheese adhered to a scattering of chips and oozing out a limp flour tortilla.
“It’s desperate drunk food at best,” my friend said as he washed down a swallow with an unfortunately unboozy house margarita.
The whole thing reminded me of after-school Mexican snacks I’d make in the microwave when I was in second grade — no spice, just Velveeta and chips.
In the same “Wonder Years” vein, the chalupa in the chalupa, enchilada, chile relleno combination plate ($8.35) — with its fried flour tortilla stuffed with salty ground beef, starchy tomatoes, lettuce and shredded cheese — was a dead wringer for taco night, circa 1984, at the Glen household. If an authentic Mexican restaurant can’t do tacos better than my white bread New Jersey parents cooking for two fighting kids on a weeknight, then pulling the chain on the “OPEN” sign a second time isn’t going to help.
The house specialties were a bit more expensive but no better. Steak fajitas ($10.75) arrived with a delicious-sounding sizzle but tasted as if they’d just been delivered from the bythe-scoop Chinese place next door (too much cheap vegetable oil, I think.)
Camarones San Jose — shrimp wrapped in bacon, grilled with onions and peppers, and topped with Monterey Jack ($12) — sounded too good to pass up but turned out much too salty, with mounds of gluey cheese gumming up the usually no-fail pairing of shrimp and bacon.
Even the house-made salsa tasted like a dismal brew of canned tomato soup with a few sad scallions.
The one redeeming dish was the super molcajete — a usually spicy stew. The name, which sounds like a Japanese monster movie, comes, like the American casserole, from the dish it is served in. (A molcajete is a traditional, threelegged stone-grinding bowl. Small plastic versions are often used to serve salsa.)
The red broth of San Jose’s stew had a slight bitter bite of red chile and other ground spices, and big chunks of beef and chicken, shrimp, green onion and green pepper. The flavor wasn’t quite as exciting as its name, and it came in a regular bowl, not a sturdy basalt molcajete, but it was pretty good.
Here’s the weird thing, though. San Jose should be a lot better. It’s owned by the same family that runs Arceo’s — a nice, phenomenally cheap restaurant in a former Pizza Hut on South Nevada Avenue. Arceo’s is by no means the best Mexican in town, but it’s good enough to be a regular stop for the downtown crowd. The same family also owns Las Palmitas in Tiffany Square.
San Jose’s has the necessary elements. The menu is huge. Dishes run the gamut, from lime shrimp and fish tacos to chicken molé and sopes. The service is good. At lunch the cheap plates ($5-$7) do bring more diners, but the food still stumbles between too much and too little. Too much melted cheese. Too little careful seasoning. Many of the dishes are so salty they could be used to de-ice Powers Boulevard in the middle of a blizzard.
I don’t know if this is funny or cruel, but the place came highly recommended. GO! editor Warren Epstein raved about it. Maybe it’s all subjective.
Even so, our generally disappointing Saturday night had us gazing longingly past the blinking “OPEN” sign at Monica’s Taco shop and Del Taco — two much better places just across the barren parking lot. Now that’s desperation.

Nana Longo’s Italian Market is an essential stop on the road to understanding Colorado cuisine.
On its face, this tiny restaurant is a delectable lunch gem with homemade pasta (by Gina Solazzi of Pasta di Solazzi fame), fresh, chunky red sauce and artisan cheese. At its heart, it’s not so much Italian as it is a spicy blend of cultures that could best be called Pueblo.
From the outside, the tiny three-table slot in a Briargate strip mall looks like a chain. It even has the sort of quaint, sweet name that corporate marketers would cook up to make their latest chain sound less chainy.
But Longo’s is not a chain. There really is a Nana Longo. She’s from Pueblo. If she’s working the counter, she’ll probably urge you to try the cookies.
Her son Mike owns the place. He’s from Pueblo, too. It was his idea to put the fried egg, green chili and pocket bread sandwich on the menu.
“I know it sounds weird,” said his wife, Pam, when I went recently. “But when he was growing up, it was one of his favorite snacks.”
If you look at the old families who built Pueblo, it doesn’t sound weird at all. Italian farmers settled the green, irrigated bottomlands of the Arkansas River and its tributaries from Colorado Springs to the Kansas line. Venetucci, Pinello, Mauro — their names are still everywhere. In Pueblo, they mixed with workers from New Mexico and the San Luis Valley. Cultures melded.
That’s how you get green chili and pasta on the same menu. You’ll also find family-made sausages from the Steel City and hard goat cheese from a cousin’s farm.
The regional family menu makes Mike Longo sound like a bit of a paesano. He’s not. The man in the tall paper chef’s toque who occasionally whisks through the swinging kitchen doors is a certified executive chef who worked at The Broadmoor hotel before heading the kitchen at Glen Eyrie. Nana Longo’s is a sideshow of his main business, First Impressions Catering.
The mix of roots cuisine and formal training make for a dynamite menu.
Start with either sausage bread ($3.50) or fried goat cheese ($5.95.) The flavorful, firm sausage is hand-packed by Frank’s Meat Market in Pueblo and wrapped in dense, pizza-crustlike dough. The goat cheese is made on a farm near Trinidad by Mike’s cousin. It arrives lightly panfried, with no breading, and a taste and feel like young Spanish manchego. The warm cheese is so lean and fresh — pay attention, Wisconsin cheese curd fans — it squeaks.
Both dishes may turn me into a regular.
From there, diners can go in different directions.
The hand-made ravioli ($6.95) tastes light as clouds. It’s stuffed with family-made ricotta and flecks of flat-leaf parsley, and tossed in a simple, radiant sauce that tastes like little more than tomatoes, good olive oil and a bit of garlic.
The lasagna is so divine that, Pam said, women in the neighborhood will surreptitiously bring in an empty pan from home, and have Mike bake a lasagna in it so they can pass it off as their own.
Longo’s does sandwiches on rolls made at Zoelsmann’s Bakery in Pueblo, and eggplant in a pocket bread from the same place.
The Butcher’s Salad is a salad in the same way that a roll of Lifesavers is fruit. You can barely see the lettuce beneath heaps of roast beef, provolone, pepperoni, capicola. The greens are an underwhelming pre-made mix, but the pepperoni is the real deal — as rich and beguiling as an Old World chorizo — and the capicola has the sweet, licoricy cologne of caraway.
All meals are available to go. Longo’s does a brisk carryout-dinner business. The new patio doubles diners’ chances of getting a seat if they eat in.
For those who stay, Longo’s serves up a heaping portion of contrast. Watch as transplanted corporate desk jockeys from nearby businesses come in, drawn by the taste of real regional family cuisine. Pam, with her generous smile and gift for faces, not only recognizes them, but also remembers who works where. She gives them lunch and (surprisingly often) a hug and a “God bless you” on the way out.
It can seem weird to have an old-school family business amid the corporate landscape of northern Colorado Springs. But that is the way its always been, from the New York pizza slice in Manhattan to the muffaletta near the busy docks of New Orleans. It can even happen, thankfully, with a spicy slice of Pueblo on the whitebread, divided boulevards of Briargate.

Rotating menu parades chef’s French creations

Two massive blackboards hang on the walls of the old brick house that serves as Le Petit Chablis’ dinning room. They are the only menu. Every night as the last diners stroll out of this highly regarded rural French dinner spot, the servers wipe the boards clean with a cloth.
Every morning, chef Daniel Petit starts again. The menu changes slightly from season to season and night to night. It may have Moules Marinière. It may have Tournedos Au Poivre. It may have Rouget Aux Capres. No matter what, the looping chalk scrawl is always entirely in French. No subtitles.
Of course, few diners speak French, so the servers have to recite the menu, dish by dish, in English, speaking just under a shout when it’s busy so they can cover a few tables at once. Since they do it several times a night, the spiel has the reflexive ring of an airline safety talk: in the unlikely event of an emergency, duck à l’orange will drop from an overhead compartment.
“Isn’t this needlessly difficult?” I asked the chef as he was making the rounds after dessert on a busy evening.
He shrugged.
“It can take a new waiter awhile to learn the French,” he said. “I spell it out for them the way it sounds and they repeat it back.”
Wouldn’t it be easier just to add translations to the chalkboard?” I asked.
“That is not how we do it,” he said in an emphatic French accent.
“You must get a lot of grumbling from them,” I said.
“Well, if they grumble, they can go home. Here we do it in French,” he said.
That pretty much sums up how Petit runs the restaurant he has owned for almost 20 years. Very traditional, very French and, like the menu, from scratch every day. If you don’t like it, you can go home.
Fortunately, there is a lot on the blackboard to like. Some dishes could use updating, but on the whole, thoughtful preparation and fresh ingredients make Le Petit Chablis a treat for anyone who finds himself in Cañon City.
The menu has the same homey, country feel as the turnof-the-century, two-story building that houses the restaurant. It’s not trendy or flirty or unusual.
But it is good.
The only adornment on the appetizer of scallops sauteed in white wine, shallots and butter ($8.50) is a beautiful amber pan sear.
The Entre Cote, ($21.95) is just a rib-eye kissed with Cajun spice, then cooked precisely as ordered and served with a luscious, crisp potato croquette, and a side of horseradish cream sauce.
The Canard à l’Orange ($21.50) doesn’t break new ground. It’s just a tried-andtrue half of a duck, roasted until the outside crackles and cloaked in a thick, rust-colored robe of intensely citrusy sauce, spiked with Grand Marnier.
Some things look so plain they make you hesitate. The chopped mixed vegetables on the side of each entree, which kitchens call “the dice,” looked a bit like those rueful frozen bags of fibery carrots and wrinkled peas at the supermarket. Instead, it is wonderful: sliced fresh that afternoon, sweet and full of flavor.
A dollop of red cabbage escorts each entree, perhaps as a reminder that Petit learned to cook in Burgundy, in east France, where families cook with a slight German accent.
The restaurant does have some real disappointments that, for the price, shouldn’t be there.
The cheese plate ($6.95) in many restaurants is an enticing speed dating session of unusual flavors. I ordered it, hoping it would rise to the level of the free samples at Par Avion. Instead, it was a slice of mediocre brie, some Emmentaler, some goat cheese and one of those soft little pucks of Bon Bell that come wrapped in red wax.
Looking at it, my wife leaned over and said, “When you order cheese at a French restaurant, you don’t want it to be the stuff you can get at King Soopers.”
Something also seemed to be lost in translation with what the server said was pork tenderloin in raspberry sauce ($17.95). It turned out to be thin, bland cuts of the type of roast one might eat at Mother’s Day at a retirement home.
Dessert redeems. Crème Brulée needs no translation. At Chablis, beneath the glassy caramelized sugar, it is light and fluffy — more a whipped cream than custard, and yet sinfully rich.
It made me wish I could wipe the whole meal clean, like a blackboard, and start from the beginning.

Muldoon’s squanders prime location, bar on mediocre food

There are few better places to sip a margarita on a hot summer evening than the stylishly renovated rooms of Jose Muldoon’s. The menu boasts 53 tequilas, ranging from common mescal to a Jose Cuervo Reserva de Familia Anejo that, for $15 a shot, one would hope comes with sparklers and a signed document certifying the lineage of the blue agave used to brew the booze.
You can order a flight of exotic margaritas, if you want. Or a dependably strong house marg, which, during happy hour, is only $2.50.
Plus, Jose’s has a plaque at the front door proudly reminding all that it holds the Guinness record for the world’s largest margarita — a poolsized, 4,756.5-gallon lime behemoth that got mixed up on May 20, 1999.
Sample liberally from the tequila menu, because in food, as in romance, a healthy tequila buzz helps lower your standards. And the menu, with mediocre Mexican plates at prices that always seem a dollar or two too much, is best viewed through beer goggles.
With the exception of the vibrant, wonderful green and red chili, the fare tends toward bland and stingy — full of $7 taco plates that still have much of the plate showing and $8 fajita appetizers that feed two. The food’s not terrible, but like most tequila encounters, it doesn’t leave you wanting a second date.
It’s too bad, because Jose’s remodel, completed in May, has made it the type of place where you want to hang out.
Stylish light splashes strategically over exposed brick, beneath thick, distressed wood beams. The sleek, simple dark wood bar and tables are dressed up with cool tin lanterns, a gas fireplace, and the hollow skeleton of a saguaro cactus. It was a needed update for the cavernous, 33-yearold restaurant. The real treasure here is the expanded back patio — a narrow swath between high stucco walls where generous, multicolored umbrellas shade a lively scene. With the right number of margaritas, the patio feels like a charming back alley taquería in the tiny Mexican fishing village of Topolobampo.
Unfortunately you can only relax there, knocking back icy margs, for so long before you get hungry. And then you order the fairly unexotic Pollo Topolobampo, a shredded chicken burrito with guacamole, melted cheese and green and red chili ($10.99) and suddenly you remember you’re in Colorado Springs again. And not in a good way.
There is nothing wrong with the burrito. It’s prepared well (indeed, both the wait staff and the cooks are real pros) but it’s like vacationing at a huge American hotel in Mazatlan — Mexican in name, but with no authentic flavor.
The menu needs the same updating that the restaurant got.
The fish tacos ($10.99), a dish that traditionally has thin fillets that have either been lightly fried or viciously seared on the grill, then tucked in a thin, warm, corn tortilla, came, instead, with fat, bready flour tortillas and a tough, not-particularly fresh-tasting hunk of mahi-mahi.
The combination enchiladas ($9.99 for beef, chicken and cheese) were good enough. But if you are going to serve a $10 combo plate, it better be really good, or really big, and this was neither.
Not everything is a disappointment. As I mentioned earlier, both green and red chili are excellent. I’m still searching, but the intensely red, New Mexican-style red chili here may be the best in town.
The fresh-made salsa is also decent, though pepper-lovers I went with wished they had a spicier option.
At lunch, some prices drop, some don’t. A chicken taco plate with two under-stuffed tortillas ($6.99) that looked like they could have come from the Taco Bell drive-through, made a friend I brought along sigh, “Man, I wish you were reviewing Chipotle instead.”
It’s too early to write off Jose’s, though. It has a great location, competent staff and killer interior. Most restaurants would be happy with any one of those things.
Now, all the owners need to do is pour themselves a $15 margarita, take out a pencil, and come up with some better recipes.

Culpepper’s rings true with Louisiana palates

The owners of Culpepper’s Louisiana Kitchen are so legitimately Louisiana that their backstory sounds like a Lucinda Williams song: born in Lake Charles, raised in a small Cajun town, met up in Baton Rouge on the road to New Orleans, settled down on the shore of Pontchartrain.
The food has that same Williams flavor: sassy, smart, Southern, sometimes sweet, sometimes fiery and always more than you’d expect. In a word, it’s great.
But to put it to a real test, you need more than a critic who’s about as Southern as maple syrup. So I called some friends, Jeanne and her daughter Crystal, who were born and raised in New Orleans and planned to stay there, until Hurricane Katrina put 8 feet of water in their living room and they got on a bus to Colorado Springs.
“Oh, mama, look, they got po’ boys! I haven’t had a po’ boy since we left,” Crystal said when we sat down in one of the booths at the modern but homey stripmall dining room.
The best place to start on a first visit is the Louisiana Sampler ($11.95), a sleek platoon of small bowls brimming with gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, shrimp creole and crawfish étouffée, with plenty of doughy French bread on the side for sopping up the bowls.
Like judges at a fair, Jeanne and Crystal scrutinized each bowl. The red beans and rice, Crystal said, were “good, but not my mama’s.” They could use a little more smoky salt pork. Jeanne tried a spoonful of the crawfish étouffée swimming in a honeycolored roux. It was as creamy and complex as a good (ahem) New England clam chowder.
“Oh, that’s good,” she said.
She moved on to the shrimp creole, took a sip and was hit a few seconds later by some serious heat.
“Whoa, now that will straighten you out!” she said, catching her breath. “That’s real Cajun right there, baby.”
Gumbo and spicy Creole jambalaya packed with andouille sausage got a thumbs up from diners from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.
And that was just the start.
Culpepper’s is owned by Martin Anderson and Kathy Culpepper Anderson, and their two sons who moved here in 1992. The parents fronted the money; the sons cook and manage the staff.
Together they have tracked down fresh ingredients rarely seen in Colorado, such as wild Gulf shrimp and, during the January-through-June crawfish season, Louisiana crawfish. (After that, the crawfish comes from China.)
The boys’ skills in the kitchen show. The Mississippi Catfish ($15.95) in a crisp cornmeal batter was light, flaky and not the slightest bit greasy — a rare thing with catfish.
The dozen Fresh Oysters ($16.95) really were fresh. Under a cloak of that same cornmeal batter were chewy, vibrant, meaty mollusks that tasted like they were shucked from their shells straight into the fryer.
The true delight, though, was the New Orleans BBQ Shrimp ($15.95). Apparently in the Big Easy, barbecue shrimp aren’t grilled on a barbecue and don’t include barbecue sauce. These jumbo Gulf shrimp came swimming in a blond butter roux flavored with beer (Abita from New Orleans, of course), Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper and herbs. They were fantastic — rich and incendiary, with the bright flavor of wild shrimp showing through. A basket of hush puppies on the side cut the heat nicely.
The scaled-down lunch menu is also a hit: Try the shrimp and oyster po’ boys (sub sandwiches) or the intriguing alligator sausage.
Once everything was done, Jeanne leaned back in the booth, folded her arms and said, “They got it right.”
But, wait, everything wasn’t done. No one — I can’t stress this enough — should visit Culpepper’s without ordering the beignets ($3.49). This deepfried dough (pronounced “bainyeah”), the Cajun cousin of the sopaipilla, arrives tantalizingly hot under a shroud of powdered sugar.
We cooled ours off with the cinnamon-sprinkled vanilla ice cream from an otherwise forgettable peach cobbler. The beignets were so terrific, our spoons were jockeying for the last bite.
“Mmmm,” Crystal said. “This is just like home.”

No one orders pho.
The national dish of Vietnam shows up on every Vietnamese menu this side of the Mekong Delta, but it’s usually translated as “beef noodle soup,” which makes it sound about as enticing as lukewarm Chef Boyardee in the office break room. Plus, the pho tends to be hidden at the bottom of the appetizer page, instead of where it belongs — with entrees — so diners pass it over in favor of the omnipresent “special noodle bowl.”
It’s too bad. There’s a reason this rich, complex dish is a national favorite. It becomes clear when you sit down to a bowl at House of Saigon. The steam rising off the clear broth teems with what smells like cinnamon, star anise, ginger, cloves and the deep flavor that can only come from boiling beef bones for hours and hours. An accompanying plate holds mounds of Thai basil, cilantro and sprouts, shavings of onion and jalapeño, a generous wedge of lemon and thin, raw cuts of beef that cook almost instantly when dropped in the scalding broth.
For the perfect flavor, sprinkle as much or as little of the garnishes in the soup as you want. It’s easily the most beautiful thing in the restaurant.
House of Saigon is a textbook neighborhood takeout joint. The menu isn’t particularly inventive, but it does a bang-up job preparing the familiar canon of Chinese and Vietnamese dishes (noodle bowls, summer rolls, kung pao shrimp) for reasonable prices.
The dining room has a thrown-together bus station austerity not helped much by paper Chinese New Year place mats and silk roses speckled with fake dewdrops. But the flavors coming out of the kitchen are enough to draw attention away from the walls.
The Vietnamese pork egg rolls ($5.25) arrive as crisp, lean, sizzling little bundles, which diners wrap in cool sheets of lettuce with mint and sprouts. Paired with the shrimp with lemon grass soup ($7.95), they are the perfect meal for two on a chilly day.
The long list of combination platters are sure hits for takeout. The “special bean curd” ($7) turns out to be a plate crowded with peppers, carrots and bamboo shoots expertly sauteed with fat triangles of tofu in a zesty lemon grass, fish sauce and chili-garlic combination. For more heat and a lovely coconut milk sauce, try the shrimp curry ($6.50).
Ask for the waiter’s recommendation, and he passes over the pho to suggest the special noodle bowl ($7.50) — the original Vietnamese crossover hit, now on heavy rotation at practically every Vietnamese restaurant. It’s a crowd-pleasing move. Who could be disappointed by a trio of grilled chicken, beef and egg rolls on a nest of rice noodles, cucumber, mint, cilantro and crushed peanuts with a savory bowl of fish sauce on the side?
With a long list of alluring choices, it’s easy to overlook the beef noodle soup. I would have, too, if I hadn’t been enlightened years ago, when I lived by a restaurant in Denver that served only pho. (Pho 79, it’s great.) When I ordered the pho at House of Saigon, the waiter raised his eyebrows.
“You want the pho?” he said. Then he nodded and smiled inwardly, and I got that little shiver of pleasure you get from an unspoken serving of approval.
“You want special?” he asked. The special comes with raw beef, cooked brisket, Vietnamese-style meatballs and pearly tidbits of raw beef tendon. I figured, why not?
There’s an almost ritualistic order to eating this dish. Take a sip of the hot, fragrant broth. Add a splash of lemon and a squirt of chili sauce. Take another sip. Add onions, and, if you can stand it, raw jalapeños. Let them steep while you rip up wads of basil and cilantro leaves. Sprinkle in the herbs. Take another sip. When the flavor is just right, add the meat, tendon and all. (This is all best done at the restaurant. Pho doesn’t travel well.)
Stir a few times until the pink drains from the raw beef. Try the tendon. It’s slippery, tender — not half bad. Put chopsticks in one hand, spoon in the other, and begin to slurp.
You’ll never pass over this simple, stupendous little dish again.

Award-winning chili is the star at Romero’s Cafe in Pueblo

TO OUR READERS: If you go to the Colorado State Fair, which opens today, you’ll find an amazing array of fried foods and meat on sticks. But if you’re looking for more of a sitdown situation while you’re in Steel Town, you won’t find many better than Romero’s Café. PUEBLO You know you’ve stumbled on a true Pueblo gem when as soon as you slide into one of the pleather booths — and Pueblo gems seem to always have pleather booths —the server comes over, pad at the ready, and says “What do you want?” without handing out menus.
Such is the case at Romero’s Cafe.
The assumption, of course, is that you’ve not only been here before, but that you’ve been coming for years and have memorized all your favorites, and that being handed a menu for this longtime local Mexican restaurant would be as needless a formality as getting a guided tour of your sock drawer.
It’s an understandable assumption.
First off, there’s no way anyone would stumble accidentally on the out-ofthe-way address in a hidden agricultural corner of Pueblo known as The Mesa that seems to be forgotten by time. Second, the diners parked at the tables here, beneath dim florescent lights and waterstained ceiling tiles, seem drawn from a pool of regulars. They ignore the menu. They ignore the almost bare walls decorated with faded chile-pepper and Jesus posters. They ignore the posse of orbiting flies — and Pueblo gems seem to always have a posse of orbiting flies. The diners are only there for one thing: the Romero green chili.
And rightly so.
Robert Romero’s chili has won a lot of awards. About 45 of them. It’s been named world champion by the International Chili Society twice. It has won “best chili in town” awards again and again, which is saying something in Pueblo, where locals take chili as seriously as New Yorkers take rudeness.
Servers bring the magical stew out to tables in heavy, dripping, helmetsize white crocks with a tortilla folded like a napkin on the side.
Most plates on the menu are so drowned in chili that you could easily get the wrong order and never know it.
“It’s my mother’s recipe. No, actually, my grandmother’s,” said Romero, who goes by the nickname “Mr. Chile.”
The secret, he said, is fresh, local ingredients. The all-natural pork comes from Mauro Farms, just down the road. The green chiles — only Pueblogrown mirasols and jalapeños — are roasted just down the block. The ground red chiles come from the only place selfrespecting Puebloans will buy them: Chimayo, New Mexico.
The chili-making ritual begins every day at dawn with cubed pork browning in a pan. While the pork cooks, a thick roux is stirred up in a large pot. In another pan, roasted green chiles are tossed with the earthy, bitter red chile, ripe tomato, handfuls of fresh garlic, and a mix of spices that, like any competitive chili chef, Romero won’t reveal.
The whole thing is thrown together and simmered for about six hours, until lunchtime, when the crowds show up for their fix.
It’s a classic Pueblo chili — as golden-brown as butterscotch, complex and thick and meaty. Puebloans slosh it over fries, eggs and burgers, bun and all. In Pueblo, a burger submerged in a bowl of chili is aptly called a slopper.
So it’s fitting the green at Romero’s is the best thing on the menu. Dip a spoon into a steaming bowl (you have a choice of hot, mild or half-andhalf) and at first it’s slightly sweet, then hearty and salty like a good stew. Then the smoky acidity of the green chiles, which are loaded with vitamin C, cuts in. Underneath, you have to search for the the ancient, blunt, burnt, dirty flavor of the Chimayo red chile. Then the heat starts.
It’s not a mouth-burning heat. It’s not a painful heat. But it’s a heat that pervades your whole body. Your pores open, as if sighing with pleasure. Your face glistens. Your heartbeat jumps slightly as endorphins flood the blood.
This is darn good chili.
Ask for extra napkins for brow mopping.
The rest of the menu is generally so-so: not bad, but uninspired. Tamales packed with generous mounds of shredded pork and spicy red chile are a hit, especially when sopped in green. Burritos and enchiladas are also a perfect chili vehicle. But the tacos are worth missing, as is the enchilada sauce, which is too much roux, too little spice.
Don’t shy away from the sopapillas, though, which arrive painfully hot, to be cooled to just below burning with dobs of honey.
They’re a perfect intermission, before going back for another bowl of green chili.

Service, attention to detail make eatery worth a stop when in Cripple Creek

Given the hand it’s dealt, The Steakhouse at Bronco Billy’s Casino does pretty well.
Cripple Creek has always been about gold, not food.
Its perch on a 10,000-foot shelf on the south side of Pikes Peak is so high and lonesome that people have only ever lingered in numbers when there were richest to be had — whether high-grade telluride or limited-stakes gambling.
Even then, it’s a tough proposition. Most casino workers live in Woodland Park or Colorado Springs.
So it’s not surprising that the town doesn’t claim any really great restaurants.
I have always believed (blame my touchy-feely liberal upbringing) that great food most often springs from great communities: places with strong neighborly bonds, vibrant, varied economies, good education, a real mix of people — all the things it takes to inspire and nurture creativity. OK, well, Las Vegas would seem to shoot holes in that premise, but it merely supports another theory: a lot of money can buy a lot of good stuff.
Cripple Creek, even with all it’s faded Victorian glory, is just a town full of one-armed bandits — without enough money to buy its way to culinary glory.
The Steakhouse is Bronco Billy’s upscale option — the place you go when luck has been a lady. It sits upstairs, above the jingling fray of the slots and the more rustic booths of the Home Cafe, home of the $.59 breakfast.
The prices are about the same as Outback Steakhouse or Texas Roadhouse, but the setting is decidedly less impressive. Two narrow shafts of green booths have been wedged in on the edges of the blackjack and Texas Hold ‘em tables. Above, hang vintage golf and big game photos. It sort of feels like a Denny’s.
Steaks headline on the menu, followed by a supporting cast of chicken, fish, and a few pasta dishes. There’s nothing on this menu you haven’t seen before, but they do a nice job with the standards.
Guacamole ($10) made table-side does double duty as a cooking class for anyone who thinks it should come from a bag. A server simply mashes two ripe avocados with a little cilantro, red onion, diced tomato, garlic, and a pinch of salt. It’s heavenly.
The thumb-sized shrimp in the shrimp cocktail ($8) taste fresh and cold with a conservative cocktail sauce.
The steaks are prepared precisely to order. The Steak Oscar ($30) — a tenderloin laden with crab meat, rich Bernaise, and a crosshatch of asparagus, which is the restaurant’s most popular dish — cames dark and bloody when ordered rare, and the asparagus showed the same care.
The whole thing was delicious, as our excellent server said it would be. She politely hinted at the onset that one should stick to the steaks.
The sliced duck breast of the Duck L’Orange ($18) arrived in what appeared to be a gravy boat of gelatinous sauce, so laden with sugar and cinnamon that the duck seemed like it was dressed in drag as an apple pie.
It only garnered a few tastes before finding a spot in a lonely corner of the table.
The cream of onion soup (free with entrees), a thick white sauce with sweet, translucent strips of white onion, also ended up there. It was one of those dishes that at first tastes wonderful, but in a few mouthfuls grows too rich, too bland.
“How’s the Creme Brulee?,” I asked.
“It’s just rich person’s vanilla pudding,” the manager said, “but I like it.”
That was good enough for me. I wish it had been true, but someone in the kitchen had been too flame-happy with the torch, and the Creme Brulee ($5) turned out to be “burned rich person’s vanilla pudding” with a carbonized sugar shell hidden under a dollop of canned whipped cream.
Here’s the thing, though: the service was good, the appetizers were good and the steak was good. Get those three to line up in a town like Cripple Creek and you’ve hit the jackpot.
The Steakhouse isn’t worth a special trip, but if you find yourself in Cripple Creek, it’s not a bad place to stake your claim.

New Mexican flavors add character to diner staples

On a recent weekend morning, one table in the bustling morning melee of this west-side breakfast institution held four war protesters inspecting the photo from their mistrial on the front page of The Gazette. Just above them on the wall hung a blown-up photo of five hot, dirty men in a desert (presumably Iraq) sitting on the turret of an Abrams tank on which they had written “WESTERN OMELETTE OR BUST.”
It just goes to show the unifying power of a good, cheap breakfast.
Many things divide the country, but who could argue with perfectly crisp, light, not-toogreasy hash browns, well-priced fluffy omelets and pancakes that are billed as “plate-sized” but actually hang over the plate on all sides?
Apparently no one. Western Omelette always seems to be packed with diners from both the Fox News and NPR sides of the cultural schism, and a fair number of grizzly, graying bikers who probably would just as soon give the finger to them both. But everyone seems to get along over plates of steaming plates of huevos rancheros and bottomless tankards of coffee.
The “Western” behind Western Omelette is owner Bill Borders, a part-Navajo who has run the place for 19 years with a slant toward Southwestern dishes.
He was born in Gallup, N.M., but grew up in Trinidad, where he developed a gift for green chili. The stuff he sloshes over eggs and burritos is a savory green paste that takes his mother’s pared-down New Mexican recipe and spices it up with major heat from hand-ground habanero peppers and Coloradostyle chunks of pork added by his son, Preston, who runs the kitchen.
It’s one of the best in town, and probably hot enough to use in particularly stubborn exorcisms.
It’s so hot, in fact, that it’s very hard to order. Servers generally make you swallow a sample to prove you can handle it before they’ll pour it over your plate.
Once, when I ordered the mild over a chicken chimichanga, the waitress said, “You’re ordering the mild. That means you’ve been here before. Everybody tries to order the hot once . . . only once.”
Even the mild has a good deal of heat on most days. If in doubt, order it on the side.
Other than the green chili, Western Omelette is your typical diner: vinyl booths, morning sun streaming in through closed blinds, regulars at their familiar tables, newspapers crowding a drawn-out meal of eggs and conversation.
The service is always great, if somewhat harried at peak times.
The coffee predates the Starbucks revolution (both in philosophy and, seemingly, in roasting date). It’s a weak, dirty-tasting slick. But what it lacks in flavor, the staff makes up for in volume. The mugs are huge, and try as you might, the passing servers will never let you reach the bottom.
It’s hard to go wrong on the menu. The huevos rancheros ($7.05) — perfectly cooked eggs resting on a pile of spicy chorizo and salsa — are a sure hit.
The Harley ($7), a pile of eggs, hash browns and sausage or bacon with a “plate-sized” pancake on the side, could keep you going all the way to Sturgis. The pancake is a little too airy, and the syrup, of course, never came near a maple tree, but it’s still a good deal.
Lunch also reels in the regulars, though it doesn’t get quite the hype of breakfast.
Pick from a menu of greasy spoon favorites with a Mexican accent. Like the breakfast, it’s generally unpretentious and covered in sauce.
The Hot Turkey ($7.65) is reported to be an open-face turkey sandwich under country gravy. The only thing evident on arrival is sweet, white, pepper-speckled gravy.
“I’m sure there’s bread in there somewhere,” a friend said. So we dug in, and it was surprisingly good: not too salty, with good, thick slices of turkey. And sure enough, somewhere in there was a slice of bread.
The Mexican dishes are also a step above normal diner standards. The pinto beans are not refried, and the whole beans retain a more delicate flavor. The Spanish rice is rich with tomato and not overly salty.
The chicken chimichanga comes packed with delicate, shredded meat, a hint of salsa and a warm bath of chili.
This isn’t the type of food that steals the show, but it’s a nice lubricant for a meal full of small talk and leisurely stacks of weekend newspapers — easy-going food in an easygoing place.
And that’s good because if you’re looking for a fight, the two choices are the bikers and the green chili, and you probably couldn’t handle either.

Will’s Sports Pub is probably the only place in a thousand miles where you can order seared duck medallions in a cherry and red wine reduction and have the server ask if you want a football-shaped 20-ouncer of Budweiser on the side.
The place is actually two businesses in one: Will’s, with the big-screen TVs and American beer you’d expect from a sports bar, and Fanz Bistro, with the pecan-encrusted pork loin and crab-stuffed avocados you probably wouldn’t.
The two joined in January, after Fanz closed its original space in a refurbished firehouse on the west side.
The change up was a smart play.
The comfy, spacious neighborhood bar covers all the bases of a sports den while serving a roster of salads, sandwiches and entrees sophisticated enough to draw in diners with no interest in footballs or football-shaped mugs of beer.
Occasionally, the kitchen fumbles on big plays. They seem to have the talent to pull it off but could use a little more precision.
The restaurant is a windowless space with a low ceiling and long wood bar on the somewhat rough southeastern elbow of downtown Colorado Springs.
In the evening, it is definitely more bar than bistro.
Regular patrons enter through the back door where a paper sign warns “Proper attire and attitude required. Please don’t get upset if we cut you off.”
But the food is solid enough to bring a trickle of dinner diners, and at lunch, the place draws a steady stream of suits from downtown offices.
For a recent midday meal, I tagged along with a pack of lawyers who frequent the place.
Their verdict (which I upheld on appeal at a later dinner): The simple dishes are great. The more complex entrees are hard to count on.
The guys in the Fanz kitchen, Joe Portillo and Andy Finkbeiner, are pub-fare all-stars. The Black-n-Bleu burger ($6.75), a chubby, hand-shaped, spiced patty on a crusty, chewy roll with a slab of blue cheese, is easily one of the top burgers in town.
The chicken Philly has all the conventional gooeyness that makes the sloppy sandwich a favorite.
Both come with choice of fries, rings, rice pilaf, sweet potato fries, garlic-basil mashers, pasta salad or green salad.
The lawyers submitted that the mealsized salads are also winners.
Exhibit A: the blackened salmon, a steak of pink fish in a dark jacket of spices on a bed of mandarin oranges, strawberries, baby greens, spiced pecans, red onions, and an orange sherry vinaigrette. After reviewing the evidence, I concurred.
The crimes occur at Will’s/Fanz on the more opulent dishes.
The concepts are good. The plate arrangement is some of the best in town.
But the eatery keeps dropping the ball with flavor.
The seared duck ($12.50) arrives as a plate of rosy, meaty medallions nestled around herb-potato croquettes with a headdress of baby corn and micro greens and a reflecting pool of ruby-red reduction of cherries, wine, shallots and duck fat.
It looks five-star, and the duck is cooked to perfection, but the potatoes taste like margarine and the reduction, despite its noble ingredients, tastes like nothing at all.
The Southern salmon carbonara ($12.95) has similar flavor deficiencies, swept under a concealing carpet of salt.
The shoestring calamari ($7.25) arrives tender and crisp.
But the sticky-sweet tequila lime dipping sauce on the side begs comparisons to melted popsicles.
The front of Fanz kitchen has a veneer of diamond-plate sheet metal that makes it look a bit like a custom auto shop. And after a few gorgeous but disappointing entrees, you start to wonder if the guys in back also have a mechanic’s sensibility: building tricked-out plates from flashy ingredients without the right kind of spoonto-mouth contemplation.
Then you try the fresh split avocado, stuffed with crab, asiago cheese, tomato and mushroom sauce, resting on dabs of rich brie mornay ($14.95).
The avocado is perfectly ripe.
The cheese and crab are devilishly rich. The tomato and mushrooms lend a needed note of earthy acidity. It’s wonderful.
It makes you sure the kitchen has the talent to work out other flavor stumbles.
It makes you think this sports-bar/haute cuisine thing could really work. It makes you think you could go for another football of beer.
And there’s the server, like a real pro, reading your next move before you even make it.

Fire Rock Grill makes tasty use of pecan wood

You can smell the pecan smoke as soon as you walk into Fire Rock Grill. It’s as sweet and acrid as old incense, and it sends a riffle of excitement through the primitive cerebrums of all us Cro-Magnon degenerates who love smoked meat in its many ugly forms.
The menu is uneven, but those who love their meat cooked slow and low, and bursting with sooty aromatic hydrocarbons won’t go away disappointed.
“Man, that’s makin’ me hungry,” my friend Dave said as we slid into one of the booths in the surprisingly tastefully decorated restaurant. Dave grew up the son of a tobacco share cropper in North Carolina. His family butchered and smoked whole hogs the old fashioned way. This summer he made me drive all the way to Penrose to hunt for free apple wood when, for no particularly reason, we decided to smoke a pig in his yard. So I figured he was the right guy to give Fire Rock Grill, which specialized in pecansmoked meat, the thumbs up or down.
Fire Rock is the reassembled pieces of what was once Ranch Steakhouse & Market, and the sight of one of the city’s greatest restaurant betrayals.
It started out as a partnership between Mike Callicrate and Neil McMurry. Callicrate was an idealist meat packer who fought for years against big industrial beef. He was the main plaintiff in a bitter class-action suit that accused meat-packing giant Iowa Beef Processors of price fixing. At the same time, he created the anti-IBP, a local meat processor called Ranch Foods Direct that offers natural, hormone and antibiotic-free beef at a price that is fair to ranchers.
Ranch Steakhouse was the showcase for the socially responsible meat Callicrate has struggled so hard for. But one day, the other partner said he no longer wanted to serve Ranch Foods Direct beef. He wanted to serve IBP beef.
Insert dagger and twist.
Callicrate walked out and the whole place folded a few months later. It reopened in June, still under McMurry’s ownership, but with a new name and a menu showcasing smoked chicken, ribs and prime rib.
“Smoked prime rib. My god, that’s just plain decadent,” Dave said perused the specials.
The place is decadent in other ways too — at least compared to your typical smoked meats shack. It has cloth napkins. It has pinot noir by the glass. It has a full range of steaks ($15-$30) that, while not on par with Ranch Foods Direct, are good enough.
The reason to come, though, is the smoker, where meats cure in the sooty 200 degree heat for 4 to 10 hours.
“The half chicken’s going to be the real test,” Dave said. “If it’s not done right, the breast can get real dry.”
When the chicken ($14) arrived, he stripped off the dark brown jacket of skin, and bit into the breast. Then he just shook his head wordlessly for a while.
“Man, that’s intense. . . . Oh, yeah, subtle. Sweet. Not too dry. I hate to say this, but this is probably the best smoked thing I’ve had this summer, including my own pig.”
The ribs ($22) were just as enticing — crispy and almost floral with smoke, served wet under a sweet sauce. The prime rib ($18 for 10 ounces) is more subtle, and perfectly pink. It’s fantastic. The only way to make it better would be to serve Ranch Foods Direct beef.
The rest of the menu is all over the place. Some dishes that sound like tired steakhouse clichés are delightfully fresh. Fire Rocks’ take on jalapeño poppers ($6) are gloriously unbread- ed. Just peppers slit open, stuffed with cream cheese, swaddled in bacon, then flash fried.
The onion rings ($8) are gargantuan slices of sweet vidalia in a golden coconut crust. Two would be a meal, they give you a pile.
The seasoned mashed sweet potatoes available as a side steal the show on any plate.
But salads and side veggies lack imagination.
Lunch has some nice values. The price of a smoked half chicken comes down to $9.
At that price, those addicted to smoking can visit often, which Dave was already planning on as he walked out the door. In the car, he gave the remaining smoke flavor on his hands a deep, satisfying snort.
“Damn that was good,” he said. “I’ve got to get some of that pecan wood.”

Sumptuous small plates replace entrees, tempting diners to taste away
On a recent evening in the basement bar of Metropolitain, after perusing the tapas menu of small plates, I asked to see a whole dinner menu.
“That is the whole menu,” the bartender said. “We got rid of our dinners.”
Gone are opulent entrees of grilled Mediterranean lamb with sautéed cucumbers and olives in a mint raitta ($22), and the scallops pan-seared with saffron and sautéed artichokes ($24). In their place are small plates including olive medleys ($5), chicken skewers ($9), grilled shrimp crusted in chili and fresh lime zest ($10), a scattering of pizzas and salads, fries sprinkled with garlic or truffle oil ($8) and a peripheral list of paired-down bistro main courses.
It’s a growing trend in town (and has been on the coasts for over a decade, but what are you going to do?): big entrees complete with carefully matched sides are increasingly being upstaged by tapas or “small plates.”
In this case, it’s a welcome move. Metro’s entrees were fine, but they didn’t match the place. Tapas really let this dim basement shine.
It wasn’t so long ago that tapas were so obscure that any mention demanded an immediate definition. (Traditional Spanish bar food that originated from the practice of placing slices of bread atop sherry glasses to keep the flies out.)
Now, they increasingly take center stage. First, MacKenzie’s started doing a tapas happy hour. Then Nosh made a splash with its artful small plates. Now Metropolitain has joined the pack. If the trend keeps up, Tony’s will be serving its fried cheese curds with tapenade and aioli.
This trend in small, hip, Euro-influenced dishes fits Metropolitain perfectly.
Walking through the replica Art Nouveau Metro station entrance, and down the stairs into a dim basement’s warm, century-old sandstone block walls, feels like accidentally stumbling into “La Bohème.” Here is a slice of Bohemian fin de siècle Paris squirreled away under the streets of Colorado Springs. Squat candles flicker on the bar, music flows along the stone walls. The lack of windows erase time. You could spend all night here without noticing, and with a varied and intriguing menu you may want to.
Chef Marcus McCoy, the latest in a steady line of cooks to parry with owner Kimball Bayles, knows his chops. He seems to love tweaking dishes with handfuls of fresh herbs or unexpected flavor combinations.
The conventional-sounding sweet chili drizzle on the chicken satay turned out to be a glorious marriage of honey and red chile flakes with a tryst of cinnamon on the side.
Mac and cheese ($7), in Mc-Coy’s place, is a pile of lightly pliant gnocchi in a mix of chèvre and cream cheese with rich bits of bacon and ringlets of scallion. It’s heaven.
The Artichoke Gratin, ($10) a personal-size casserole of grilled artichokes in a rich conglomerate of cashews and gorgonzola, has the zing and thump of sour and creamy notes, with tasty fresh basil interludes.
His is still the only restaurant I’ve seen in town where the corn in a relish was actually fresh sweet corn, the kernels still in small groups from when they were cut from the cob. It’s a sign — this guy’s good.
In the menu mash-up, some dishes were deservedly dropped.
General Tso’s Frogs Legs are nowhere to be found.
The Metro Mussels ($10), which were too heavy in a gorgonzola sauce, have thankfully made an encore in a traditional white wine and garlic broth.
But other dishes that should have been axed still linger — the pizza ($13) crust tastes suspiciously pre-made, the salads ($7) are dull and even in September have styrofoamy tomatoes.
Even more unfortunate, a few plates that deserved to stay are gone.
A bold calamari stewed in fresh tomato and lemon basil is now fried like every other calamari in town. A shame.
A simple plate of thin slices of Manchego cheese and jamón serrano in a woody, complex sherry vinaigrette got the hook. Too bad. It was the closest thing to a traditional Spanish tapa I’ve seen west of Santiago de Compostela, and it’s a magical combination.
I get the impression McCoy was all for it, but orders of “Ham and Cheese” were few.
Let’s hope another one of his masterpieces doesn’t also get the ax: an occasional dessert of poached pear where the fruit is stripped naked, then stuffed with a vanilla-infused goat cheese and set in a reflecting pool of cherry, honey and port. The salty cheese enveloped in robes of sweet and tart and spice is something I can’t quite get my head around, but I love it.
There is much to love here. The service is great. The atmosphere, tres chouette.
My only beef with the place used to be that it had no bargains to lure modern-day broke Bohemian sybarites down from their urban garrets. But now the sleeked down menu has a desperately needed happy hour (half-price apps and martinis from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., try the Ruby), which means even though the new menu offers less, you can enjoy it more.

It’s rare to find a soup that looks like it could beat you up, but the steaming Siete Mares at Tino’s Place really does.
A claw reaches menacingly over the rim of the bowl, trailed by three prickly pink legs. A tentacle briefly drifts to the steaming surface before sinking to the depths.
“You’re afraid of it, aren’t you?” my wife said when the soup arrived at our table.
I have to admit, until I tasted it, I was. The Siete Mares, or “Seven Seas,” ($14.95) turned out to be a luscious bowl of red broth brimming with vegetables, shrimp, scallops, fish, clams, octopus and half a crab. The dish goes way beyond the landlocked expectations most people have for Mexican food. But going beyond expectations is what Tino’s is all about.
The four-page menu, which runs from basics such as tacos ($1.50) and tamales ($2) to raw oysters (market price) and pan-fried garlic trout ($9.95, and fantastic) is just as irresistible as the soup, which had me scraping the bowl until the last tentacle was devoured.
The restaurant’s location, in a shabby stretch of East Platte Avenue among pawnshops, topless bars and a murder scene or two, makes the same first impression as the soup. But inside, Tino’s has a reassuring homey neatness. Twin rows of booths run down a long spotless Saltillo tile floor. Through an archway is a karaoke room where the oompah beat of Norteño on the jukebox is punctuated by the clack of pool balls and the high lilting “ayee-ayee-ayees” of amateur Mexican troubadours.
Tino’s sits on the tip of a slice of town, roughly between the intersections of Union and Platte avenues, Academy Boulevard and Platte, and Academy and Airport Road, that could fittingly be called the Taqueria Triangle. It’s the dwelling place of the majority of the city’s Mexican Mexican restaurants (places owned by and tailored to Mexican immigrants).
Here, immigrants serve dishes such as chicken in pumpkin mole, tacos with beef tongue and tangy tomatillo salsa that are old traditions south of the border but have an exotic ring in Colorado Springs.
Quality in the Triangle swings from heavenly to hepatitis shot.
Tino’s is one of the great ones — unapologetically authentic, yet gringo-friendly.
Tino, the jovial owner, tends to work the room wearing a red apron.
His wife and brother work the kitchen, whipping up dishes from their home state of Oaxaca.
Ask what’s good, and Tino will probably say the ceviche ($11.95).
This simple dish of raw fish or shrimp cured in lime juice and served with fresh cilantro, tomato, onion and jalapeño is prepared to order (a rare thing) and served in a wreath of tomato and cucumber slices 15 minutes later, just as the shrimp is turning from cloudy gray to pearly pink.
Raw seafood on Platte sound too scary? Tino also makes the dish with cooked shrimp.
Terrestrial dishes don’t disappoint, either. The asada tacos are light and lean. The tamale with beef, chicken or pork is skillfully homemade and one of the spicier things on the generally tame menu.
For more heat, ask for a dish of the phenomenal homemade salsa caliente — a blend of acerbic dried red chiles that otherwise stays hidden in the back.
A few things are unexceptional.
The batter on the chile rellenos in the combo plate ($8.95) is eggy to the point of sponginess.
But the chile pepper at the heart of it is a hit.
The green sauce over the tamales is a piquant tomatillo salsa, not an earthy New Mexican green chili, but that’s to be expected. This is Mexican Mexican, not Colorado Mexican.
Save room for dessert.
Tino’s wife, Xochitl, makes carrot cake and a dynamite chocolate cake with a crown of flan. (She calls it Flan Impossible.)
The service here never leaves you wanting, and the well-priced menu is solid enough to forge first-timers into regulars.
Anyone inspired to explore the regional cuisine of Oaxaca further is in luck. A daily overnight bus to the border leaves from the front door. A ticket costs $45.

Big City Burrito has a seven-step set of directions for ordering. Start with the selection of a white, wheat, tomatochile, pesto, spinach, or jalapeño-cheddar tortilla. Then there’s the choice of three cheeses, then two kinds of beans, then four kinds of meat, five salsas, guacamole and sour cream, and 42 (at last count) bottles of hot sauce, including one habañero concoction called Smack My Ass And Call Me Sally.
Which is to say, the place has options.
Many of them are quite good. Anyone who loves big, sloppy, dripping foil-wrapped burritos, but is turned off by the sleek iPod-like efficiency of, and limited selections at, Chipotle, will find a happy home in the myriad combinations at this downtown Mexican joint.
Visiting the place, you will notice Big City and Chipotle are remarkably similar. Both are Colorado-based chains. At both, diners work their way down a glass counter, pointing as scoop after scoop of southof-the-border innards are piled on a seemingly inadequate tortilla, then, through some magical fast-casual origami, are folded into a fat burrito with a neat foil exoskeleton to hold it all in place. At the end of both lines, you have a pleasantly non-fast food opportunity to buy a bottle of beer.
Anyone who frequents Boulder knows the state harbors yet another giant foil burrito clone: Illegal Pete’s.
Each is a bit different. (Pete’s cleverly mixes the innards before folding the burrito. Big City has a potato burrito, Chipotle uses all-natural ingredients.) But all sprout from the same foil-wrapped roots: the San Francisco burrito.
“In San Francisco,” New
Yorker writer Calvin Trillin once wrote, “the burrito has
been refined and embellished
in much the same way that the
pizza has been refined and embellished in Chicago.”
They’ll stuff just about anything in there until it almost bursts.
The birth of this calorie bomb, full of meat, beans and rice, is a bit murky. Some say they came from farm workers in California’s Central Valley. Some say it was invented in San Francisco’s Mission District in the early 1960s. Whatever the seed, it grew into a cheap Bay City favorite by the early 1970s. Whether the influx of thousands of free-thinking young people with a killer case of the munchies had anything to do with it is yet to be fully studied. This much is clear: In Colorado, it caught on 20 years later, also in places where young people tended to get the munchies. Chipotle opened in downtown Denver in 1993 (by a San Francisco transplant). Big City opened in Fort Collins in 1994. Illegal Pete’s hit Boulder’s Hill neighborhood in 1995.
Big City differentiates itself with rich chicken mole burritos ($6.29), savory chicken bay leaf ($6.29) and a potato burrito with grilled onions, salsa and ranch dressing, that a friend who went to school in Fort Collins swears is the perfect hangover cure. The brightly colored walls, good music, cheap bear ($2 bottles of New Belgium) and college sense of humor (The “employee of the month” plaque has featured “The Office” character Dwight Schrute for quite some time) make it a good place to grab a fast, filling lunch or dinner.
Not everything on the menu is worth getting. The carne asada, which should be seared, chopped steak hot from the grill, is mushy beef in a tray of brown sauce. The soft tacos are an engineering disaster: Saucy meat options turn tortillas into a quivering quagmire that must be eaten with a spoon. The fresh, kitchenmade guacamole ($1.29 extra) is too often coaxed from underripe avocados.
But other dishes, such as the perfectly spiced Chile Verde burrito ($6.29), and the light, luscious shredded pork roast of the carnitas, ($6.29) have minted many devotees who come so often they can order their favorite without reading the long sheet of directions.
For my money, I’ll stick with Chipotle. It’s more consistent, and the ordering rituals are hardwired in my skull. But many folks I know favor Big City for its smorgasbord of choices.
Either way you go, one thing’s for certain: Nobody’s leaving hungry.

Samba Brasil is the food of home. It’s not the exotic dinner theater of most American Brazilian joints, where gauchos carve slabs of meat table-side.
Sitting down at one of Samba’s four small tables doesn’t even feel like going out to eat.
It feels like visiting a friend’s house.
Part of that no-fuss homey feel is the small, tasty menu of no-frills traditional Brazilian comfort food. It’s hard to go to Samba and not see a Brazilian expat sit down to a plate of rice and beans or hearty Ximxim (pronounced “sheem sheem”) de galinha ($6.25) and say, “This tastes just like my mom’s cooking.” The other part of the homey feel is owner Rich Alvarado, who greets everyone coming through the door like an old friend.
The affable American of Brazilian parents is a one-man goodwill embassy. Between juggling his roles as Samba’s sole waiter, manager and chef, the inveterate chatter swings through the tiny restaurant (it’s such a hole in the wall that before it was Samba, it was storage for a cigar shop next door), doling out advice on everything Brazilian, from the best way to clean flipflops (the dishwasher) to the best way to find a Brazilian husband in Colorado Springs (the Samba e-mail list).
The food is hearty, honest and delicious. Feijoada ($6.95), Brazil’s national dish, which melds Brazil’s African, Portuguese and native heritage, arrives as a steaming plate of black beans, rice and Portuguese sausage with a pile of farofa (toasted flour made from manioc root) on the side for sprinkling.
Ximxim, which Alvarado calls Brazilian stroganoff, features chicken drowned in a creamy sauce of tomato, spices and evaporated milk, served with rice and bananas on the side.
The Espetinho chicken kebabs ($6.75) are a safe bet for less-thanadventurous diners.
The bottles of jewel-size, fragrant pickled yellow cumari peppers reward the more adventurous.
Flank the meal with a hot cup of Brazilian espresso and an icy dish of sorbet ($2.50), made with the vitamin-rich Amazonian acai berry.
Samba also serves small, freshly made pizzas ($5.95), topped with gooey Brazilian cheese, red and yellow peppers, Portuguese sausage and huge chunks of artichoke hearts. Given the American tendency to believe certain things don’t exist outside our borders (pizza, “The Simpsons,” freedom), this dish might seem an odd choice.
“But Brazilians love pizza,” Alvarado said on the visit when I ordered one. “São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, eats more pizza than Chicago or New York.” The pizza, like all Alvarado’s offerings, is very good. The food at Samba doesn’t wow you, but it’s not supposed to.
Often diners expect restaurants to either provide a stupendous value (McDonald’s), a really special culinary experience (The Penrose Room) or at least a novelty (Casa Bonita.) But Samba offers something often overlooked: food’s ability to whisk people home. This is ruby-slipper cuisine. All you have to do is take a bite.
Food, if we’re being honest, is just dead plants and animals. In the kitchen, though, something magical happens. With a little heat and tradition, it changes from nature to culture. Black beans and ground pork become a nation’s heritage. Lemon butter cookies become a lost childhood. Certain spices spark a memory of home that can instantly sweep people back in time and space. That is the idea behind Samba: give home cooking to people far, far from home.
It’s no wonder Samba is packed with Brazilians on Saturday afternoons.
For those who aren’t Brazilian, Samba manages to make you feel as if you are. Alvarado treats everyone like family.

New owner upgrades Mexican mainstay’s fare

Step through the doors of Henri’s Mexican Restaurant — the longtime Old Colorado City Mexican joint that was recently bought by Pueblo restaurateur Jorge Alaya and over-possessively renamed Henri’s by Jorge’s — and you’ll notice that only one important thing has changed. The oldest Mexican restaurant in town still has the cracked Spanish tile tabletops in its cozy booths. It still has the old art deco fans dutifully whirling on the high ceilings. It still has the funny little bar — more of a lunch counter, really — where the swiveling chairs under a tiled arcade don’t rise more than 18 inches.
What’s changed? The food. And for the better. This place that has survived for 61 years has had its ups and downs, and has been mostly down in the last decade. Now, it serves heaping hot plates of Pueblo-style Mexican.
It’s good. It’s hearty. It’s the type of place where people will become regulars.
Henri’s was the first Mexican restaurant in town (actually, it started out as a barbecue joint because, the original owner told The Gazette in 1996, “People didn’t know Mexican food then — it was considered too spicy and bad for digestion.”) It opened in 1946 and stayed open as others came and went. When Nemeth’s El Tejon Restaurant closed in 2006, the second-oldest place bit the dust. In the 1940s, the mix of refried beans and rice and tacos crowned in lettuce and tomato must have seemed pretty novel.
Over time, of course, the cuisine’s popularity has grown. That original Mexican prototype has diversified, franchised, mechanized and been treated to uncounted unflattering reproductions. Today, Mexican joints are so common that they have to have a shtick to survive. You can’t just have a Mexican place. It has to be a blackened-fish taco place, or yuppie place with seven fresh salsas and 30 pedigreed tequilas, or a place with a high-diving gorilla and tiny sopapilla flags — not that there’s anything wrong with a high-diving gorilla and tiny sopapilla flags.
But Henri’s has no shtick. It’s a triedand-true playbook of taco and enchilada combo plates made from old Pueblo family recipes. It would be easy to ignore if it weren’t done so well.
Here’s what I mean by done well: On a recent visit I ordered the Combination Plate (bean tostada, chorizo taco, cheese enchilada, tamale, rice, refried beans and sopapilla, $11). The refried beans were made from scratch, the taco shell shaped by hand and freshly fried. The gooey enchilada and fresh tamale came drowned in true Pueblo-style green chili. And — best of all — the rice was laid out in a line across the center of the plate, forming a dam so that green chili wouldn’t make the taco soggy.
This is Mexican done by people who know how to do it right. Be warned, it’s Pueblo-style, which means it’s heavy, and bright-yellow shredded cheese is still in style. But if you’re not on a diet, grab a booth.
I kept looking for soft spots in the menu and found none. The Smothered Pork and Avocado Burrito ($6.75) was not quite as well spiced as El Taco Rey’s but still used delicious, moist chunks of meat and tons of fresh avocado.
The Cheese Enchiladas ($7 for two) come cloaked in a dynamite red chili that doesn’t skimp on the ground peppers.
The Chili Relleno ($9.25) is a bit unexpected. The whole chile filled with nacho cheese comes wrapped in a thin sheet of egg instead of a deep-fried batter. But it still delivers all the right flavors.
The Flautas ($10) — basically a deepfried enchilada filled with chorizo, beef or chicken — is crispy and, since the service at Henri’s by Jorge’s is excellent, always hot.
In a nod to Jorge’s Pueblo roots, there’s also a Slopper ($8.75). For non Pueblo-philes, that’s an open-faced cheeseburger served in a bowl, flooded with green chili. In Colorado Springs, the menu translates it as a “smothered hamburger.”
The green chili here is a bit odd. There are two grades, mild and hot. The mild is a classic Pueblo stew, thick with flour, spices, red chiles and pork. The hot is a thin broth with big chunks of green chiles and tomato. The mild is a little too mild. The hot doesn’t have that nice Pueblo flavor. Most people learn to order it “half and half” to get the benefits of both.
If I have a complaint, it’s that prices are a dollar or two more than they should be, especially at lunch.
There are small plaques on the wall above a couple of booths, with names of diners who were so regular at the old Henri’s, one employee said, “They were like furniture here.”
When I finished as much as I could of that delightful combination plate, a server came by and asked if I was ready for sopapillas. A few minutes later, she brought the little dough pillows out, still sizzling from the fryer, too hot.
I imagined, as I cooled them in a puddle of honey, that the new Henri’s would have to add a few more plaques for a new neighborhood following that’s sure to come.

Briarhurst solves the mystery of where to go for special meal

Stepping into the ornate, wood-paneled foyer of this 1886 Manitou Springs mansion feels a bit like waltzing into a game of Clue. You can eat in one of nine rooms: the conservatory, the library, the lounge or the drawing room — all gorgeously decorated. You almost expect to overhear Col. Mustard and Mrs. Peacock surreptitiously murmuring something about Professor Plum over ruddy glasses of Beaujolais. Naturally, the staff puts on mystery dinners, where diners solve a classic whodunit. (The next one is Oct. 26.)
But the mystery here isn’t what happened. It’s what will happen.
For years, the Briarhurst Manor has been a go-to spot for special occasions — 50th anniversary, 60th birthday, third acquittal, whatever. If it needed to be special, Briarhurst was, and is, a safe, sumptuous bet. Since 2001, the kitchen had been under the culinary watch of Chip Johnson, one of the town’s most talented chefs and a champion of local ingredients and wild game. Dishes such as wild boar chops with green chili sauce or game birds drizzled in orange peppercorn port reduction have gained him a deserved following. In July, Johnson quit to take over The Warehouse, leaving the Manitou manor house in care of Rachel Brown, who had been working with Johnson for five years.
Brown and staff have taken clues from Johnson. A recent evening’s dinner was almost seamless. We were guided up the winding staircase to a table in the former master bedroom, where attentive, stealthy servers brought the most delicious things: sweet, spicy pear soup ($5), a tower of trout rolled with crab meat, leeks, mushrooms, bacon and spinach leaves, and drizzled with herbed butter sauce ($12); Colorado Bison tenderloin sauteed with five kinds of peppercorns, flambéed in cognac, and served with demiglace and cream ($38); and perfectly pan-crisped bass swimming alongside salmon under an aptly citrusy pesto ($30). All were fantastic — clever ingredients deftly crafted.
The Briarhurst really does it up — we’re talking multiple Romantic languages here. A meal starts with an amuse bouche (a French term for a little something to entertain the mouth) and before the main course, servers bring an intermezzo (Italian for an interlude or interval, and by the way, want to impress your date? Just spot this little dish, which is usually a scoop of sorbet, coming and say, “Ah, the inter-MET-zo”).
Unfortunately, some of the formality is undercut by flavor. Not everything on the menu is great. The Blueberry Spinach Waldorf salad ($7) was nice enough, but the dressing tastes like accidently spilled Yoplait. The ringneck pheasant came across like a fairly good chicken breast, but was hardly worth $29. Our amuse bouche (melon cider in a tiny glass mug) was musky and gloppy. And — here’s the real crime — they may be cheating on the lobster.
We tried two lobster dishes, a classic sherry lobster bisque ($7) and a lobster salad with mache, slivered black truffles, wild mushrooms and grilled asparagus ($8). The bisque lacked that indefinable lobster flavor. It was all cream and butter. And when I had a fork full of the lobster salad, I thought I knew why. The salad was gorgeous: The slick flesh of a blushing red claw draped over chunks of meat, and the mix of greens beneath were perfect. The chunks of meat were good enough. But the claw was dry and stringy — a sign of an inferior, and perhaps not-so-fresh, crustacean. Is it cost cutting or just one night’s bad batch? That’s still a mystery.
When I mentioned it to owner Ken Healey over the phone, he said, “That’s strange. I could see why the lobster might be a little dry in the bisque, but not the claw.”
But here’s the real caper: Almost all the mentioned dishes are from former chef Johnson’s time. It’s understandable that the Briarhurst wants to stick with what works. No one would complain about having to eat flambéed bison again.
But at some point, keeping the old chef’s creations around goes from a safe business move to a food version of the post-Charles Schultz “Peanuts” comics, where the departed is still taking up room better used to spotlight young talent.
Healey says changes are on the way. The old menu is too heavy.
“We want to lighten it up,” he said. “With Chip, if you asked him to lighten a dish up he’d just make the color lighter. It’d still be full of butter.”
A rough draft of the new menu includes rabbit tortellini with sweet pea gastrique, and caribou chops with lingonberry glace and rutabaga puree. We can’t wait to investigate.
In the meantime, there is one more practical crime to be solved. I rarely say this about a restaurant, but the Briarhurst, at least in the rooms I’ve dined in, is too quiet — in a strange way, it is so quiet that it’s too loud. The six tables in the master bedroom have plenty of space, but there is nothing in the room to eat up the sound: no carpet, no dividers, no background music. The result is that everyone at every table hears everything. And the result of that is that no one says anything. No wonder Col. Mustard and Mrs. Peacock were murmuring. Add to the quiet the fact that Briarhurst is a busy wedding spot. You may be dining while two raucous weddings are thumping downstairs, so when you’re about to suavely say, “Ah, the intermezzo,” you may have to talk over not one but two DJs blasting “Love Shack.”
Can the Briarhurst continue to be both a quiet, fine dining destination and a venue for dueling brides? That is a mystery.

Back East Bar and Grill is one of those restaurants that tells its story on the back of the menu. It goes something like this: In 1980, when Mike Davis was 14, his family opened a pizza shop in New York. The homemade recipes became a hit. When Mike got older, he brought the recipes to Colorado Springs and opened Back East Pizza and Subs on Airport Road. It was a hit, too, so he opened the slightly swankier Back East Bar and Grill in Briargate.
The new Back East is a nice den for some serious lipidfueled game watching. Flatscreen LCDs cover the walls. The place is bright and clean. Wing and beer specials pile up like Rockies homers.
But there’s part of the story I don’t get. At the end of the menu story, the owners ask us to come “enjoy the incredible food and flavors that we have brought from home.”
And when you grab a stool and start flipping through the menu, you’re greeted by seemingly frozen cheese sticks and fried mushrooms, preformed burger patties, and fish and chips and fajita plates that could hail from Houston as easily as the Hudson. This is generic anywhere food.
Not that Back East disappoints. Prices are good, especially on the delicious homemade pizza. Service is major league — our waitress on a busy night didn’t miss a beat taking orders through the uproar of a Red Socks basesloaded home run. But this family-owned place seems to have taken its cues from the chains that dominate the north end of town. So much of the menu is pre-made, food-service standards that you start to feel as if the owners had to print their “back east” credentials on the menu because they aren’t obvious anywhere else.
I left judging the East Coast-ness of Back East to my mom, a born and raised Jersey girl with a drawn-out Woody Allen-type accent full “dawwwgs” and “cawwwffee” that, for some reason, seems to get thicker every year she lives in Colorado.
“You think they have real New York pizza, where you fold it and the grease just drips off the hot cheese? Oh, I love that,” she said as we waited for a table on a Saturday night. The place was packed. A Little League team still in uniform bumped elbows with mall-chic post-frat guy gangs, families with young kids, and well-coiffed McMansion-onthe-new-golf-course boomers.
When we got a table, we ordered the pizza. I’ve always thought Boriello Brothers had the best New York slice in town. In fact, it’s better than many slices I’ve had in Manhattan. But I’m always looking for a challenger. Back East doesn’t quite make it.
The pizza here is good. The dough is from scratch. So is the sauce. But it can’t quite do the chewy-but-crisp dance of Boriello Brothers. And you can’t get it by the slice.
“I liked it. It’s not awwwful,” Mom said after finishing a pizza. “But it isn’t it.”
Even so, the pizzas are an enticing deal. A 12-inch cheese is $7.75. And the monstrous, 3-square-foot Beast, which could feed the whole Little League team, is only $20.
Stick to the pizza, and maybe the wings. Everything else seems food-service devised. Back East is a menu short on disaster but short on imagination, too. The burger ($6.95) has a nice roll, but the patty tastes as if it were formed a long, long time ago in a patty plant far, far away. The Philly Cheesesteak ($8.95) is a better choice. The otherwise nice Flat Iron Steak ($13.95) is marinated overnight to a point that, most of the table agreed, it tasted too much like salad dressing. The Lasagna ($10.95) which the menu says is “made the way mom taught me,” is dense brick of ground beef cheese and noodles that tastes fine but could use be lighter.
The only really bad thing is the raspberry sauce that flanks the jalapeño poppers ($7.50) which packs an oddly syrupy chemical taste that could knock a long-sober cough syrup abuser off the wagon.
So that’s the story. This is successful family-owned joint with a chainy feel and good pizza. If the owners really want to be known for being “back east,” they might consider going back to mom’s recipes.
When they do, I’ll bring my mom back, give it a try, and we’ll tawwwk.

Even chicken soars on eclectic, delectable Black Bear menu

Victor Matthews vowed he would never serve chicken at The Black Bear Restaurant.
Chicken is boring. “It’s been so Americanized and industrialized that it can be really bland,” he said recently on the phone.
Chicken is something most chefs throw on the menu not out of love, but as a lifeline for the timid or the cheap.
Matthews doesn’t play by most chefs’ rules. His restaurant in Green Mountain Falls is a riddle wrapped in a mystery stuffed with foie gras. It is known to be one of the most unusual gastronomical adventures in the Rockies. People drive from Denver to eat here. Matthews can whip you up a 10-course feast from scratch, made with the best local, organic ingredients. On the other hand, the person at the next table might be munching on burger. It’s is probably the only restaurant on earth that serves both foie grasstuffed quail and hot wings.
Matthews says he needs both. Wings and burgers attract steady local business, fancy stuff draws diners from Colorado Springs and beyond. Together, they keep the doors open.
Matthews is as wacky as he is shrewd. He once cooked a seven-course dinner using breakfast cereal in every dish. The monkfish came with a Lucky Charms beurre blanc.
But chicken? Come on, this is a guy who won’t serve crême brulée because it’s too trite. So it was surprising, about two months ago, when a roasted half chicken ($24) appeared on his menu.
I couldn’t believe it. The menu just said “Half an organic chicken.” No sauce. No culinary frills and bobbles. Had the region’s most eccentric chef finally gone totally batwing crazy? I had to order it to find out.
When I did, I had the best chicken of my life.
It came completely unadorned: a bonein half bird sprinkled with salt and pepper, with a crackling bronze skin and a light pan sauce drizzled on the plate. The meat, which steamed up when I broke through the crust, hit with an unexpected richness. It was just chicken, but it was just chicken in the same way a Mark Rothko painting is just a square.
And it turns out it isn’t just chicken. It’s Smart Chicken — a free-range organic bird from Nebraska that is cooled with cold air during processing (instead of the standard practice of letting thousands of carcasses soak in a tank of non-potable cold water.) The result, Matthews said, is a bird that needs no adornment, is clean enough to be served on the edge of rare, and isn’t saturated with excess water.
“It’s madness. I don’t even need a flour dusting to get that golden crust. When this stuff hits the pan,” he said, “it sears like a dry-aged beef and seals in the juices.”
Delicious madness of this kind is what you can expect at Black Bear. The little, rustic log cabin is odd in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start. If you’re looking for drippy candles, fine linen and a general feeling of smugness, this isn’t it. The cabin is divided into a very dark bar room with a pool table, and a somewhat spare dining room focused on a grand petrified wood fireplace.
The dining room’s backwoods shabbiness suggests a menu of possum pot pie and squirrel where you have to eat quick so cousin Jethro doesn’t get it all.
Servers push the chef’s tasting menu (four to six courses for $55; $85 with wine pairings). On a recent night it included an awesome Cajun-style crawfish soup, squash salad with a tarragon-and-citrus dressing, house-made orecchiette with fennel, and a petite fillet of Kobe beef over mashed potatoes with a sweetbread demiglace. The whole meal was phenomenal and rare: great ingredients presented in simple, well-planned splendor.
Diners who ask for the à la carte menu get rewards like the Smart Chicken over a fricassee of eggplant, fennel and wild mushroom, New Orleansstyle barbecued shrimp swimming in a light roux littered with cayenne and fresh rosemary ($21), or a delightful foie gras-stuffed, balsamic-glazed quail ($9), which arrives on the table with its little legs politely crossed, hiding a belly of foie gras so sweet, soft and creamy it almost feels like you’re eating Ben & Jerry’s.
The restaurant has about 85 wines, but no wine list. Tell the servers what you like, they make recommendations. A friend complained that it feels like a guessing game, but if you hate trying to concentrate on a wine list, it’s a nice break, and our server managed to pick a bright, minerally and inexpensive sauvignon blanc that was a perfect match for the chicken.
On Fridays and Saturdays, Matthews runs the kitchen. On Sundays, students from his Paragon Culinary School run the show. I had a seamless night with them. Apparently, Matthews is as good a teacher as he is a chef. Others have warned me it’s best to stick to the chef’s tasting menu on Sundays. But who knows?
On most days, Brooke Ash is doing double duty as maitre d’ and creator of luscious, outof-the-ordinary desserts. On a recent evening it was dainty ginger cake with a riesling reduction, white chocolate caramel, pecans in apple caramel, and an ingenious whipped cream spiked with freshly cracked cardamom seeds.
Her talent is complemented by a Black Bear-style lack of pretension. When we got into a conversation comparing favorite local ethnic markets, she ran to the back to get spoonfuls of her latest find: Mexican caramel made from goat’s milk, which, she said with a shrug “I found at Wal-Mart.”
It’s this searching for the right ingredients, the talent to spot them, and the brass to not care what the rest of the restaurant universe is doing that make Black Bear such a treasure. To succeed in such a weird, excellent place, you can serve chicken, but you can’t be one.

Nathaniel Glen’s mixed review last week of Tomo Sushi drew several e-mails and blog-entry comments saying that it was racially insensitive to Koreans.
John Ra, owner of the restaurant, sent this letter, which addresses both the insensitivity issue and the criticisms of the service:

REVIEW WASN’T QUITE FAIR

I would like to sincerely apologize for the terrible experience that you had at my restaurant.
I would also like to convey to you that what you had experienced that evening is not a typical night at my restaurant.
I am not doubting what you had written to be true. I have had three nights that I was upset about the quality of service and the time it took for the food to be taken out to the customers.
Mr. Lee has had over 12 years experience in Korea, two years in Japan and almost two years on the east coast. He is traditionally trained where he had to apprentice for close to three years before he was allowed to serve the customers directly. He speaks very, very minimal English and also has a vocal problem. As you stated that he grunted for the waitress, that is his loud voice.
The lack of service from our servers is something that I have improved upon in the last few weeks prior to the review coming to print. I will admit that both the servers and the kitchen have been overwhelmed at times. The sushi as I am sure you are aware of can take a while when they are backed up with orders. We have been working on how to cut down the time.
I am not trying to make any excuses or trying to justify what you had unfortunately experienced. Being short staffed, or a cook being out sick or not being able to find that server that I am looking for should not be the concern of a paying customer. It is totally my problem and our customers should not have to pay for or endure.
I have hired two more sushi chefs, along with a sushi helper. They are not the most fluent English speaking people, but they can communicate and make up for the lack of English through smiles and service. The new sushi chef, Brian, is someone that I admire and is also respected by many sushi chefs here in Colorado Springs as well as in Denver. The other sushi chef will be starting with us next month in May.
I have also hired several more servers that have experience in a Japanese restaurant.
I am truly upset and disappointed that I was not in the front of the restaurant to try and make your “experience” a little more bearable.
My philosophy is to do whatever it takes to make your first dining “experience” with us the first of many. I truly believe that when things go wrong, just saying “I’m sorry” is not enough. I have given out gift certificates for a much higher value (up to 150 percent) than what was spent to customers that were not satisfied (whether it be food or service) hoping that they will utilize them and give us a second chance.
As for the liquor license it has been over three months since our application was submitted. The FBI has a backlog of three to four months. I can say with confidence that not having a liquor license at this present time is much more upsetting to me than it is to you or any of my other customers. To try and make up for this, I have been giving out vouchers for free sake, wine and beer.
Once again, I apologize for not being able to provide a good experience with us. I am saying this not just to you, a restaurant critic, but to any person that enters Tomo Sushi.
Now, with that being said there are a few questions and comments that I would like to make about your review.
In my opinion it would have seemed fair for you to state that the night you had the terrible experience with the service and the long time it took for your food to arrive, that we were very busy, since you mentioned that when you came back the very next day that you didn’t have any major problems, but that there was only three tables.
I am assuming that it was busy because in the article you had stated that “Mr. Lee was hunched over order after order.” Another statement was “The rest of the room seemed to also be behind on orders.”
Since there weren’t any major problems or mistakes when you came back the next day, for my own personal benefit, would you let me know what the minor problems were?
The biggest or most troubling statement you made in your article was “For all the attention he gave the fish, he paid none to us. Not so much as a KONNICHIWA which is good because I’m pretty sure he was Korean.”
Does that mean that when you go to a French restaurant, they shouldn’t say anything in French unless they are French?
I was contacted by a competitor, another major sushi bar, that day stating that he got angered by that statement. There are several people, mostly Korean, who took that statement as being racial and that Koreans are inferior, rude and that you feel that we should not be doing sushi or any restaurant that is not of our own ethnicity.
I feel that we are owed an explanation for that statement.
Another thing that bothered me was that you had stated that Mr. Lee looked like a worker in a sweatshop. Most people associate terrible working conditions dingy and grimy, unfair conditions to work in. I think I know what you were tying to get across, but it would have been much better if you had used a different analogy.
Having an ex-sushi waitress and including her comments seemed inappropriate and unnecessary. An ex-sushi chef or a practicing chef, I feel, would have been more appropriate.
I say this not trying to devalue her observations, but many people seem to believe that what they first learned or were first taught is always the right way and that when it is different they seem to believe that the other version is incorrect. Even in Japan, different regions make the food and sushi differently. They may emphasize different tastes and aspects of the dish.
In San Francisco California, they hold the Annual Master Sushi Chef competition and in two of the last six years, it has been won by an American sushi chef, and in another year, it was won by a Hispanic sushi chef.
What I am trying to say is that having the comment of an ex-sushi waitress (unless she is very experienced and knowledgable about sushi, in which case I will apologize) could be limited or be just a sliver of the total art of sushi and dining experience.
I believe that a strong foundation is necessary to become successful in any field, but having narrow vision limits your growth in a field where there should be very little boundaries on creativity. Maybe I am wrong, but I believe enjoying what you are eating is just as important, if not more, than sticking strictly to tradition. Nothing brings me more happiness and a smile then when I see somebody enjoy something that we made.
I am not a food critic, therefore I don’t know as much as you do in how to review a restaurant. I have however dealt with different “food critics” in the past. I believe and have experienced a guideline of how they try to have a fair and nonbiased review. If they had a terrible experience but want to be fair, they normally give the restaurant a few days to work out the problems (could the staff have been shorthanded because of a flu epidemic, did the cook quit and they haven’t found a replacement and so forth) and not come back within a 24 hour period to do a second review (which you did) because that really doesn’t give a business ample time to fix the problem.
I would still like to thank you for giving me the opportunity for the review. I wish we had not “dropped the ball” and it turned out differently, but thank you anyways and once again my apologizes for such a terrible time.
Thank you and a response to the questions we have will be expected.
JOHN RA, Tomo Sushi owner

Wasabi wraps influences from 3 cultures into standout dish

Wasabi Sushi and Grill manages to roll together elements of Korean, Japanese and communism in an item at the back of the menu called the Kimchi Roll and end up with something surprisingly American.
The Kimchi Roll ($6.50) is a typical maki roll of pressed seaweed paper and rice, but it’s bundled around a core of rich, salty Korean barbecue beef (bulgogi) and spicy pickled cabbage (kimchi). The maki roll is all Japanese. The beef and kimchi inside are the national dishes of Korea. And the audacity to wrap them all together smacks of the USA.
“When I opened,” owner Jay Lee told me as I sat at his bar, “all the soldiers told me I had to do the Kimchi Roll. So I did.”
A strange request for soldiers? Not really. That’s where the communism comes in. The Korean War may have ended in 1953, but the United States never left. About 30,000 American troops are stationed there now, guarding the border with North Korea. After a stint, many are stationed in Colorado Springs.
It’s easy to imagine soldiers in Seoul falling in love with hot, grilled bulgogi and sour, spicy kimchi, then asking a chef to throw it in a roll. After all, from Hot Pockets to Pixy Stix, Americans clearly like their food wrapped up.
It’s just as easy to imagine the Korean chef saying “sure” since the Korean version of the sushi roll, called gimbap, has long included meat, eggs, vegetables and just about anything else. (In Japan, rolls tend to be much more traditional and minimalist with rolls that typically contain only tuna, salmon or cucumber.)
Whoever started it, the Kimchi Roll was a winning team, and grunts stationed overseas brought back a craving for it. Which just goes to show, foreign policy affects the palate, even generations later. It’s probably a good idea only to get mired in countries that have good food.
Anyway, the Kimchi Roll landed in Colorado Springs when Lee, formerly of the Sushi Ai restaurant near Fort Carson, opened the place in August. (It may be served elsewhere, but I haven’t seen it.)
The new Wasabi is a scrappy neighborhood strip mall sushi place. It doesn’t have the sleek dining room of some bigger competitors, or the bestquality care of a few tiny, onechef gems, but it does have fun, dependable favorites such as the Kimchi Roll that seem to have made it a regular stop for the neighbors.
The chef seems to know almost everyone walking through the doors, and even on odd weeknights, Wasabi has a steady business.
Much of it is takeout, which you understand soon after sitting down at a table. The harsh neon lighting casts a pallid glow that will remind many of sitting through a long standardized test. What the wall art lacks in skill, it makes up in sheer size and brightness.
The service is all over the place, from creepily attentive to neglectful. After asking three times in the first five minutes whether we knew what we wanted to order, the young, scruffy server rarely returned, leaving piles of dirty dishes and some sides undelivered.
It’s worth sitting at the bar to avoid as much service as possible, or calling ahead and getting food to go (Wasabi also delivers).
The menu has the standards, such as chicken teriyaki ($6.25) and Katsudon ($13.95) but also a surprising array (considering how small the kitchen is) of less common dishes — such as chicken wrapped in rice paper ($12.95) — and two full teppan tables where chefs can juggle knives over searing hot metal (I didn’t see it in action.)
The sushi ($3.50-$4.95) is dependable. Rolls never get ridiculously large and ricey (as more and more tend to these days) and are made with care by Lee.
Sushi pieces are generally precise and tasty. Ask Lee what’s fresh and he’ll steer you in the right direction. On his recommendation, we had some deep, dark, garnet-red blue-fin ($4.95) that had the ethereal, slightly minerally bite of good tuna.
Other things leave you wanting. The tempura tended toward heavy and greasy, and the fried shrimp came with thick, dark veins.
The Sunomono Salad (big chunks of octopus, shrimp and crab, $5.95) came with blocks of fake crab, which is expected in a California roll but a letdown when whole and unadorned.
I was set on never coming back until we ordered the Kimchi Roll.
It’s one of those mongrel concoctions that sushi snobs wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot chopstick. (They would then explain to you that sushi should really be eaten by hand.) It’s too spicy and salty and bold, with a marinade about as delicate as a stroller ride from Britney Spears.
But I like the melding of cultures in it. I like the history it represents. Plus, it’s delicious — a guilty pleasure like roadside jerky or funnel cake — and if you want, you can get the whole thing deep fried, which makes it truly American.

[CORRECTION: The review should have said that Adam's Mountain Café serves fish
and chicken, but not red
meat. Correction ran 4/7/2007.] Adam’s Mountain Café, with its vegetarian-friendly, socially conscious vibe, is such a vital part of Manitou Springs that if it ever left, Earth would probably rumble and swallow the town in a fiery cataclysm.
Fortunately, Adam’s has moved only down the block.
And its new space, in the under-renovation Manitou Spa building, strikes a perfect balance between Manitou’s old, quirky Birkenstock weirdness and its rising yuppie tide of inns and lofts.
Some things at the new Adam’s have changed — generally for the better — but the fantastic menu has wisely stayed more or less the same.
In the new cafe, the long dining room windows reach up to the high ceiling. Beyond them, a patio tucked between two of Manitou’s century-old stone bridges on Ruxton Creek offers an unmatched view of the foothills.
Adam’s kept the mismatched tables and tiny terra cotta pots of succulents that lent the old address a certain groove. It kept the drawings by cheery Gandalf-looking local artist Charles Rockey. It also kept the eight-seat “community table,” where diners can rub elbows with local pagans, flatland tourists and whomever else has the munchies for huevos rancheros but no reservations.
Adam’s food strikes the right balance — healthful but not preachy, gorgeous without any hint that it knows how good it is. At a recent dinner over flickering candles, my wife and I shared a heaping plate of smoked salmon enchiladas ($9.50) and Thai Prawns with Mango and Mint ($18).
The salmon brimmed with the sophisticated spice of home-smoking, mellowed by mild melted cheddar and sweet corn. Like most items on the a la carte menu, it was a real value. We ate until stuffed and still took most of it home.
The shrimp was perfectly cooked just a few seconds past raw, resting on a vibrant, delicious nest of diced carrots, sliced cucumber, fresh mango, red onion, garlic, roasted peanuts, Thai chiles, cilantro and some of the best noodles in town. I can’t think of a Thai place that can stand up to it.
What makes Adam’s such a great place, though, is that the same thought and care are put into the most peripheral dishes. The lime chipotle vinaigrette on the house salad has the simple expressiveness of a Miles Davis riff — not too many notes, just the right ones.
A humble appetizer of shiitake, oyster, porcini and portobello mushrooms under bubbling fresh mozzarella with fresh baked crackers on the side ($8) offers a beguiling, rich earthiness that only comes from great ingredients.
Adam’s version of the apple crisp, which at some restaurants is a dumping ground for mealy, moribund fruit embalmed in sugary goo, proves an aromatic delight of nutmeg and cinnamon with a fantail of tart, crisp apple slices standing in a pool of raspberry puree.
I was gushing with so much praise during the meal that my wife put her hand on mine and said, “You can’t like everything. You’re supposed to be a critic.”
“OK,” I said. “I don’t really like the wine glasses.” Then we dove back into the crisp.
At the next table, a server was explaining that Adam’s is really better-known for breakfast. Reservations are a must.
Listen to the servers. They’re good. Very good.
Not surprisingly, so is the breakfast. The famous huevos rancheros and the almond French toast with real maple syrup are well-honed crowd pleasers.
It pains me that Adam’s refuses to serve meat — not even the most Earth-friendly breakfast bacon. A few slices of hog would really jazz up that French toast. But I guess being a vital part of a community means standing by your convictions. Manitou didn’t get where it was by marching in step with the majority. If keeping the town weird means no smoked sow’s belly at breakfast, then, hey, let your freak flag fly.

House of Yakitori No. 4 nails ancient art of chicken skewers

Atheory started to form over steaming hot, sticky rice and yakitori skewers at House of Yakitori No. 4 last week: A sure sign of a great hole-inthe-wall chicken joint in Colorado Springs is a weird mural.
Exhibit A: Wild Bill’s Buffalo Wings on North Academy Boulevard, a sad little strip mall slot that probably serves the best hot wings in town beneath a full-wall mural of a chicken shooting Colonel Sanders.
Exhibit B: House of Yakitori No. 4 on South Nevada Avenue, an even sadder little strip mall slot that serves Japanese-style grilled chicken beneath a full-wall mural of a scattering of hens and chicks pecking at the feet of caricatures of Japanese chicken people (thick glasses, kimonos and all) serve skewers of yakitori to guests while a Hokusailike Mount Fuji looms in the background.
Naturally, the owners are Thai. But the hot, fresh, cheap sticks of yakitori (Japanese for “grilled bird”) at House of Yakitori No. 4 are first-rate. The bits of chicken stacked on skewers and marinated in soy sauce, sweet sake and sugar have a light, crispy bite from the grill that leaves you craving more.
Of course, two chicken places don’t prove a theory, but they can spark one. I’ll be on the lookout for more.
In the meantime, these restaurants have more than wall art in common.
Yakitori is essentially the Japanese hot wing. It’s quick snack food grabbed on the way home, usually washed down with cold beer. Its not too much, but it’s sweet and salty and tides you over.
The No. 4 at the end of House of Yakitori comes from the fact that there are four incarnations in Colorado Springs, all once run by the same owner, but no more. Before a friend steered me to House of Yakitori No. 4, I hadn’t had yakitori since I was a kid. To me, yakitori always seemed like gateway Japanese — a way to enjoy the cuisine without touching your lips to anything with tentacles. After all, everyone likes meat on a stick. Whether you call it satay, shish kebab or souvlaki, something deep and primal, perhaps dating back to our campfire-cooking common ancestors, makes nibbling at spears of flesh irresistible. I doubt the corn dog would have had much of a career in a bun.
Anyway, it was with delight that I grabbed a table with a couple of friends at dinner last week. House of Yakitori No. 4 is a typical mom and pop Asian restaurant — neat, spare, generally quiet at dinner with mom, dad and the kids all helping out, and a table near the back scattered with homework, crossword puzzles and cell phones for when business is slow. At No. 4 the table held what appeared to be two bridal magazines and a book titled “Living Buddhism.”
The menu is simple: chicken or beef, either grilled or deep fried, teriyaki, a scattering of noodles and egg rolls, sticky rice and almost nothing green beyond the shredded cabbage that seems to accompany every yakitori plate in North America. It’s so rudimentary, you get the idea that the business could be a street stall if zoning would allow it.
Most menu items, such as the panko-crusted chicken ($8.25), are quite good, if plain. A few things, such as the Tatsuta (marinated, deep-fried steak cubes, $4.50) are much too salty. The only real bummer is a lack of liquor license, so you can’t pair this traditional bar food with a beer. No matter.
The service is good, and food is phenomenally cheap. (The four teriyaki skewer dinner special with rice, soup and salad is $7.25; a slightly smaller lunch special is $4.61.) There’s a lot to like in a fast plate of grilled, salty chicken tempered by sticky rice. It’s simple, filling, and relatively good for you. You won’t find anything fancy at No. 4, but that’s not the point.
Sometimes you go out to eat for a celebration. Sometimes you just go because you’re hungry.
And when you’re hungry, rich, sweet beef teriyaki with yakitori on the side ($10.05) is a welcoming find.
You don’t need a mural to appreciate plates of hot, simple food. But it doesn’t hurt.

“Can I get you something to drink?” the server at the sushi bar of Tomo Sushi asked.
We knew right away what to order. If anything goes better with sushi than big, cold bottles of beer or sake, it’s big, cold bottles of beer AND sake.
“Oh sorry, we don’t have our liquor license yet,” she said.
It was a sign of what was to come, which was — nothing.
No server showed up to offer appetizers. Or entrees, or desserts. I had come with an ex-sushi waitress and a self-proclaimed wasabi-holic. When we asked the young sushi chef chopping veggies in front of us to make us whatever he felt like (a traditional sushi bar request) he nodded, then peeled cucumbers for 10 minutes before saying, “So are you going to order something?”
Tomo is a spacious, hip-looking new Japanese restaurant across from The Citadel mall with a menu almost indistinguishable from places like Jun, Sushi Ai and Sakura. Overall the food is fairly good. But the service, like the liquor license, is sorely lacking.
We made an excuse (sun in the eyes) to move from the young sushi chef to chairs in front of the head chef, a stern man the staff called Mr. Lee.
Tomo is Japanese for “friend.” Mr. Lee was as friendly as a border guard.
Behind the glass fish case, he toiled like a sweatshop worker — brow gleaming wet, eyes fixed humorlessly on his task, knife flying through fillets of squid, octopus tentacles and tuna with the merciless, tender precision of a sewing needle.
For all the attention he gave the fish, he paid none to us. Not so much as a “konnichi wa,” which is good because I’m pretty sure he’s Korean.
Anyway, there was no polite entry to ask if he’d put together a sampling of the freshest fish. Eventually, we just marked an X next to a few maki (rolls), nigiri (sushi pieces), and a sashimi combo (just plain raw fish), and slapped it on top of the bar.
But what about appetizers? My former-sushi-waitress companion tried to take charge. “Do we order from the menu with you or the waitress?” she asked.
“Waitress,” Lee grunted.
She flagged one down after a few tries and asked for a plate of edemame, spring rolls, tempura and shrimp dumplings.
“It will be right out,” the server said. It arrived 45 minutes later, lukewarm.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lee hunched over order after order. When he put the finishing touches on ours, he wordlessly handed three huge platters over the glass.
Our chopsticks hovered over traditional slices of fish on rice — inspired by the Japanese penchant for simple, defining elegance (they pay $100 for the perfect watermelon).
We couldn’t resist also ordering a sampling of the audacious, multilayered, often deepfried rolls that have become the common currency of Colorado sushi joints — inspired by the American penchant for adding calories to calories (we pay 39 cents more for bacon on the double cheeseburger). All were good. If the coaster-sized slices of rose roll (spicy tuna and shrimp tempura topped with flying fish roe) were too big to actually eat and fell apart in our chopsticks, it wasn’t Mr. Lee’s fault. He was only giving the people what they wanted.
The ex-waitress nitpicked between bites. The sashimi should be thinner. The sushi should come bit by bit, on small plates, not all at once. The wasabi-holic was thrilled with the big, absorbent rolls.
But I wasn’t listening to either. I was lost in the wonder of good raw salmon — sweet, buttery, somehow soft and firm like a ripe pear — more like marzipan than meat, with no hint of fishiness. Ordering sushi in Colorado is still a game of roulette. Often it is fairly tasteless. Sometimes you just wish it were. But this was pretty good.
It was a brief glance of the heaven a good raw-fish experience can bring, then we plummeted back to purgatory.
Behind the stack of empty platters, we waited for the bill. And waited. And waited. The rest of the room seemed to also be behind on orders. The one thing the flustered servers didn’t seem to have trouble with was ignoring us.
“Amateurs,” the former sushi waitress scoffed.
I went back a day later for lunch and didn’t have any major problems, but I was also only one of three tables.
Maybe Tomo will work out its kinks. Maybe Mr. Lee will loosen up a bit. But it might not be a bad idea to let them practice on someone else, because one of the only comforts for such absent-minded service is a good tall drink, and that won’t be an option for at least another month.

What is it with critics always dissing chains? We scoff at Chili’s or Applebee’s or Outback, while the rest of the nation stampedes in for the Bloomin’ Onion. Obviously we’re out of touch.
To reconnect, when I went to scope out the new Saltgrass Steakhouse on Academy Boulevard, I invited a friend from the Army’s Special Forces.
Special Forces guys don’t get caught up in things like plating or frisee. They like steak. Plus, he was about to ship out to Iraq, so I figured he wouldn’t be too picky. It would be a great way to shortcircuit any snootiness.
I should have known things were going to go badly when our chatty server called the Special Forces guy “Sunshine,” then joked that he was ordering a girlie drink because he opted for a 12-ounce beer instead of a 22-ounce, $10.99 margarita (which turned out to be woefully unboozy.) Saltgrass is an arm of Landry’s Restaurants Inc., which also owns the concept restaurants including Rainforest Café and Landry’s Seafood House, among others.
The concept at Saltgrass is “Texas to the bone.” Think Outback with a different drawl. Instead of Aussie-tizers, the menu has Lone-starters. Instead of the Melbourne Porterhouse, it has the Silver Star Porterhouse. Instead of a kangaroo motif, the place serves Certified Angus Steak and other Texas victuals in a bunkhouse of distressed wood festooned with old Texas license plates, animal heads, cow-horn chandeliers and a mural of white guys on the prairie. Corporate country wafts from hidden speakers. The servers all say y’all (even though ours told us she was from California.)
It’s important not to get distracted, though. A steak place should be judged on one thing: steak. Unfortunately, Saltgrass’s is pretty mediocre.
We tried the top sirloin with shrimp ($19.99) the center-cut filet mignon (7-ounce, $19.99) the prime rib (8-ounce, 15.99) and the porterhouse (24-ounce, $25.99.)
Each cut was cooked to exact specifications. Rare is really rare. Medium-well is a thin line of pink. They have it down to a science, and the steaks look delicious too — seared mahogany crust and a dollop of garlic-herb butter oozing down the black grill lines.
But the Certified Angus Steak, something the chain touts as setting it above competitors, is only OK. Prime rib was the best.
“I think this is about what you should expect from middleof-the-road steakhouse. I mean, it’s decent,” said the Special Forces guy as he chewed.
It wasn’t the caliber of marbled, juicy beef that stops conversation, but, to be fair, it also costs less, and the place was packed with chowing families.
The kitchen’s non-steak dishes are pretty forgettable (even by the staff, which didn’t notice that half the shrimp on one of our plates was translucent raw.)
We also tried the barbecue baby back ribs and the grilled chicken breast ($16.99.) Each was like the top 40 country playing in the restaurant: tender, but too laden with corporate decision-making to have much interesting flavor. This menu is Carrie Underwood, not Johnny Cash.
It probably wasn’t always that way. The founder of the first Saltgrass had to ask his friends for money to open on the historic Salt Grass Trail in Houston.
A few successful years later, he sold to a real estate investment firm that expanded the chain, then flipped it to Landry’s, which owns more than 300 restaurants.
Now, it’s been so streamlined by spreadsheet folks that the desserts brought out on a tray to entice diners are made entirely of plastic, from the whipped cream and cherry on the brownie Sunday, to the strawberry drizzle over the key lime pie. One of my companions actually picked up the pie and waved it around, giggling.
If any of that original Saltgrass still lives in the chains spreading across the country, its like that husk of Anakin Skywalker encased in the black plastic, imperial aspirations of Darth Vader.
Or is this me falling into the knee-jerk habits of a critic?
I don’t think so.
As we ate, the Special Forces operative was reading lips across the room, gathering intelligence.
“See that guy talking to the manager?” he said. “He didn’t like his steak, either. He says the service wasn’t good. The girl didn’t get a candle on her cake for her birthday. He says he’s disappointed. I think he’s trying to talk some items off the check.”
This guy is good. Wish we could say the same about the restaurant.

Canned ham gets day in the sun at authentic Hawaiian restaurant

The Spam sushi is a fitting introduction to L&L Hawaiian Barbecue.
That’s right, Spam sushi.
Technically, the slice of canned ham wrapped in sticky rice and seaweed with a splash of soy sauce ($1.89) is musubi, not sushi. But the only real difference is the absence of wasabi and the presence of a four-letter meat that’s usually used on the mainland as a punch line.
This is authentic island cuisine. Odd as it may seem, Hawaiians love Spam. They eat more per capita (about six cans a year) than any state. You can order Spam platters at Burger King, and Spam musubi is sold everywhere from sushi bars to 7-Elevens.
The musubi is surprisingly tasty in an odd Pacific Rimtrailer park-fusion sort of way. Salty. Hammy. Seaweedy. But good.
That’s why it’s a good intro to L&L Hawaiian. The whole menu is real Hawaiian comfort food without any makeup — not the touristy pineapple luau show you might expect from a slick-looking, fast, casual Hawaiian spot on Powers Boulevard (if you want that, try Rumbi’s Island Grill on North Academy), but the food you might find at a drive-in in a blue-collar corner of Honolulu.
L&L is not going to sweep the Spam, or anything else, under the mat.
There is not a pineapple in sight. Instead, mayonnaiseladen mounds of macaroni salad sit alongside juicy, thinly sliced, Korean-style grilled beef short ribs and sweet chicken teriyaki.
The Spam doesn’t stop with musubi. Steaming bowls of ramenlike Saimin soup ($2.89) arrive with the pink pork squares bobbing in the broth.
L&L started in Honolulu as a chain serving “plate lunches” to locals. On the islands, ordering the plate lunch will get you two scoops of rice, one of macaroni salad and choice of meat (often beef or chicken teriyaki, Japanese-style breaded chicken, smoked pork or a hamburger). When L & L expanded to California in 1999, it tacked “Hawaiian Barbecue” onto its name because no one on the mainland knew what the heck a plate lunch was. The formula must be a winning one. The chain keeps growing. One hundred seventy five locations later, L&L landed in Colorado Springs.
The bright, ocean-blue and sunset-yellow walls lend the strip mall restaurant a tropical mood, even on a winter day. The counter staff welcomes everyone with an “aloha.” The trash-bin doors are all are printed with “Mahalo” (“thank you”), and dogeared copies of The Honolulu Advertiser sit on the counter.
The menu holds a number of delights, though most arrive as crashing tsunamis of meat.
The Barbecue Mix Plate (thin cuts of beef, ribs and chicken grilled with teriyaki sauce, $7.85) is seductively sweet and shot with sodium, but the fatty cuts (the chicken is boned thighs with the skin still on) seem to drown in their own grease, and the starchfest of macaroni and rice on the side isn’t much of a lifeline. The Seafood Combo (fried shrimp, fried mahi mahi and choice of grilled meat, $8.50) is as good and bad for the same reasons.
Kalua Pork ($7.10), slowcooked, shredded and richly smoky, is light in comparison and absolutely delicious. For a traditional island experience, get the combo plate with Kalua and Lau Lau ($9.75), a thick pork chop slow-steamed in a wrapper of taro leaves. The sweet, soft, slimy leaves are even more of an acquired taste than the Spam sushi.
“They’ve got a little musk to them,” I said when a friend and I tried the taro.
“They’ve got a lot of musk to them,” she said.
“A little like horse breath,” I said.
“Yeah, in a way, I can taste that,” she said.
The leaves went unfinished, though people I’ve talked to love them.
All plate lunches have a “mini” option ($4.95-$5.75) that’s plenty filling.
L&L also has lighter plates ($7.75) served with salad instead of scoops of macaroni and rice, but the light plates are marked by the same decidedly un-chainy Hawaiian oddness. (Salmon patty or unshelled shrimp anyone?)
But in the end, the odd authenticity of L&L is what makes it a cool experience, and the good value makes it worth coming back. The service is great, too.
The question is whether the Powers Boulevard crowd will buy “real Hawaiian” or whether it’s just too far from our mainland, pineapple-laden notion of paradise.
It would be ironic that Spam, the symbol of bland Middle American suburban culture, would be too exotic for the bland suburban cultural hub that is Powers, but stranger things have happened — Spam sushi among them.

Fargo’s pizza, games, Old West theme fun at any age

I’ve been avoiding Fargo’s Pizza Co. for more
than a decade.
Not because I don’t like it. Like almost every kid who grew up in Colorado Springs after this East Platte Avenue pizza palace was built in 1973, I was a regular at Fargo’s. Many birthdays were marked with a hot pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza demolished to the old-timey jingles of Fargo’s player piano, and fists full of quarters wasted on Zaxxon and Ms. Pac-Man in the game room. It was one place the whole family agreed on.
But the past is a tricky thing. Looking back from the present, the past tends to grow smoother, sweeter and smarter, until it floats over the hurried tackiness of the present on angel wings. And when you try to recapture it, it crashes back to Earth in dull shards of disappointment. Like Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again.”
You shouldn’t even try.
And yet on a recent evening, I found myself at the Fargo’s counter, ordering a hot pepperoni-andmushroom pizza with quarters clinking in my pocket. And I’m glad to say, I was wrong.
Turns out you can go home again. And you can have a good, wellpriced dinner, put the smack down in the game room and leave with leftovers.
I invited two budding reviewers — Emma, 12, and Abigail, 8. After all, Fargo’s is a family place. One of its main attractions is that kids can be kids without the atmosphere slipping into Chuck E. Cheese’s tot-pandering creepiness.
Abigail started by saying she would eat only cheese pizza. Just plain cheese. “I hate everything else,” she said. A tough critic.
Emma said she would eat anything, she didn’t care. Apparently, she didn’t even care about basic conventions of nutrition. When I asked her to reconnoiter the salad bar ($5.25, all you can eat) she returned with a mound of croutons, bacon bits and shredded cheese pinning what appeared to be a single leaf of lettuce. She also had somewhere found a bowl of chocolate pudding.
“You can’t have pudding before your dinner,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said.
Times haven’t changed that much.
A little back story: Fargo’s was one of a few lavish theme restaurants erected during some warped sense of optimism in the early 1970s. Only months separate the opening of it and massive Mexican cousin to the north, Casa Bonita. The legend behind Fargo’s, dreamed up by its Missouri owners, involved a “hard drinking, straight shooting, free thinking gambler” from the Wild West named Fargo, who falls in love with a genteel, young Italian girl and opens a dance hall-type restaurant that seats 500.
Think of Fargo like Al Swearengen at the Gem Saloon, except with pepperoni instead of prostitutes.
Like thousands of theme restaurants that followed, Fargo’s tacked all kinds of crazy stuff to the walls. And since Fargo’s got in on the game early, it seems to have scored some of the best stuff. Bison and elk heads compete for wall space with antique sixshooters, Victorian whalebone hair combs and old sepia photographs.
Female employees flounce around in long skirts and frilly lace blouses. You order at the counter and (to the endless delight of young kids) your number magically appears on one of several mirrors around the restaurant when it’s time to pick up your pizza.
The vast, two-story dining room has enough nooks to make it feel cozy.
The junior reviewers staked out a big, round booth in a corner. While we waited for our number to appear, Abigail said “Let’s go see the creepy lady.”
Sure enough, likenesses of Fargo and his young bride, cast in wax with decidedly 1970s hairdos, sat gazing into each other’s eyes at their own table along the balcony, as they have since Fargo’s opened.
The two aged pretty well. They were a little dusty, and I couldn’t help but notice their drinks were empty (a shame), but otherwise, I, like Abigail, thought they looked as creepy as ever.
Other aspects of Fargo’s have aged well, too, including the food. The pizza ($10.85-$15.55 for a 13-inch) is thin crust, light and crispy with the delicious character of dough that hasn’t been hurried and a coarse underside caked with cornmeal.
There’s nothing fancy going on with the toppings — no goat cheese, no truffle oil, no local organic heirloom turkey sausage. The menu hasn’t changed much in decades, but the ingredients are fresh and the pizzas are remarkably hot. For something new, try the Big Red, covered in Canadian Bacon and fresh slices of tomato.
It’s best to stick with the pizza. Fargo’s spaghetti with marinara or Alfredo sauce ($3.80-$6) has a toned-down seasoning most fitting for young, picky eaters. But the young, picky eaters I had with me pushed it aside for more pizza. The few doughy hoagies here, too, are really beside the point.
But don’t write off dessert. Fargo’s strikes gold with its classic and not-corrected-forinflation Karat Cake ($1.25, yes, $1.25 per slice, $5.75 for a whole cake!), baked on location with moist shreds of carrot and a rich, but not sugary, cream cheese frosting.
Kids can opt for tall hot fudge sundaes ($2.50).
The junior reviewers both gave the place two thumbs up.
Bring quarters to feed the piano (actually, a nickelodeon, since it includes a half-dozen other instruments) and quiet pleas for arcade coins.
Time has added more raunch, blood and bytes to the arcade but has taken away none of the fun. After whipping the young reviewers in a race car game, we hit the old photo booth and the creaky, antique fortune teller in her glass booth. I put in my quarter, the fortune teller waved her hand over a glass ball and my fortune spit out on a card.
“Beware of Friday the 13th,” it said.
I was pretty sure she gave me the same fortune about 20 years ago. But that’s fitting in a place where the future looks so much like the past.

The foodie revolution has finally reached that most generic of boulevards — Powers.
It arrives in the form of Fuse, a “new American cuisine” bistro serving strawberry goat cheese salad and chipotle pesto in a strip mall between a burger joint and a multiplex.
At its essence, Fuse is an economy-class Blue Star — the Toyota Corolla to the downtown restaurant’s Lexus. If the menu lacks the luxurious features and precise engineering, it still manages to pack a number of enticing options into a sleek, affordable package.
The one-page menu ranges from buttery grilled artichokes to cedar-grilled wild salmon. It’s a welcome addition to the city’s east side, which has been spinning its culinary wheels for too long on bland chains that tend to value caloric shock and awe over creativity.
Fuse is immediately inviting. Candles flicker in well-placed nooks. Local photography dots the rich ochre walls. Everything from the tables to the plates to the music exudes an understated hipness. The only clues that the place was recently a Mexican restaurant are the ceiling of exposed vigas and the generous house margaritas ($7).
The food is a notch above anything in the neighborhood and the service is some of the best in town. On a busy night, a server swung by with a complimentary plate of corn bread, still steaming from the oven. When we looked up in surprise, she said, “A big table just ordered and it may be a while. I didn’t want you to get hungry.” The cornbread was sweet and delicious, with a perfect caramelized crust, and the entrees arrived right on time, anyway.
When a vegetarian asked if she could have the chipotle pesto pasta without chicken, the server said, “You should try it with portabella mushrooms. We did that for the first time a few days ago, and it was awesome.” She was right.
Chef Amy Sheldon has put together a smart, hard-working, tasty menu. The calamari ($9) is a study in perfection — sauteed until springy but not tough, with just a rumor of breading and a generous lemon wedge on the side. The hummus ($6) is a blend of white beans instead of standard chickpeas, which lends it an unexpected creaminess complemented by a light confetti of cucumber and tomato and fat wedges of smoky grilled flatbread. The herb-roasted half chicken ($12) is a classic bistro delight done right. Slow cooking turns the skin a crackling bronze and makes the moist meat slide off the bone.
The chef lets the salmon with cider mus- tard glaze ($14) leave the kitchen a bit rare — a bold move, and in this case, the right one.
The chipotle pasta ($10) is a bath of creamy sauce over penne brimming with the sharp, ancient flavor of smoked jalapeños and enough melted white cheddar on top to make stealing a forkful from a dining companion a stingy but worthwhile move.
A few things need tweaking:
The sirloin flatbread ($11) — a sliced steak served over a bed of spring greens, roasted red peppers and gorgonzola, all on a platform of stiff flatbread is unnecessarily hard to eat. Picking the whole dish up like a tostada is asking for trouble. Eating the salad and steak first lets the bread get soggy.
The Strawberry Fields salad ($7) is a fun combination of greens, candied almonds, goat cheese and berries, but it’s too big to be an appetizer and too bare to be an entree.
As we were finishing dessert of croissant drizzled in chocolate, owner Rodney Lane made the rounds, asking how everything was, and telling us he thought enough people on the east side yearned for a place to sit down for an hour for a great meal to make the business work.
At the windows behind him, crowds thronged into the multiplex, but we hoped he was right.
If not, Fuse is hedging its bets. On some Thursdays, it hosts speed dating.

Disorder, so-so sandwiches distance Cathy’s from N.Y.

For all its sophistication, all its money, and all its decadent $45-just-for-the-soup restaurants, New York has only managed to export its most bluecollar meals: the floppy New York pizza slice, the humble bagel and the Jewish deli sandwich.
Of them, the sandwich is sometimes the hardest to find. In its classic form, it consists of a skimpy swipe of mustard and two woefully inadequate, thin slices of bread pulled into the orbit of a massive heap of hot corned beef or pastrami. The whole thing is held together by one slender toothpick poking from the top as a sort of monument to the futility of fitting the thing in your mouth. But where can you find such a beast? The Jewish deli is one of the few ethnic-restaurant niches the corporate world has yet to conquer. To get a real sandwich, depending on your tastes, the pickings are slim, unless you go to Denver or other cities with large Jewish populations. So I was delighted when I spied an ad for Cathy’s Deli. There, under the words “Best Corned Beef & Pastrami in Town” was a pinup of that awesomely meaty sandwich, toothpick and all.
I had to go.
Unfortunately, like everything from Michael Bay flicks to mail-order brides, the real thing rarely lives up to the ad.
The little restaurant in a new strip of shops in the North Powers retail megaplex has sunny yellow walls and hip corrugated metal accents that make it look more like a smoothie bar than a stereotypical bleak Jewish deli. (One of my favorite delis, Katz’s in New York, makes most third-world airport waiting areas look cheery by comparison.) But so what? The owner of Cathy’s, (that would be Cathy Anderson) is from sunny California. And besides, as far as I was concerned, she could nail Cabbage Patch dolls to the wall as long as the pastrami was good. But the pastrami ($7.99 for a combo) was only OK, lean but not flavorful, and the service felt clunky.
At the counter, Cathy hands diners a multiple-choice sheet, where they mark what kind of bread, meat, cheese, condiments and sides they want, then what style of sandwich — melt, dip, Reuben, wrap, etc. The whole thing can be confusing. It’s not unusual to see a line of people studying their forms and finally getting to the cash register only to go through everything again with Cathy.
“I was never any good at these kinds of tests,” a friend said as he handed over his sheet. “Don’t worry,” said Cathy. “The first time it’s hell. But after that it’s easy.”
Maybe. But the whole thing seems unnecessary. The sheet could turn into a lovable quirk if the sandwiches were really excellent. But like I said, they’re only OK.
The Reuben had two slices of marble rye crisped on the grill and stuffed with just the right gooey dose of sauerkraut, Thousand Island dressing and pastrami. But the pastrami, on several occasions, was so stringy that one bite pulled most of it out from the bread.
The stack of corned beef we ordered on pumpernickel was so thin it didn’t warrant a toothpick. The bread was thick and doughy. Neither had a very memorable flavor. Service is slow, despite what seems like twice as many workers as needed behind the counter. If you go for lunch, expect a wait.
It’s not that Cathy’s is bad. Some dishes are pretty good. The matzo ball soup and the half-dozen other daily soups are made in-house, and the fresh-fried, crispy potato chips are a real treat. The brisket is slow cooked in the back, and the list of sides includes refreshing options such as cucumbers in rice vinegar.
The staff, which six weeks after the place opened still ran around the kitchen like the Marx Brothers, has made huge leaps in skill and efficiency.
But it may not be enough.
North Powers Boulevard is a shark tank of sleek, fast, casual dining. Competition is fierce. “Pretty good” probably won’t keep the doors open among well-tuned corporate predators such as Chipotle or Rock Bottom Brewery. I hope I’m wrong. I want Cathy’s to stick around long enough to live up to the gorgeous sandwich featured in ads. I want a place with thin rye and the highest quality kosher meat in town. I want the area’s few independents in the northeast corner of town to hold their tenuous beachhead. But like one friend said after walking out from a so-so lunch, “You want to root for the underdog, but come on, they have to do their part, too.”

El Poblano’s savory menu of Central American food calls for repeat visits

For all the tiny taquerias tucked in every crevice of Colorado Springs’ Taco Triangle, there isn’t much variety. The Triangle, made up of a slice of aging sprawl between Galley Road, Academy Boulevard and Union Boulevard, is home to what seems like 95 percent of the city’s true Mexican restaurants — places owned by immigrants and catering to immigrants, where English is as rare as a counter that doesn’t sell phone cards.
Adventurous eaters uncover many delights in the Triangle: tongue or beef-cheek tacos folded in steaming soft, corn tortillas with fresh cilantro; rich, red posole soup; tostadas piled with citrusy shrimp ceviche.
But after a while, the same pan-Mexican menu starts to repeat itself like the background in an old “Flintstones” cartoon: tacos, burritos, soup. Specialties and regional dishes are rare. And then there is El Poblano.
The little lunch spot serves the usual Mexican canon, and does it better than most, but it also has a precious list of Central American dishes you almost never see in Colorado.
The humble shop, in a rather dreary strip mall occupied by a Kung Fu center and Mosh Pit Records, bills itself as a pupuseria. Don’t know what a pupuseria is?
I didn’t either until I sat down at one of the tidy dining room’s six small tables. Turns out a pupuseria is a place that serves a sort of Central American hot pocket, called a pupusa, that is the national snack of the owner’s home country, El Salvador. Order one ($1.75), and a basket arrives with a thick disc of masa cornmeal stuffed with gooey white cheese or, even better, a mix of cheese, refried beans and chicharrónes (seasoned, fried pig skin). On the side, you get a hefty jar of spicy, pickled cabbage and carrot, called curtido, which can be eaten on the side or heaped on top. Either way, the relish adds a terrific zing to the humble corn cakes.
Make sure to ask for a bottle of pupusa salsa — a thin, spicy tomato salsa sequestered in the back, which apparently needs to be requested.
Every time I’ve gone to El Poblano (and I really like it, so I’ve gone a lot) I’ve been the only person speaking English, including the staff. I view this as a good thing — proof of quality and authenticity. After all, Central Americans would know best whether the food is any good.
And it is. But if your Spanish is rusty, and you don’t want to take a chance, stick with La Casita.
El Poblano’s torta ($5.50), or Mexican sandwich, is a fat, crusty roll with avocado and melted cheese, tomato and a choice of meats. The carne asada torta arrived with grill-crisped chopped steak spilling from all sides and a deadly, delicious smear of homemade chipotle spread. My friend who ordered it took a bite, then another, then another. When he came up for air, he said, “I could see this winning the best-sandwich contest.”
A real treat here it the mole poblano ($7.50). Over chicken or enchiladas, this complex sauce is so deep, dark and beguiling that not even light can escape.
It’s sweet. It’s bitter. It’s hot. It’s earthy. It’s all things to all parts of the mouth.
I’ll run out of space listing things to try in El Poblano’s long menu. So just go repeatedly. Try everything. Even the tripe. This place deserves to become a regular stop.
Don’t miss the sopes ($1.95). These little handmade barges of masa dough topped with piles of taco ingredients are something like a tostada without the crumbling tortilla.
Don’t miss the blended, flavored aguas frescas ($1.50). And definitely don’t miss the Central American dishes such as deep-fried yucca root with big chunks of chicharrónes and mild salsa ($5.75), or a campesino repast of long wedges of fried plantain served with refried beans and a small wedge of mild white cheese ($4.75.)
Central American food tends to be mild. There’s nothing in the whole place that’s particularly mouth scorching.
The menu also has an entire page of mariscos (seafood) I didn’t have a chance to dive into yet. So I’ll be back.
This is one place in the Taco Triangle where I’d be happy to get lost.

For the big game, give Rhino’s a try; for food, try the pizza next door

It pays to have good neighbors. In fact, the neighbors make the winning play at Rhino’s Sports & Spirits, a sleek new sports bar off Barnes Road, which otherwise might not be worth a visit.
The place looks like a delicious spot to enjoy a game: high ceilings with cool halogen lamps gleaming on a crescent-shaped granite bar, flat screens flickering on every wall and a projection screen the size of your average college dorm room for the big games. You can wear a hoodie and a backward hat and be in good company. There’s Guinness, PBR and Laughing Lab on tap. There’s even a signed Elway jersey (framed, of course) hanging by the door.
The place has all a great sports bar needs. But man, the food.
It seems like either the guy who wrote the menu never stepped in the kitchen or the folks in the kitchen never read the menu. On a recent night, I spotted what I was sure was a winner on the appetizer list: red Hatch jalapeños stuffed with cheese ($6.99.) After all, Hatch, N.M., is known (and known only) for growing some of the best chile peppers on the planet, and red jalapeños, which tend to be sweeter and more nuanced than their green brethren, are a rare treat in a world of frozen, pre-made jalapeño poppers. When they arrived, though, they weren’t red, they weren’t fresh, and unless the New Mexico state agricultural extension has developed a new jalapeño with absolutely no heat or flavor, they weren’t Hatch.
Next up was cedar plank seared ahi tuna ($9.99); it seemed kind to throw something on the sports bar menu for those few people who wander in without a Y chromosome. Mainly, I wanted to know how something could be both seared (cooked very briefly over super high heat) and cooked on a cedar plank (a slow cooking usually reserved for salmon.) It turned out as confused as it sounds. The thin tuna steak arrived a pallid gray, suggesting reheating more than searing. The fish was peppered with an unlikely (and unfortunate) combination of what tasted like cumin and dill. There was no cedar plank in sight.
“I think they got their fishes confused,” my wife said, poking it with a fork. “It’s almost as if they took a couple ideas they liked from other menus and combined them, but never tasted it.”
More-Y chromosome-friendly foods fared better. The hot wings and burgers are about what you’d expect — not fancy, but filling — good enough to keep you covered while watching a game. But stray too far into the exotic and you end up with a fairly flavorless burrito in green chili, which must be made with the same no-heat, no-flavor “Hatch” peppers.
So where does the good part come in? The winning play that saves a good-looking but dull place like Rhino’s?
To mix sports metaphors as poorly as cumin and dill, it’s a pinch hit from a few doors down at NYPD Pizza. You can order a pizza from the Rhino servers (who are quite good). They phone it in, pick it up, bring it to your table and add it to your bar tab. The pizza is that prototypical New York crust that somehow manages to be airy, chewy and crackly all at once. A 16-inch margarita ($14.99) came with just a thin smear of blended tomato, sweet, creamy mozzarella and piles of basil so fresh you could still taste the tinge of anise. It made the place. And as I was eating my third — no, fourth — piece, I couldn’t help but notice that almost everyone in the restaurant (including a guy I’m pretty sure was an owner) was eating pizza, too.

La’au’s Taco Shop has a simple, catchy concept: Take the tried-and-true soft taco and dress it in a Pan-Pacific pile of goodies such as peanut- and miso-marinated grilled chicken with cool green papaya, or mahi-mahi seared with cumin and pepper and tucked under springy napa cabbage with a golden crown of mango.
The unlikely pairings are the brainchild of Joseph Coleman, owner of the Blue Star, and Denver professor Matt Shea. And this seems to be part of Coleman’s plan for world culinary domination. Even with its pesky apostrophes, La’au’s (pronounce la-OWs) seems designed for replication — a Meso-American-Asian fusion Borg ready to spread from its hard-to-find address in the back of Colorado College’s Spencer Center to bourgeoise neighborhoods everywhere. It would be a creepy proposition if the place weren’t so darn phenomenal.
Lunch is served in an ultramod space that’s more Ikea than taqueria. The seats are space-age cubes. The walls are complementary panels of wood and lights. What makes the whole thing really sing, though, is the skill and calculation that goes into the ingredients. The setup is Chipotle-esque:a pared-down menu arranged in trays behind an open counter. Order individual tacos ($1.50-$2.15) or sets of four ($5.50-$7.75), then orchestrate the adding of toppings however you choose.
Start with a corn tortilla or light, crusty flour version made in-house and puffed for a few seconds on the grill. Add your choice of skillfully seasoned meats, such as carne asada in a garlic and citrus marinade, red pepper shrimp or a dynamite shredded pork slow-cooked in ancho chili. Then top it with either napa cabbage or thin ribbons of crunchy green papaya.
Next comes the house-made salsa. Mango-jalapeño salsa has little more than the name implies, and is fantastic on the pork. The roasted corn with red onion, lime, chiles and spices is just as sweet and tangy, but in an entirely different way. The Aji de Peru is a hot mix of garlic, peppers, celery and lime. Dress it all with a flurry of sharp, crumbly cotija cheese and fresh cilantro.
Results can be mixed. For lunch a few days ago I ordered a combo plate that tasted good enough. Then I came back for dinner and another guy working the counter offered different combos that rose to a whole new level.
It was a slow night, so instead of meats languishing in the hot trays, he said “I hope you don’t mind if I cook this up fresh.”
As he threw a thin sheet of steak on the grill he asked how I’d like it done.
“Raw,” I said, and with a few quick flips of the meat over the heat, he set it on the counter and chopped it up.
He combined pork with mango; chicken with papaya and aji; and fish with papaya, mango and corn salsa.
Then he came to the steak, which I’d had before topped with a pico de gallo that was puckeringly sour.
“Honestly, I’m not digging the pico,” he said. So, instead, he packed a tortilla with a simple mix of steak, cilantro and cotija cheese like you might find at a taco truck in Zacatecas. It was awesome.
And the plastic cup margarita ($3.50) he recommended on the side was to perfect match: no extra sugar, just tequila, triple sec and limeade. Other, more fancy margs could learn from this one.
La’au’s has its problems. One of the main ones is that the menu suffers from lack of mobility. There’s no grab-andgo grub such as a burrito that a CC student riding a longboard could munch while skating to class.
Until that and other minor inconsistencies are fixed, Coleman’s culinary Borg may have trouble assimilating the rest of America. Thankfully, if you live in Colorado Springs, you don’t have to wait.

Delicious Italian fare explains little Villa’s lasting success

It takes most good restaurants about a generation to go out of style and die. Places that forge a true connection with customers might last two generations by capitalizing on a kitschy, vintage appeal. But when a place is still going strong after three generations of the same family, it must be a classic.
So it is with Roman Villa, where three generations of the Biondi family have been keeping customers happy with wellpriced, homemade Italian dishes since 1959.
It takes only one forkful of Roman Villa’s steaming lasagna to show you how they do it. It’s a personal lasagna, cooked to order in its own casserole so it doesn’t sit around the kitchen waiting to be reheated. The three layers of meat, cheese and mushrooms arrive at the table billowing steam and puffed up like a soufflé, just daring you to dig in with a fork. When you do, it’s a furnace blast of heaven.
Roman Villa serves the classic canon of Italian dishes that little family restaurants in every city used to serve before The Olive Garden started gobbling them up.
The place is pretty unassuming, outside and in. It’s a squat, cinder block rectangle with a single door. Inside, small benches hug little tables under bulletin boards covered with decades-old Kodachrome customer baby pictures, slowly yellowing with time.
When I walked in, I was struck by how similar it is to the city’s other favorite multigenerational Italian pace, Luigi’s. Both have the same low ceilings and cheap carafes of wine, the same rows of chianti bottles hanging from the ceiling. They straddle a line between blue- and white-collar neighborhoods, drawing fans from each.
“I think they even have the same waiter,” a friend said when we sat down, pointing out that our server had worked at Luigi’s for years.
I asked the guy whether it was true when he swung by our table.
“I know, funny, right?” he said. “When I first walked in here, I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ They’re exactly the same. This is like Luigi’s for the north end.”
So which is better?
“They’re both really, really good,” he said. “This is a little cheaper, though.”
For value, start with the antipasto ($8.95), a Vesuvius-like mound of artichoke hearts, salami, pepperoni, olives, peppers, mushrooms and cheese. Four of us couldn’t finish it.
It set us up for failure on our generous entrees too, not that we didn’t try.
The tortellacci ($11.50) at Roman Villa (as at Luigi’s) is probably the best thing on the menu. The hand-shaped pasta stuffed with cheeses and spinach has a springy lightness anchored by an indulgent, poppyhued tomato, herb and cream sauce. They were so lucious that when I was too full to stomach the single, tiny tortellacci left on my plate, I toted it home in a box.
The handmade ravioli ($11.50) are almost as good and, without the cream sauce, better for you.
The pizzas are small (a large is 12 inches) but hit the spot with a thin, crisp crust and enticing topping options such as roasted red peppers and artichoke hearts.
The Chicken Cacciatore ($11.50) was an unexpected treat. Instead of the standard tomato-tinged sauce, the nicely baked half chicken arrived under heaps and heaps of fresh mushrooms and a sweet, tangy sauce whipped up from white wine and sherry.
The place is small and has an army of regulars. Expect a wait on a weekend. Anyone looking for a hip night out sampling exotic new delicacies will be disappointed in Roman Villa. There is nothing new here, from the basket of bread at the beginning to the sweet pistachio spumoni at the end.
Still, the place has classic appeal. How else can you explain a fierce following now in its third or fourth generation? On a recent weeknight, we scored the last table and watched the servers greet our neighboring diners (one in a Brooks Brothers shirt, one in a Slayer shirt) by name.
Roman Villa is like an old Frank Sinatra record. You’d be surprised how many kinds of people like it, and with good reason. It has a timeless mix of heart and value that, after making it almost 50 years, will probably never go out of style.
“I want to say it’s comfort food,” I told my wife as we walked out to the car. “But that’s just a trite phrase new restaurants use to charge more for macaroni or meatloaf.”
“Yeah,” she said, “But this has been comfort food since before anything was called comfort food. So I think you can get away with it.”

The twin morsels of yellowtail sushi ($4.25) that Shinji Shibuya set in front of me in his tiny sushi bar the other day didn’t arrive with the usual escort of hot green wasabi. And it wasn’t that Shinji forgot.
“Everything must be in balance,” he said with a quiet, self-deprecating chuckle that lets you know he has probably just said something totally serious.
He went back to cutting fish with an ancient-looking wood-handled knife, and I took a bite. He was dead on. The premium tuna needed no more than the dainty swipe of wasabi Shinji had added with the rice. Any more would have drowned out what was next. The fish was firm at first, slightly cool, then in my mouth it suddenly swam with the most amazing, vibrant zing — an unexpected mix of what tasted like fresh lemon with a trace of something metallic, and none of the muskiness that can lurk in average yellowtail.
This was the best tuna I’d ever had.
“Oh, thank you,” Shinji said with a sight nod, not stopping to look up as he placed two limp, glistening, raw sweet shrimp on twin cots of rice ($3.95) and gently reached across to lay them on my plate. They came with soy sauce, but still no wasabi, and tasted as sweet and soft as cake batter.
Shinji’s Sushi Bar isn’t so much about what is there as what isn’t. While American-style sushi continues to grow more elaborately baroque and deep-fried, Shinji’s one-sheet menu is as simple and elegant as the traditional Japanese watercolor landscape hanging at the bar. Where some chefs focus on gimmicks, he focuses on great fish. It’s no wonder the longtime west-side sushi chef has such a following of regulars. Half the diners who find their way to his strip mall address are greeted by name.
These people must be sushi purists because you won’t find much else at Shinji’s. There is no chicken teriyaki, no katsudon, not even lowly tempura. There is just Shinji with his long knife, worn crooked and thin from making what is probably the best traditional sushi in town.
The one-man operation (plus a server who does dishes between waiting tables) is just like the traditional hole-inthe-wall sushi dens in Tokyo, where he learned the trade. “For one year,” he said of his apprenticeship, “I wasn’t allowed to touch fish.”
He was just expected to watch, learn and scrub the counters.
In his second year, he was allowed to go with the chef to the famous Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo to learn the art of selecting the best tuna. By and by he learned the deceptively simple craft he brought to Colorado Springs.
On my first visit, my wife and I sat at the bar, which, unlike most sushi bars, has no refrigerated glass case separating diners from the chef — just a flat counter that makes it feel more like a cooking school than a restaurant.
Shinji aptly plays the part of professor. He even showed us where on the tuna — just to the side of the backbone — he took the cuts for our yellowtail.
To test the place, we ordered the California roll ($4.50). Cheap sushi restaurants use sweet but flavorless Krab. Most places pack the roll with too much rice, assuming diners will just use such a boring item to mop up wasabilaced soy sauce. Shinji did something slightly different.
His roll came with a wonderfully thin veneer of rice wrapped around a bundle of avocado, cucumber, smelt roe and cooked shrimp instead of crab. The combo packed the perfect balance of flavor and crunch. No wasabi mopping required.
“This is terrific,” I said.
“Yes, balance,” Shinji said with a nod.
My wife, who has been complaining about sushi in this city for years, leaned over and whispered, “I’m home.”
Shinji deserves some kind of medal for keeping things in bite-size portions. Recently, I’ve seen rolls at other places grow to nearly the size of DVDs, making them impossible to eat in one bite. The supersize rolls fall apart when dipped and sink into the wasabi-soy bog. At Shinji’s, even more elaborate rolls, such as the rainbow roll draped with tuna, yellowtail and salmon ($14.95) fit your mouth.
The art of Shinji’s is the chef’s well-honed craft applied to admirable ingredients. His sashimi is perfectly sliced on an elegant diagonal to the grain. He is one of the few chefs in town to get his tuna and salmon fresh, not frozen. He makes his own mayonnaise (it has a little soy in it).
Not everyone will be as dazzled with Shinji’s. The service can be slow in this one-man shop. None of the waitresses I’ve seen are quite up to par. The selection is limited. If you want baroque sushi, try Academy Boulevard.
Shinji’s art is more like haiku. Since there is no room to waste, every little piece must sing. And as far as I can tell, everything does.
To truly appreciate the Shinji’s, go on a weeknight, sit at the bar and watch Shinji work. If it’s not too busy, order “omakase” and let the chef pick what sushi you’ll eat.
After nothing but dish after dish of bliss on multiple visits, the plate that finally blew me away was one I didn’t even order. Shinji unwrapped a cache of scallops that had been plucked from the deep, cold waters off Hokkaido, Japan. He sliced the raw, alabaster lumps into thin coins and spread them out on plates on the bar as if he were dealing cards, then he pulled a big jar of tan liquid from his fridge, gave it a quick stir with a long spoon and sprinkled it over the plates.
He handed the scallops (free!) to everyone at the bar, even though no one had ordered them.
I took a bite. The simple brown sauce was like a vinaigrette, but it was exploding with a robust onion flavor closer to French onion soup. A drizzle paired perfectly with the scallops, which packed rich, sweet taste with a slight brassy kick like Long Island oysters.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Onion sauce,” Shinji said.
“Yeah, but what’s in it?” I said.
“Onions,” he said with his wise chuckle.
“Yeah, but what else?”
He chuckled again. “Too many things to say.”

Common menu items have standout flavors, and the Turkish coffee is divine

I’m not sure what’s going on, but downtown Colorado Springs is gradually turning into shawarma central. Whether you’re searching for the Iranian version (Persian Grill), the pan-Mediterranean version (Mediterranean Café) or the hippy chain version (The Pita Pit), it’s almost easier to get this Middle Eastern meat sandwich or a falafel plate in the city center than it is to get a hamburger.
The commonness shouldn’t diminish the arrival of the newest version (Palestinian/Yemeni), Heart of Jerusalem Café #2.
The simple lunch spot, in a former Jamba Juice, may share many menu items with competitors in downtown’s hummus hub, but it has a style and flavor all its own, and some special touches that may push it to the front of the pack.
Consider the Gyrafel Ultimate, a Chipotle-sized foil bundle stuffed with lean beef and lamb shawarma, and chicken and falafel all wrapped in spongy, pita-like grilled lafa bread ($6.99). When I ordered it, I was expecting shawarma (or gyro or whatever you want to call that Mediterranean mix of lamb and beef) carved from a colossal rotating column of sizzling meat. Instead, the loose chunks of shwarma are fresh grilled because, as owner Abdul Nasser explained, the pre-fab meat column often doesn’t cook enough when business is brisk. And business, especially at lunch, is usually brisk.
The result is moist and perfectly spiced. Topped with cool lettuce, tomatoes, and puckering banana peppers, it will make you want to eat the whole thing. And you might as well. Try to save some for later and this behemoth is so tantalizingly delectable that it will taunt you the rest of the day. After wrapping half of mine up in foil I finally gave in just minutes before dinner, stuffing it in my face while driving home from work. Then, not wanting to make excuses, I had to find room for dinner too. Ordering fries with this bulging omnisandwich is wantonly reckless.
The ingredients in the Gyrafel Ultimate play recurring roles in the rest of the simple menu. You can get the Shawarma, the chicken or the falafel solo. The recipes are imported from the original Heart of Jerusalem stand in Manitou Springs, with the welcome addition of inside seating.
The falafel plate ($5.99, which the menu calls “veggie burgers” as if the stuff weren’t all over town) is especially good — very crisp on the outside and light, not mushy, in the center. They come topped with a sauce the cafe calls “gazaziki,” which seems to be a mix of rich, bitter tahini (sesame seed paste) charged with sweet, aromatic roasted garlic that’s hard not to love.
The creamy hummus ($4.99), on the other hand, is not too garlicky, letting the duet of chick peas and good olive oil take center stage.
Heart of Jerusalem is so simple I can describe the whole menu in one review. The only thing I haven’t mentioned (besides chicken nuggets for the kids, $3.59) is the exemplary Babaganouj ($4.99) — a blend of tahini, garlic, olive oil and egg plant so well roasted that you can still taste the flame and char in the rich dip scooped up on a toasted pita point.
No reasonable person would have room for dessert after all this, so it’s worth returning a few hours later for baklava and Turkish coffee.
The baklava ($1.49 per piece) comes in many forms from dense, sweet bricks of walnuts and butter to light, flaky cigar-shaped rolls of phyllo to nests of shredded wheat cupping pistachios with honey.
A sampling pairs well with the Turkish coffee ($2.99 —$3.99), which is easily the most stunning — and overlooked — thing on the menu. Order it and you’ll soon detect the sweet perfume of freshly cracked cardamom pods — a scent almost like a just-peeled orange rind — flooding the room. In the back, they are boiling the coffee in a small, longhandled pot, stirring in sugar, cardamom and heaps of very fine grounds.
Out comes an ornate tray with a dainty demitasse on a saucer and the long-handled pot, called an ibrik, still steaming from the flames. The sweet, spiced contents look as thick and dark as old crankcase oil and tastes like heaven.
It’s enough to make Heart of Jerusalem a threat not only for other shawarma-serving restaurants in the area, but with another close neighbor: Starbucks.

It takes some searching to find best red chili in town

Red or green, that is the question. Really. It’s the official state question of New Mexico, adopted in 1996. And you can’t order a plate of rellenos or enchiladas in our neighboring state to the south without the server asking “red or green?” i.e., “Do you want your plate smothered in spicy, chunky green chili or earthy, smooth red?”
So it was fitting that “red or green?” was the first question foisted on me when I ordered a burrito at Flame Throwers Nuevo Mex Grill, the new kitchen in the rear of Benny’s lounge.
“Or, if you want, you can have it Christmas,” — that’s red and green — chef and owner Patrick Baca said through the narrow slit in the barroom wall where diners order.
It was a good call.
Baca and his wife, Dorothy, who hail from Santa Fe and Albuquerque, respectively, serve simple traditional New Mexican dishes sloshed with green and red chili made from peppers grown on their family farms near Los Lunas and Chimayo.
“I wasn’t aware there was such a thing as New Mexican food,” said a friend I dragged along.
There is. In fact, even within the state, there are stark regional distinctions. The posole and blue corn of Taos is not the mutton and fry bread of Gallup or the cumin-laced Tex Mex of Las Cruces. The one thing they all have in common is a love affair with the long, slender chile pepper. No other state is so enamored with a single vegetable. They roast it, fry it, dry it, grind it, dice it in eggs, mix it in sausage, even sneak it into beer.
At Flame Throwers, the most classic New Mexican dish besides the green chili is the Frito Pie ($5.75), which may sound like a bad Midwestern casserole, but it is a New Mexico bar favorite. It’s a dish of salty corn chips, cheese and steaming red chili layered in a bowl. At Flame Throwers, it comes with a dab of sour cream and a sprinkle of fresh pico de gallo. What could be nothing more than bad chili fries is lifted by excellent red chili, shot through with rich ground peppers from the holy land of red, Chimayo. Chunks of ground beef add a heartiness that makes this bowl the perfect treat to accompany a beer at the bar.
Now, about the bar. Despite being a local institution (right up there on the Local Dive Bar Hall of Fame with Murphy’s Tavern and The Dutch Mill), this place could turn off some diners. Started in 1953 as an Italian restaurant, the bar was run for decades by local sportscaster Benny Raviotta. It has the oldest liquor license in the city but over the years has evolved from a restaurant into a somewhat gloomy lurch for bikers, poker players and just plain drinkers. Today it looks a lot better through a pair of beer goggles. The smell of stale beer pervades the dark rooms. And at lunch there are plenty of patrons parked at the bar get- ting an early start.
Maybe none of this is a deal breaker. I’m just saying, don’t expect Sonterra Grill.
Order the Big-ass Burrito ($6.50), filled with refried beans and chicken or ground beef, a smaller-ass burrito ($6.25), or my favorite, stuffed with crispy fresh fried chicharrones (meaty pig skin, $5). The burrito innards are simple and beside the point. The good stuff is the chili ladled on top. The green is thick and stewy — more like the sauce you see in Pueblo (or El Taco Rey) than in Santa Fe. It’s laced with bits of tomato, big chunks of stewed pork, cumin and some of the best chiles you’ll ever taste.
Baca mixes four kinds of green chiles to get the right flavor and heat level.
“Different regions, different dirt, give chiles really different tastes,” he said. “You have to blend it to get the right flavor.”
Despite Flame Thrower’s name, the heat is manageable. It might even have you reaching for a bottle of chili sauce (which, unfortunately, isn’t there).
The red is even less spicy, but just as tasty. I’ll say it here, and others can argue: This is the best red chili in Colorado Springs. Don’t be afraid to order it neat, in a bowl, with a tortilla on the side.
Not in the mood for chili? Try the fajita burrito ($7.50), with moist, tender strips of ribeye, bell peppers and onions.
Flame Throwers has its drawbacks. The service is prompt and attentive, but you can’t order drinks and food on the same tab. The menu is a hit (especially for bar food), but the kitchen closes at 8 p.m., when the bar is often hopping.
In a location as tough and hidden as the back of Benny’s, a restaurant has to be perfect to have even a shot.
Without quick fixes and a serious awareness campaign, the question here won’t be “red or green?” It will be “to be or not to be?”

Expect lots of sugar in nice restaurant’s well-priced dishes

Unlike a number of restaurants on North Academy Boulevard, Thai Basil is true to its name. Diners may not notice a single chipotle at the Chipotle next door. The beef at the Saltgrass Steak House across the street probably comes from a Midwestern feedlot, not the flavor-enhancing salt grass along the Texas gulf. I don’t even want to get into The Egg and I.
But at Thai Basil, if you order the Thai Basil Shrimp ($10.50), it comes brimming with fresh, sweet, anise-y basil. Same with the Spicy Shrimp with Tomato and Basil ($10.50) and the Thai Eggplant with basil and mint ($7.95.)
Whole, sweet basil leaves, treated as a precious garnish at more expensive places, are everywhere at Thai Basil. It’s just the start of what makes this small, Denverbased chain, which opened in the Springs in January, a great value. A cozy, stylish dining room and an extensive menu with some Chinese and Vietnamese dishes push it even farther toward being a favorite.
There’s only one problem. Thai Basil is a lot like catching a rerun of “Pretty Woman” on cable. It’s fun at first, but quickly becomes too sweet.
Most of the meals are saucy, and most of the sauce is sugary. Even the Pad Thai ($7.95), a mix of shrimp, chicken, scallions, sprouts and peanuts, which is typically tossed in a mixture of chiles, fish sauce, tamarind and egg that adheres to the noodles, instead comes wading in a pool of sweet, not-too-flavorful goo.
This probably isn’t a big problem for most people. Americans love pools of sweet, not-too-flavorful goo. And the place is busy every time I go. But true Thai food aficionados, be warned.
Everyone else, grab a chair. This is a nice place. While most inexpensive Asian shops in strip malls go with a stark dining room motif of scattered chairs and fluorescent lights that needs only scratchy blankets to feel like a hurricane shelter, Thai Basil has painted the walls a warm, kaffirlime green. Service is attentive and sometimes startlingly quick. Portions pretty much guarantee you’ll have another meal to put in the fridge. And the place has added touches, such as microbrews and wines by the glass, that make it feel as if you should be paying more than you are. It’s no wonder Thai Basil has grown from a single Denver spot into a Front Range chain.
Don’t pass up the Satay Chicken ($4.95), a plate of four grilled skewers, shot with an intensely salty marinade that pairs perfectly with a rich, smooth dipping sauce of coconut milk, red curry and searing chiles.
The Seared Scallops in Red Curry ($12.50) come loaded with big, tender mollusk medallions swimming in a similar (but even hotter) coconut curry with a fantastic mix of vegetables: snow peas, sugar snap peas, zucchini, red peppers, tomatoes, broccoli and only a touch of the baby corn and green peppers that often dominate at cheap places.
The Tom Yum Goong soup ($3.25) is loaded with fresh mushrooms, lemongrass and shrimp in a broth with the perfect balance of sour, savory and hot.
Other dishes fall flat.
When I ordered the Lemongrass Mussels ($7.95), I imagined them dancing in a bright chile-lime broth. Instead, they were mired in sweet brown pan-Asian goo with little lemongrass flavor.
The Spicy Shrimp with Tomato and Basil suffered from the same bland, sweet goo overload; I’m pretty sure the main culprit in the smooth sauce was ketchup, and there was no spice.
A little sugar is no surprise. Thai food tends to be sweeter and saucier than the cuisines of its neighbors, but when done right, it serves up a balanced blend of sweet, spicy, sour, salty and bitter.
At Thai Basil, the sweet factor is out of whack across the menu. The kitchen tops each side of white rice with a pineapple slice and a cherry, as if you’d ordered a sundae.
Thai Basil does have a dessert menu sitting on each table, with photos of gigantic prefab slices of American cake (no sticky rice with mango, alas), but on several visits, the otherwise perfect servers never asked whether we’d like any. Perhaps it was a tacit nod to the fact that any more sugar would just be redundant.

Steaksmith does meat right, but sides could use updating

If locals have a long-term love affair with any restaurant in Colorado Springs, it’s Steaksmith. When the Gazette staff suggests others for “Best Steakhouse,” readers always correct us. They also heap “Best Wait Staff” and other laurels on the Academy Boulevard mainstay. The parking lot is reliably full, even on typically slow week nights.
But sometimes in a longterm relationship, the spark starts to fade. Whether it’s husbands and wives, or diners and their favorite restaurant, it’s easy slip into a comfortable but dull routine. Such, I think, is the case with Steaksmith.
It doesn’t have to happen that way. Recent brain and behavior studies delving into how long-married couples can keep the spark alive have found that the most promising strategy is constantly injecting novelty.
Rather than relying only on long-term feelings of attachment, researchers suggest that couples can ignite the same neurons that lit up when they fell in love by trying new and different experiences together that stimulate the brain. It can be anything — a pottery class, a trip, a new restaurant — just as long as it isn’t the same old, familiar, safe, boring thing.
This immediately struck me when I walked into Steaksmith on a recent Friday night. The relationship is solid as a rock. But little has changed in almost 30 years. If Steaksmith wants to keep the spark alive, it’s time to jazz up date night.
Steaksmith is known, above all, for good steak. Its Black Angus beef is aged in-house and hand-cut in the back, then cooked to order with nearly scientific precision. The 12-ounce rib-eye ($26) is so flavorful you don’t need to add the available extras, such as crabmeat and béarnaise. The 8-ounce petite filet ($25) is so tender you could practically eat it with a spoon. The burger ($7) — paradise on a bun. Beef like this never gets old.
But other things Steaksmith once wooed customers with seem to have grown stale.
To see what I mean, call for a reservation — you’ll need it — and stroll through the groovy 1970s blacksmith dining room and past a row of awards on the wall.
Among the awards is a 1981 Gazette Telegraph review touting the unique wonders of the deep-fried avocado appetizer. The writer who penned the review retired years ago, but the battered and deep-fried avocado strips are still here, just as unique as they were a generation ago — mainly because no other restaurants chose to copy the somewhat bland and mushy strips. They could use updating, or maybe the hook.
Next on the “The Thrill is Gone” tour is the salad bar. It’s OK to hold onto a salad bar, even if salad bars have lately become the restaurant equivalent of pleated denim mom jeans — woefully unhip no matter how comforting they are. If customers like it, that’s all that matters. But Steaksmith is a fairly high-end place, and the salad bar can’t match my high school lunchroom’s. Salad trends have moved toward spring greens and house-made vinaigrettes. Steaksmith hasn’t. The bar has a romaine mix, standards including carrot salad and marinated mushrooms, and no dressing that isn’t woefully opaque.
Steaksmith increasingly seems like your father’s steakhouse. It’s the old, well-kept Oldsmobile he rolls around in — comfortable, dependable, but out of date. The clearest place to see the need for change is the bar. On tap, the place has Moosehead and Foster’s, two light imported lagers that taste like every domestic lager. There is no locally brewed Laughing Lab or Red Rocket to mark the microbrew revolution that swept Colorado during the past 15 years. Time for a change.
These throwbacks certainly aren’t enough to end the relationship. Steaksmith is a toptier independent place with commitment to quality, local ingredients and not cutting corners. The service, which uses an amazing team approach, is unbeatable. The homemade cheesecake ($6) and chilled mocha torte ($5.50) prove that they not only do everything from scratch, they do it well. And skewers of broiled scallops ($22) with simple grilled vegetables and a dish of clarified butter on the side are enough to remind diners why they fell in love in the first place.
There wasn’t one thing on the menu beyond the avocados that didn’t rise to the highest standards. But I’m not the only one who thinks it’s time to try something new.
On a recent Sunday night, the bar was packed with jovial baby boomers as a jazz trio played. I scored a corner table in the bar and ate what may be the best burger I have ever had — a house blend of Steaksmith’s own steak trimmings topped with real cheddar between thick, homemade slices of hearty wheat bread.
Over the thump of the standup base, I eavesdropped on a server having a beer after work with two regulars. The subject was the future of Steaksmith.
Clearly, the place needs to evolve, the server said.
“Right, but how do you evolve without alienating regulars?” the regular said.
If psychologists are correct, it should be pretty easy. Just start trying new things together, little by little. It could be a lot of fun.

Touches of authenticity aren’t enough to make Tuscan Sun a star

About halfway through a bowl of pasta at Tuscan Sun Market and Deli, it struck me that reviewing restaurants is like judging “American Idol.” You have limited time to try to decide whether a new talent is deserving.
The big difference is that “Idol” has three judges: hip, Randy, sweet but scattered Paula, and grim, sarcastic and usually right Simon. The Gazette just has me trying to be all three at once: constructive, encouraging, and still not mincing words.
Today, though, I thought I’d channel all three “Idol” judge personalities to give Tuscan Sun a full “Idol” review. Imagine the restaurant walking onstage.
Enter Tuscan Sun, a new Italian sandwich and pasta place in a shopping center in Old Colorado City. The ceilings are decked with fake ivy and Christmas lights. The menu has a scattering of salads, subs, panini and pastas. The pastas are available only for dinner. In the almost empty dining room, owner Becky McCain is doing paperwork at the bar.
Randy, Paula and Simon sit down and decide to really test the place’s range. They order one of their favorite Italian dishes, the insalata caprese ($6.25) — tomato slices stacked on fresh mozzarella stacked on basil leaves. They order a turkey, spinach and sun-dried tomato panini ($6.95), a sub piled with extra capicola, mortadella and Genoa salami (7.95), and two plates of pasta, one with a buffalo and Italian sausage ragu ($11.95), and one with a fresh marinara with an order of meatballs ($12.95).
Then the judges wait, and wait, and wait. Forty-five minutes pass. They look around and see there’s only one other couple in the dining room, and they already have their food.
“Here’s hope,” the owner says with an uneasy laugh, setting silverware wrapped in napkins in front of everyone at the table. Ten minutes later, the food arrives, side salads and all, all at ounce.
The caprese looks beautiful: red medallions of tomato, white mozzarella, green basil glistening with a drizzle of house-made vinaigrette. The turkey panini is not too thick, with cheese melted around a core of turkey and thin vein of spinach and sun-dried tomatoes in a crackerlike bread streaked with grill marks. The sub is a high stack of three meats, cheese, bright yellow pepperoncinis, crisp romaine and spicy, leathery capicola on a slightly doughy, bland roll. The pastas are doused in a chunky, herby sauce that is clearly homemade. The hand-formed meatballs are deliciously spiked with sage, lemon zest and nutmeg. The ragu is a hearty, meaty, steaming mélange that could only . . .
“OK, OK, OK. Right. Thank you,” Simon says, cutting the audition short. “Randy, what do you think?”
“Check it out, dog,” Randy says. “I like you. You got that whole good-ingredients mom and pop thing going on. I like how you got right out there with the caprese salad. That’s a big dish. The basil was cool. The fresh mozz was cool. I don’t know though, dog. Your tomatoes were only OK. They were like good supermarket tomatoes, but not really great garden tomatoes. I know it’s winter, and you can’t get good tomatoes, but then maybe that wasn’t the right menu choice for you right now.”
Simon: “Paula?”
“You’re beautiful. You’re wonderful,” Paula says. “I love how you tried to evoke a starlit Tuscan evening with the Christmas lights. You have an awesome side salad with fresh spring greens. Your timing was a little off. I know this isn’t fast food, but if you’re just serving pasta and sandwiches, people expect the tempo to be faster.
“I love how on your sub you serve really good, authentic, Italian meats. The mortadella has a nice, rich, deep flavor to it, and the capicola is like a good prosciutto, but with a kick. You kind of lost me with the roll though. You know what I mean? I would say, maybe, go down the block to La Baguette. Get some of their bread, instead, and that will really make people like you. I know it’s French bread, not Italian bread, but don’t get caught up in what other people expect Tuscan Sun to be, just let yourself shine.”
“Right well, OK,” Simon says, rolling his eyes. “I, for one, don’t get it. I didn’t see anything at all Tuscan in your menu.”
Boos from the crowd.
“No really, I mean, this is just a lot of pasta in red sauce.
“The meatballs were quite nice, actually. And Paula is right, the capicola is excellent. But when I think Tuscany, I think pasta fagioli. I think Fiorentina steak in olive oil. It’s not here. This is more like East Coast Italian. Look, maybe you could call it Newark Sun.” More boos from the crowd. “Honestly, I think it’s very old-fashioned. How are you relevant?”
“It doesn’t have to be authentic Tuscan,” Paula blurts. “It can just be a good neighborhood Italian place.”
“Can I finish?” Simon says. “You’ve got some sandwiches and salads that are good but forgettable. I’m in the business of finding stars, and I’m not sure you’re it. What’s going to make people come to this place instead of Panera? If you’re going to last in this competition, you need to do something that will bring you out from the crowd.”
Fervent boos. Simon holds up his hand for silence. “Randy, yes or no?” “I liked it, but I’m not dying to go back. I’m gonna say no, dog.” “Paula?” “Yes.” “And I’ll say no,” Simon says. Cue the post-tryout weeping and bleeping. One more thing makes restaurant reviewing like “American Idol” though. The judges can talk all they want, but in the end, the people decide.

West-side eatery has tasty dishes but can’t compete with cheaper options

Before there was the Taco Triangle, there was La Unica. Today, nearly all the truly authentic cooking by Latino immigrants for Latino immigrants takes place in a triangle of the city formed roughly by Galley Road, and Academy and Union boulevards.
But when La Unica, a bright little Sonoran restaurant, opened in a former Taco Bell on West Colorado Avenue in 2000, Colorado Springs had less than half the Hispanic population it does now, and the city’s taco choices ranged from Tex Mex to, well, that was pretty much it.
Then La Unica opened the city’s eyes to the true Mexican street taco — a palm-size fold of two soft masa corn tortillas holding a few bites of finely chopped carne asada beef crisped on a grill and mixed with onions and cilantro. It wasn’t the first true taco place in town (that title probably goes to the original branch of La Unica, a somewhat humble taqueria still open on East Platte Avenue), but after falling in love with this style of tacos on a trip through Baja, La Unica is the first place I found them.
Eight years later, La Unica still offers a lot to love. While newer Taco Triangle restaurants outshine this old star in many ways, it’s still the go-to place for real Mexican on the west side.
Inside, the once sterile Taco Bell walls are bedecked with parrot sculptures and lush plants. The dining room offers a few festively painted tables and spills out to a covered patio that’s full in the summer.
A good place to start is the ceviche ($6.95) served in a saucer-size clam shell. The cool, tender bits of fish and shrimp swim in a bright lime marinade with cucumbers and peppers that offers a fresh finish.
Chile relleno fans should schedule a meal on the weekend when La Unica serves fat, meaty poblano peppers (the best pepper for this dish) oozing with a light, flavorful blend of cheeses in a batter that’s crisp, not too eggy, and comes on a combination plate with a choice of enchilada.
The chile verde burrito ($10.95) is packed with thick chunks of pork and slices of green chile in a well-seasoned sauce. It’s not a Colorado-style green chile, but that’s always been the point here.
The menu warns that the chipotle-style pork plate ($13.95) is “very hot.”
One bite of this dish of cubed, slow-cooked pork in a sauce of jalapeño peppers that have been smoked, dried, ground to a powder, then mixed with cloves and other spices, makes every pore on your brow instantly open in shock.
“It builds on you,” a friend said with beads of sweat glistening on his face. But it was so good he cleaned his plate.
I get the feeling west-side regulars at La Unica find what they like and stick to it, because the menu lurks with disappointments.
A chicken enchilada with the relleno was bland despite being covered in sauce.
The fish tacos, ($3.50) made with breaded codfish, were crisp but had a “fish sticky” taste.
The tacos ($2.50 each) are similar to authentic taqueria snacks available in the Triangle, but less deserving and more expensive. The asada (chopped steak), barbacoa (marinated shredded beef) and carnitas (marinated pork) were good enough and not greasy, but lacked the authentic toppings that can make a great taqueria.
The below average dishes are made worse by above-average pricing across the menu. A fajita combo is $16 — more than you’d pay at the decidedly more upscale Salsa Brava in Briargate. You don’t get refills on chips or sodas.
Maybe La Unica could get away with this pricing when it was one of the few true Mexican spots. But supply, demand and a dining room that has been almost empty every time I visit suggest not anymore.

‘Fresh’ is the byword at upscale Palapa’s Surfside

When chef Victor Matthews says the seafood at Palapas Surfside is fresh, here’s what he means:
“When I need to order scallops, I call the guys at the scallop beds in New England,” he said by phone the other day. “I tell them how many I want and they dive in and get them right then and overnight them. These are certified sashimi grade. They’re so ridiculously crazy fresh you can eat them raw.”
He likes to sear the scallops just a bit, so the inside is still a translucent alabaster, then wrap them in brown sugar bacon and serve them sizzling over a cool, spicy Asian slaw. He calls the dish Scallops of Love ($27).
That’s the concept behind this ambitious restaurant he opened in January with the backing of investors and a dream staff reeled in from downtown: Get the best fish and get it fast, then whip it up with the care, innovation and guts that have become a hallmark of the slightly eccentric Matthews, who also owns The Black Bear Restaurant in Green Mountain Falls.
To that end, whatever is fresh from the docks arrives by courier overnight. The menu, overseen by chef Dan French, formerly of MacKenzie’s Chop House, changes every day. The seasonal cocktail menu by Nathan Windham, the much-loved mixologist from The Red Martini, is paired to the fish.
The excellent, truly knowledgable staff steers diners toward a three-course, prix fixe dinner ($40). A facing list of a la carte options offers an array of upcharges. The place is spendy enough to be special occasion-only for most people, but it’s generally worth it.
A few reefs and shoals on the menu warrant navigating carefully, but the results are overwhelmingly good. On a recent evening, one of the fresh entrees was a light, flaky Corvina sea bass quickly pan fried to get a slight crust, then floated on a barge of luscious lemon risotto, and topped with a bright banner of mango and avocado salsa. Salsa like that can turn to slime if it isn’t made fresh for each dish. This one was perfect.
The ceviche ($9) changes daily, relying on the fresh fish at hand. When we visited, it was the slightly pink, flavorful flesh of a tile fish, cured in fresh lime juice then finished with a simple confetti of cilantro and a splash of lime vodka.
Three petite monkfish steaks arrived naked except for a tiara of candy-orange flying fish eggs and a swipe of sweet pepper beurre blanc painted artfully across the broad, white plate. On the side, three balls of sushi rice, kissed with tart rice vinegar and deep fried to resemble hush puppies, gave heft and balance to the ethereal fish.
Not every cast into this culinary pond nets good results, though. Recently, a deliciously light-sounding mahi mahi baked in paper with a tropical salsa and roasted corn couscous arrived drowning in heavy butter. Way too rich.
The Lobster Diablo was a bit dry and tough and didn’t feel worthy of its $50 price tag. Neither did the doughy conch fritters ($9).
But other dishes will hook you. The Tartar Trio — three ruby-red mounds of diced raw ahi tuna paired with French, Japanese and Thai sauces — is a keeper. The crab cake ($15) is so much crab and so little cake that the chunks of rich claw meat seem to adhere by will and deep-frying alone.
The dining room is classic Caribbean. The walls have big, bright paintings. Garage doors on one side can open on warm days, and a communal table sits by the bar for folks who wander in on busy nights without a reservation. It’s so welldone that a centerpiece of fake palms somehow manages not to be tacky.
It’s an odd restaurant to find in the corporate depths of Powers Boulevard, where independents tend to get devoured by inexpensive, casual chains.
“I feel like I’m behind enemy lines,” Matthews said with a laugh.
Ironically, Matthews and the other investors are trying to franchise the Palapa’s concept. I’m not sure how well that will work or even if this restaurant will find its audience.
On any given night, you can see families walk in expecting a seafood version of Chili’s, look at the prices, and walk out. But those who stay are rewarded.
You can get a taste of the place without dropping too much coin by sitting at the bar for an appetizer and cocktail. Windham’s cocktails deserve a review all their own. The juices are fresh-squeezed. He crafts arcane tinctures such as elderberry flower syrup himself and pairs them with liquors such as Brazilian cachaça that you probably never heard of.

No middle ground for bistro meals at former Eden

The new bistro menu at 13 Pure Nightclub is a lot like its architecture — it holds surprises no one would expect from a rowdy downtown dance and drink joint.
The club’s structural heart is the nave of the original Grace Episcopal Church, an English Gothic chapel built in 1873 from local stone and finished by a carpenter named Winfield Stratton who later became one of the city’s greatest benefactors. Not what you’d expect from a place that features the Bare Assets male revue and skimpy “Pajama Jams” with cash prizes for the “hottest pajamas.”
The same is true for the white-tablecloth bistro that serves lunch and dinner before the club starts thumping. At its center are carefully conceived and premium-priced dishes such as duck confit ($17) with roasted shallots in an herb and lemon fettuccine and braised elk ($25) in a rich bath of veal stock, onions and mushrooms.
Of course some of the food gets the same rough treatment as the old church (now the laser-lit dance floor), but like any true club experience it has equal potential for delight and regret.
The layout of 13 Pure is identical to the building’s former tenant, Eden. It has the same maze of theme rooms and bars, the same multicolor lighting, the same Gothic sin and salvation themes.
“We basically just gave it a face-lift,” my server said in a quick tour before dinner. “We wanted to make it more classy, like for young professionals — less thugs, less ghetto.” “Does that mean you won’t be doing teennight foam parties?” “We’re not sure yet,” she said. The same sense of uncertainty shows up in the menu by chef David Sciple.
Take the appetizers. A delicious mix-andmatch plate of meat skewers called “Pick Up Sticks” ($15) arrived with colorful, complementary escorts: seared tuna on seaweed salad, salmon on mango salsa, beef tenderloin on pan-wilted spinach. It was great.
The Fricassee of Wild Mushrooms ($7), though, sounded exotic and complex with a backbeat of Madeira and roasted garlic, and instead arrived as a plate of cream sauce-drenched, very domestic-seeming sliced button mushrooms. My companions insisted they tasted a shitake or two in there. I never did. It was too heavy, too bland.
Bigger plates offer the same roll of the dice.
The excellent Colorado Trout ($17) comes pinned by a heavyweight crab cake in a shallow ring of beurre blanc. The huge cake, baked right on top of the fish, is loaded with truly excellent, sweet crab. The trout, moist and light despite all the beurre, is terrific, and a value.
Also good is the duck confit — tender chunks of duck roasted and tossed in fettuccine with roasted garlic, shallots and herbs, then spritzed with fresh lemon.
Both came with a unexpected side of wilted cabbage in a light, spicy dressing — just one of many things the sassy but too vague and typo-ridden menu hides in general statements such as all dishes come “appropriately adorned.” This time it worked. Sometimes it doesn’t.
On the same table, you might (but probably shouldn’t) get the “braised elk loin” — a Colorado version of a classic French beef Bourguignon. But in this version, the elk is dry, the sauce is too rich and the whole thing lacks a a slow-cooked complexity and balance.
At dessert, again, the dice rolls. Baked Alaska with a subtle banana ice cream center ($9) had the whole table vying for the last bite, but strawberries in cream ($9) arrived as firm, raw berries in an undiluted pool of Grande Marnier with a dollop of canned whip cream.
“You should get carded if you order this dessert,” a friend said, sniffing the alcohol fumes rising from the plate.
It felt like a hint from the staff, who by 9 p.m. were whisking away tables, that the drinking hour had arrived. It was time to make way for the night life.

At barbecue joints — even really good ones — the magic usually stops at the meat.
The pit master might fret over the pedigree of hardwood coals and fine-tune the heat like a Stradivarius, but the stuff on the side often has a thrown-together feel: beans or peach cobbler gooey with corn syrup, coleslaw that would be left to the flies at most church picnics.
That’s not what’s going on at Bayou BarBQ, a delicious new barbecue and Cajun restaurant in Monument.
Owners Patricia McClelland and Kenneth Trombley, who also own the popular Bella Panini Italian restaurant in Palmer Lake, have lifted the traditional sides to be worthy of America’s most exalted and argued-over meat.
The coleslaw ($1.50) is gorgeous — a fresh, crisp tangle of red and green cabbage laced with a few carrot slivers and glistening in a tart vinegar dressing that tastes as good as it looks.
For potato salad ($1.50), Bayou eschews gloppy-mayonnaise orthodoxy in favor of a light, vinegary German-style dish flecked with fresh parsley.
I ordered the corn on the cob, expecting it would be the awful, starchy zombie cob of the living dead you tend to find everywhere but your own kitchen.
Instead, even in March, it was sweet and each kernel was practically bursting with freshness.
“We hand shuck it, boil it, then finish it on the grill,” McClelland said when she came out from the tiny kitchen to check on our meal.
The spicy Cajun slurry of jambalayas, crawfish étouffées and red beans and rice nearly stole the show.
Oh, by the way, the barbecue isn’t bad either.
I was worried at first because I’d invited my barbecue consigliere to Bayou. This is a guy who can’t sit 10 minutes without getting into a story about some tar paper shack somewhere in Carolina, or a family pig roast after hanging tobacco.
This is a guy who has a criticism for every barbecue joint he’s ever visited but would go back to every one of them, and when the ’cue is really good, stops speaking in full sentences, instead just saying things like “Whoooo boy!” or “Ooooh man!”
“At a great barbecue place,” he said as we were pulling up, “you should be able to smell it before you even get in the door.”
At Bayou, we couldn’t smell it when we got to the door. We couldn’t really smell it when we walked in the door. But then the huge plates arrived, and Mr. Barbecue held a hickorysmoked pork rib ($9.95 for six) to his nose like he was sniffing a fine Bordeaux and inhaled the sweet, smoky perfume.
“Oooooow, yeah,” he said, and cleaned the bone in a few seconds.
The ribs are the best of the barbecue. The half chicken ($8.25) was great, but not quite as flavorful.
The brisket ($8.95) was a little too moist and had no noticeable smokiness. The salmon ($10.25) was loaded with delicious smoke, but a tad dry from overcooking.
The pulled pork ($8.75) is roasted to give diners a nonsmoked option — and it’s awesome with one of Bayou’s three house-made barbecue sauces, but I could see Mr. Barbecue’s face grow long when he heard it wasn’t smoked.
“We do the pork the Carolina way,” McClelland said.
“They don’t traditionally smoke it there.”
Mr. Barbecue leaned over and whispered, “Boy, if word gets out to my relatives that she said you don’t smoke a pig in Carolina, there’ll be a posse comin’ her way.”
Like I said. People like to argue about barbecue almost as much as they like to eat it.
The lack of smoke didn’t keep Mr. Barbecue from stealing pulled pork off my plate.
The Cajun fostered the same intratable thieving.
The owners of Bayou have been doing Cajun at Bella Panini for years, and the experience shows.
The deep-brown, spicy gumbo ($3.75), swimming with chicken and smoky andouille sausage simmered in a trinity of celery, bell pepper and onion, had an addictive richness that can come only from a slow butter roux.
“That must be a 45-minute roux,” Mr. Barbecue said to the owner.
“No, it’s an hour roux. We’re back there stirring it every day,” she said.
It was so good that even after we were nearly comatose from eating ’cue and sides and an excellent dessert of fresh-made bread pudding with rum sauce and pecan pie, Mr. Barbecue walked up to the counter and ordered a pint of gumbo to take home.

New South Wales proves less lavish than its prices

Longtime steak and seafood restaurant New South Wales has awoken from a 10-month, COSMIX-induced slumber.
Owner Gary Flewellen decided, probably wisely, that with pile-drivers banging steel posts all day and the interstate exit an impassable pile of dirt and rebar, it made more sense to shut the doors and wait for the dust to settle.
Now it has. The restaurant opened its eyes again in January. But it’s still yawning.
New South Wales serves such top-tier goodies as an 8-ounce hanger steak crowned with big lumps of Alaskan king crab ($26) or an oven-bronzed lobster tail with drawn butter ($30), and commands top-tier prices.
The place has a lot going for it. Service is attentive and friendly. The view of Pikes Peak is tops. The food generally pleases. But tired little details often deflate what could be a divine place.
The hanger steak and crab dish is a dream — so tender you can cut it with a fork, and draped in a delectable, truly wellmade Bearnaise redolent with fresh, fragrant tarragon.
The guy running the grill earned his chops. I asked for rare, and the steak arrived looking like a scene from “Braveheart.”
I appreciate that. But the dish was festooned with a chintzy, unneeded steak knife and gaudy garnish of kale and orange slices that make it feel like steak night at a smalltown diner.
Small quibbles? Probably, but most folks don’t drop this kind of coin on a night out very often, and when they do, it should be darn near perfect.
Cheap details distracted from the dinner again and again. A $6.50 glass of pinot noir arrived in a stemware so sturdy you could bounce it off a frat boy’s head without a crack (at least to the glass).
The “freshly baked bread” looked and tasted like an oversized institutional dinner roll, preformed and frozen from a distant supplier. With so much good fresh bread in Colorado Springs, there is no need for such a sin. Ditto for the generic slices of cake for dessert.
The roasted duck ($26), glazed in orange marmalade, lacked that delectable crackle that well-cooked duck skin promises, and came — without warning — on a bed of wild rice, making my companion who ordered it wish she hadn’t also ordered risotto on the side.
The kitchen almost gets the risotto right. It’s sweet, fragrant and rich. But, at the end, they’re adding almost raw onion that just doesn’t work.
New South Wales is known for fresh seafood and has some nice offerings. The Mediterranean Monkfish ($21), oven bronzed with lemon butter, had a pleasant, fresh taste.But the firm lumps of white meat in a tame lemon butter treatment were kind of dull, especially since I had recently tried an awesome monkfish in spicy burre blanc and flying fish roe at Palapa’s Surfside.
The lobster also plays it safe. The tail, split for easy eating, is simply roasted with a ramekin of butter on the side. It’s not bad, but not special either.
Most of these dishes could be lifted by well-paired, inventive sides. Instead, you get your choice of baked potato, fries or risotto. Those are fine for steak but don’t really complement light seafood.
If you’re pining for a side of haricot verts tossed in a house-made herb vinaigrette, too bad. Besides the perfectly nice side salads, there is not a vegetable on the menu. (No, deep-fried zucchini doesn’t count.)
When I bring people out to eat with me on The Gazette’s dime, I always keep my criticisms to myself through the meal. I let them talk. And since most people have been taught to be polite, they focus on the positive.
“Pretty good,” was the summary for New South Wales.
But I have found a more accurate way to gauge what they really thought. “Would you come back here if you were paying?” I asked.
For New South Wales, all three answered no.
It’s not that the place is bad, it’s that it’s not that good for what it costs, especially when there are other restaurants in the neighborhood that are. To compete, NSW might want to do a little COSMIX on its menu — widening the lanes from simply serving good steak and seafood to providing a dream experience.

Whenever I want to convince out-of-towners that Colorado Springs is cooler than our reputation might suggest, I take them to Shuga’s.
Shuga’s is a rare restaurant that appeals to every sense. Fresh tulips poke from thick, vintage soda bottles set on a crew of mismatched, secondhand tables. The tables seem to wobble in time on the weathered wood floor to the quiet songs of Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, or the cadre of arcane indie bands on Shuga’s iPod. The air is ripe with espresso and good, toasted bread. Origami cranes twist lazily on strings hung from the high ceilings of this century-old groceryturned-typewriter-repair-shopturned-restaurant. Tall front windows bathe the tables and the tulips in natural light. After sunset, an orbit of vintage globes give the whole place a complementary glow.
Servers, often in ratty Converse and $150 jeans, drop slender menus on the table, holding a scattering of tapas, soups, sandwiches and salads as effortlessly stylish as the surroundings.
It is all the invention of Alexius Weston, an Army brat who grew up all over the globe from Germany to Fort Carson, waitressed in Seattle, sipped coffee in Paris cafes, island hopped the Mediterranean and at 28, in 2002, moved back to Colorado Springs and decided the town really needed a cool little cafe. Against all odds and predictions, it worked.
“I wanted to mix old and new to create an eclectic environment, to make a place that was hip but also timeless,” she told me recently. “I believe people really respond to the place that surrounds them. The lighting, the smells and the sounds are extremely important.”
So at Shuga’s, no sense is neglected. But the food is so good, it may make you forget that.
The crusty, rustic Italian bread of the BLT ($8) comes with thick slices of bacon cooked to a perfect, almost leathery, crunch and topped with a nest of light spring greens and a floral, nutty slice of gouda. Most of Shuga’s other sandwiches follow its lead, matching unexpected combinations with the acumen of a thrift store diva.
The Phellini ($7.50) is a bohemian’s grilled cheese: warm chevre, tomato, greens and resplendent pesto on that crusty bread. Like much of the menu, it’s hearty but light.
Sandwiches can all be paired with a shifting cast of soups ($2.75 on the side). Recently a cinnamon-laced Moroccan lentil and a spicy, vegan carrot ginger both proved lovely escorts.
If the menu of salads, salady sandwiches and light soups leans slightly into the realm of chick food, there are also meaty, gooey calorie lifelines such as the Brick Chicken sandwich ($8.25), with hot chunks of meat melded with blue cheese, roasted red pepper and bangles of red onion.
The tiny kitchen saves time and space by using some ingre- dients in many dishes, but it doesn’t cut corners.
The perennial favorite spicy, Brazilian, coconut-shrimp soup ($4), a blushing, creamy broth with hints of peanuts that match with ginger, jalapeño, cilantro and lime, is made from scratch every day. A few plump shrimp are tossed in when you order a bowl so they never arrive overcooked.
The quiche ($7), which changes slightly from day to day, is always a hit.
Somehow, there’s also room in the kitchen to bake fabulous cakes ($4.25 a slice) such as the sweet, crumbly Almond Butter Cake or sinfully rich Double Chocolate Diablo — a dense, no-nonsense brownie in a jacket of ganache.
Shuga’s probably should have gone out of business a long time ago, considering that it’s hidden on a quiet residential street blocks from the downtown restaurant scene, which itself is having trouble these days. Instead, Shuga’s has attracted a coalition of rabidly loyal regulars.
At noon, the crowd tends to be welldressed ladies who lunch. The curb is packed with polished Lexus and Acura SUVs. The tables are packed with salads and lemon iced teas. Afternoons belong to wireless, hungry hipsters pecking at laptops over the foamy rims of Shuga’s excellent cappuccinos. At night, artsy couples with tattoos and carefully styled bed head nosh on pita points dipped in hummus, tapenade or goat cheese, and servers come around with bottles of shabby-sheik Pabst Blue Ribbon and artisan lavenderlime martinis.
There’s a magic hour around dinner when the disparate crowds mingle. In a way, it feels like a secret club or a speakeasy hiding in plain daylight. Here are people united by a shared, timeless aesthetic. To find out that someone else likes Shuga’s is to know you have much more in common than Almond Butter Cake.

‘Artisan Ravioli’ tops predictable menu at Bravino’s

On a recent evening in the almost empty dining room of Bravino’s Trattoria & Pizzeria, owner Mary Jane Nelson and a server sat at the bar stuffing menus and discussing, what else? The ravioli.
“I like the grilled eggplant the best,” the server said.
The owner nodded. She liked the rosemary chicken in thyme white wine cream sauce, “But it’s better the next day," she said.
Not the kind of food you’d expect anyone to be discussing in a strip mall eatery wedged between a Mexican market and a Philly cheese steak joint. But this restaurant packs some surprises.
Bravino’s menu has the predictable stuff: pizzas and meatball heroes, fettuccine Alfredo and linguine with clams. And it does a fair job with them all.
But what really caught my eye was a section at the very end called “Artisan Ravioli.” There, I spotted what they were talking about: little spinach pasta pillows stuffed with smoky grilled eggplant, blended smooth with ricotta, Parmesan, garlic and onion; other pillows stuffed with chicken, rosemary and melted provolone. And even more — some stuffed with artichoke hearts and tomatoes, some stuffed with zucchini, carrots, ricotta, mozzarella and sun-dried tomato bits.
The raviolis are made fresh at Pappardelle’s Pasta in Denver, which usually sells to gourmet shops and farmers markets.
“They all look so good, I can’t decide,” a dining partner I’d dragged along said. So we ordered them all.
On other visits, I’d forded through other sections of the menu and found a fairly good neighborhood Italian place.
In my mind, restaurants come in tiers: First tier — a place worth avoiding like a vacation to Basra, Iraq. Second tier — a place with fair-priced, dependable dishes worth regular visits if you live in the neighborhood. Third tier — a really good place worth driving across town. Fourth tier: a freaking awesome place worth crossing state lines for.
Bravino’s seemed to fit in the second tier. A meatball hero ($7.50) comes slathered in a homemade sauce with warm, tasty filling. The bread is a lame, frozen loaf, but the meatballs seemed homemade and tasty. The pizza ($10-$20) uses nice cheese and has a thin, crisp crust. The house special salad, with spring greens, roasted red pepper, artichoke hearts and olives isn’t a great value at $7.50, but is perfectly good.
The atmosphere is sort of a neo-Italian faux classy. The walls are so loaded with mass-produced filigree candle sconce wall hangings that the place looks like it was decorated by Carmela Soprano. The easy-listening music pumped through the room is such an odd mix that in one sitting I heard the theme for “The Pink Panther” and the jazzy intro to “Democracy Now!”
It seemed a little too stuffy for a place that serves simple sandwiches, pasta and pizzas.
But then the ravioli ($13.95 each) arrived in beautiful dishes, each with a different sauce and a different sprig of fresh herb. They were beautiful.
Some tasted as good as they looked, some didn’t.
The server was right on — the grilled eggplant ravioli are fabulous — smoky and rich, and swimming in a light, chunky marinara.
The chicken and rosemary ravioli are less so. I was expecting the meat to be blended with cheese and herbs. Instead, it was quarter-inch cubes of what tasted like processed smoked chicken breast from a deli, which gave the dish a Hot Pocket effect, not helped by something bitter in the white wine cream sauce.
The garden vegetable ravioli, with a rainbow filling of zucchini, carrots, eggplant, spinach, onion and sun-dried tomato, have a great flavor, but were ruined by a pesto cream sauce that tasted like it had more salt than the Dead Sea. Let’s hope it was a one-night mistake.
The tomato and artichoke ravioli stuffed with Italian cheeses in a bright, sun-dried tomato and basil cream sauce, on the other hand, have a good balance of flavor — not too rich, not too tart.
A few tweaks could make all of these dishes fantastic. Hopefully, that’s what the owner will be discussing with the staff at the bar tonight.

Marilyn’s fresh, crisp slices prove capable of seduction

When asked what she had on during the photo shoot that landed her in the first issue of Playboy, Marilyn Monroe famously said, “the radio.”
The slices ($2) passed through the window at Marilyn’s Pizza House on sweaty summer sidewalk days are the same: naked (or with pepperoni, and we’d just as soon not get into any symbolism here).
They waltz out the window as a glistening veneer of blended cheddar and mozzarella, sauce, and a thin crust served on a paper plate. And they’re seductively good folded and scarfed down as a quick street snack. I’ve enjoyed them a number of times on busy days, but I had never actually ventured inside to check out this longtime Manitou Springs pizza nook’s full menu.
This week’s GO! cover story on the Marilyn Monroe exhibit at the Fine Arts Center gave me an excuse.
The food at Marilyn’s doesn’t quite live up to the name. It’s more starlet than star, good enough to make it but without the rich depth to really become a sensation. Still, it’s a good place for lunch or something cool on a hot day.
Inside, the restaurant has old-fashioned wooden booths running down one side to a bright alcove not just overlooking, but literally over Fountain Creek. On the other side, a few rotating diner-type stools nestle against a counter that serves both as a soda fountain (cones, floats and shakes) and a bar (Fat Tire Amber and 5 Barrel Pale Ale). It’s fun for the whole family.
Just to the side, a narrow galley serves a variety of 10-inch pizzas that are decidedly less pedestrian than the naked slices sold through the window on the street.
We ordered the Manitou — a white garlic sauce pie in a gorgeous ensemble of pale artichoke hearts, bright-red sun-dried tomatoes and strands of fresh-chopped basil ($9.35) — and another pizza with slices of chicken breast and fresh wheels of tomato ($9.15). We also ordered a Reuben sandwich ($7.75) from the Ancient Mariner next door, which has a slot in the wall through which food is passed. The Mariner has a sign outside that claims the place has the “Best Reuben this side of anywhere.” We’ll see, I thought.
We sat down. The restaurant is slammed in the summer, but still quiet now. The walls are covered in different Marilyns: Warhol’s pop Marilyn, Marilyn with her skirt blowing up, Marilyn in big, dark glasses, Marilyn smiling, Marilyn pouting, even brown-haired Norma Jeane. For good measure, the tables are shellacked with Marilyn pinups.
“They’ve gone too far,” a friend said. “There are so many Marilyns on this table that I can’t find a place to put my drink.” He respectfully moved his soda off Marilyn’s pointy brassiere and onto her face, then back.
The pizzas arrived. Both had a very thin, almost crackerlike crust. It had a good crisp bite, but seemed to lack the complex, yeasty allure of a mature dough.
The toppings and sauce are both fresh and made in the shop. The cheese walks the line well between too much and too little. While no one at the table raved about the pizza, they gave tacit approval by cleaning their plates.
Then we waited for the Reuben. And waited. Apparently, the two kitchens don’t put much stock in coordinating. But, hey, a good Reuben is worth hanging around for.
Finally, the sandwich arrived, and the “best Reuben this side of anywhere” was . . . not bad. The thin-sliced pastrami was mounded between two very thin pieces of bread with a blond cascade of sauerkraut and melted cheese over the top.
Best side of anywhere? I know some folks at Katz’s Deli on the Lower East Side who might kvetch about that. It’s not like the Mariner is making its own pastrami, but it’s probably the best Reuben this side of the Manitou arcade.
Besides, not everything needs rise to the level of timeless pop icon like Marilyn to be good.
Sometimes, a cozy neighborhood place with good pizza through the window is enough.

La Carreta’s Mexican dishes worthy of gathering
There are good signs and bad signs when you walk into an unfamiliar ethnic restaurant for the first time.
If you can pronounce everything on the menu, that’s probably a bad sign.
If they sell anything by the scoop, that’s probably a bad sign.
If you sit down hoping for something truly authentic and your server’s name is Eugene, that’s probably a bad sign.
But if you walk in and notice a string of tables pushed together in a long line in a back of the room packed with people who aren’t speaking English, that’s a very, very good sign.
It means the local immigrant population has decided the restaurant is not just OK, it’s good enough to become a community gathering place.
I’ve stumbled upon these gatherings a few times, and always come away with a new favorite restaurant.
So it was on a recent night at La Carreta — a Mexico City-style restaurant that, for 10 years, has done steady business in a hidden strip mall. Beyond a scattering of regular diners was a long table of Mexican guys in baseball caps and mustaches drinking Coronas and talking.
These beer-drinking bellwethers were right on. This place matches good value with careful preparation and an array of authentic dishes.
The humble relleño, tamale and enchilada combination plate ($10.95), which I always use as a quick way to judge a Mexican place, doesn’t have a single weak link. The fat, flavorful poblano pepper is stuffed with just the right Monterey Jack cheese so it never gets too tough or too gooey, then it is dipped in seasoned flour and egg whites for a light, crisp breading, and finished with a simple, fresh sauce of blended tomato and onion. A slender enchilada with nicely seasoned shredded beef or chicken comes doused in bright, slightly sour tomatillo sauce. (Tomatillo sauce is the best way to know if you’re in a Mexican, not a New Mexican, restaurant. In New Mexico cooking, the “green sauce” is chili.) A fat, homemade tamale with shredded pork came under a veil of brick red, deeply earthy, and amazing salsa made from blended dried red chiles. None of it fell into the combo plate pitfalls of being deluged in melted cheese, or melding into one unidentifiable mire of salty slop.
Tradition and restraint are the guiding forces here. Even the refried beans are made from scratch. (I saw a cook through the open kitchen door performing the ageold task of removing small pebbles from a batch of dried pintos.) The sizzling shrimp on the Fajita de Camarón ($11.95) arrived flared open like iris petals, showing they’d been deveined in the kitchen, not some distant processing plant.
I try to avoid fajitas when dining out because the Tex-Mex dish is tailored for the timid pallets of El Norte and often comes dripping with cheap vegetable oil. But La Carreta’s shrimp, sautéed with strips of onion, tomato and pepper, were perfectly cooked, not overly salted, and had only a kiss of oil.
Same with an order of carne asada: the thin sheet of seasoned skirt steak ($9.25) arrived flopping over both rims of the plate. Places often serve this steak with too much oil and salt. Here, the flavor of the meat showed through.
Carreta also serves some unusual dishes, such as Barbacoa de Borrego (lamb tacos, $11.95) and Bisteck Milanesa (Mexican-style chicken-fried steak, $9.50).
The light green mole verde was an intriguing break from the dark brown poblano moles most local Mexican restaurants serve. The smooth sauce came ladled over three pork enchiladas ($9.50) and sang with tart complexity I couldn’t decipher.
I stopped Rossy Sandoval, the owner, as she shuffled by in a red apron, and asked what the heck was in it.
She rolled her eyes and said “muchas cosas” — many things: tomatillos, ground poblano pepper, jalapeños, cloves, onion, garlic, “and a lot of others.”
It was wonderful. And followed swiftly by hot sopapillas with honey and cinnamon, it had me in heaven.
The only downside I’ve found in this little restaurant is the décor. Ten years into the operation, it still has a dropped panel ceiling with half the fluorescent bulbs unscrewed to cut down on the cold glare. Some more welcoming lighting and a few booths would make for a better meal.
But as the guys at the long table in the back would probably tell you, that’s a small matter when you’ve found a place where the food, the service and the prices are good enough to bring a group together.

Porky’s might be the only restaurant in town with a name that describes what will happen if you eat there too often.
The bar just off Powers Boulevard acts as the centerpiece for a spread of sandy beach volleyball courts that draw slews of league and amateur teams. The interior is open and breezy with oars and surfboards for decoration, garage-door-style walls that open to the sand and Bob Marley wailing on the speakers.
The food isn’t beach- or volleyballthemed. It’s that good ol’ middle American calorie assault in all its glory: double-, triple- or quintuple-stack burgers, ribs, pulled pork sandwiches, Tater Tots, chili, melted cheese and something called the Big Stinky. Even the fried shrimp come wrapped in bacon.
“I wouldn’t think that kind of stuff would necessarily go with playing volleyball,” a friend said as we walked in for lunch.
Maybe not, but as Oscar’s Tejon Street, the downtown bar with the same owner and a similar menu, has proved, it goes great with beer.
And the servers aren’t shy about pushing the lipids. After up-selling me to a double Black & Blue Burger ($7.95), a server suggested melted cheddar over the side of tots. “It’s really good,” she said.
I went for it.
“You want bacon on the tots, too?” she asked.
The manager, clearing tables nearby, said, “No reason to stop now.”
You see what I mean about the name.
Porky’s would be a delicious occasional indulgence if the flavors accompanying the lipids justified the bad behavior, but in some cases they don’t.
The thin burger patties don’t pack much flavor. They pass as adequate bar food with an escort of lettuce, tomato and special sauce, but there are better $8 burgers in town. The Black & Blue Burger, covered in rough cracked pepper and blue cheese, came with a half-inchthick smear of blue cheese that tasted as if it were scooped from a big food-service tub. A smaller share of a nicer cheese would have made a better burger.
The bacon-wrapped shrimp ($12.95) were fine, but came with a cilantro pesto that tasted as if it had been frozen, then zapped for minutes in the microwave, obliterating that astringent, herby cilantro flavor.
The dry-rubbed ribs ($9.95) were wet, cheap, tough end pieces in a dull sauce.
The pulled-pork sandwich ($7.95) came on a nice ciabatta roll, but the mushy meat seemed to have a slightly musty flavor.
A few things are fine, and even good.
— The Big Stinky — pastrami, turkey and sauerkraut on toasted pumpernickel ($7.95) — had a delicious blend of flavors in generous layers on perfectly crisp, not greasy, grilled bread.
The raw oysters (served on the half shell, $1.65 each) are mammoth, glistening gulf mollusks on a bed of ice, with lemon, cocktail sauce and nothing offensive.
“These taste like good Colorado oysters,” a friend said. “Which means they don’t taste like much at all. You don’t want taste in your oysters this far from the sea.”
For once at Porky’s, we cleaned the plate.
Porky’s has a lot going for it. It may be the best place in its corner of town to go for a beer. The view from the upper deck on a hot day is the closest you can get in the Springs to a beach vacation. But you go for the volleyball, summer setting and beer. The food’s just an accompaniment.

Local joint successfully models itself on noted California fast-food chain
To really understand Drifter’s Hamburgers, a terrific new local burger joint, you have to understand what happened in 1948, probably the most pivotal year in the history of fast food. That’s when both McDonald’s and In-N-Out Burger opened in Southern California and started down significantly different roads.
McDonald’s created a highly engineered burger franchise system designed for easy replication, maximum profit and minimum wage. The company now boasts 31,000 restaurants and has become the poster boy for the successes and excesses of modern American culture.
In-N-Out focused on quality, not quantity. The family-owned chain, still based almost entirely in Southern California, serves only burgers, fries and shakes. The beef is never frozen, the fries are hand cut in the store, and the shakes are made from real ice cream. No freezers, no heat lamps, everything is made to order and service is top-notch because employee pay starts at $10 an hour.
All this has earned In-N-Out an almost cultlike following. Even Eric Schlosser, author of the Colorado Springs-focused book ‘’Fast Food Nation,’’ which demonized the fast-food industry, is a fan.
What does all this have to do with Drifters? In-N-Out is Drifter’s inspiration. The menus are nearly identical. And if you’re a West Coaster dying for a Double Double Animal Style, Drifter’s is your best hope this side of Las Vegas.
Drifter’s owner, Rich Beaven, who also ran the now closed Classics Hamburgers, worked at In-N-Out for years, starting when he was 16, and wanted to bring that experience to Colorado.
“In-N-Out is the best,” he said recently. “I’ll openly admit we’re not as good as them, but we’re trying.”
He starts with great meat. The patties come from locally butchered, natural, hormone-free Ranch Foods Direct cattle. You can smell the difference before you step in the door. The air is brimming with natural beef flavors instead of the standard fast-food “natural beef flavors.”
“To me it tastes like what burgers tasted like when I was a kid,” Beaven said.
He sticks to the simple In-N-Out menu: burger, cheeseburger, double burger, fries, shakes. He also allows a great grilled chicken and a small breakfast menu, but that’s it.
On a recent visit, I invited a Cali transplant to test the authenticity. He practically ran to the restaurant when I told him it was similar to In-N-Out.
The restaurant was packed. He scanned the scant menu, watched Beaven in a paper cap and red apron furiously flipping the rows of just-ordered patties and toasting buns on the grill, ordered a double cheeseburger “wild style” (a lawsuit-dodging homage to In-N-Out’s “animal style” burger, which is grilled in mustard with grilled onions and extra Thousand Island dressing, $3.59) and smiled as it arrived peeking out of a paper wrap nestled in a small basket.
“I gotta say, this is pretty legit,” he said. “The paper hats, the aprons, the little baskets. They’ve got it down.”
He took a bite. “Yeah … mmm …” he mumbled through the juicy, flavorful mash of patties slathered in homemade Thousand Island dressing, pickles, grilled onions and real cheese on a crispy bun. “Oh, yeah … that’s good.” When he swallowed, he declared it was the best fast-food burger in town. I tend to agree. So must the line of folks waiting to order, who, by that time were out the door.
The chicken ($3.59) is tasty, too, for the same reasons. It’s a simple sandwich — no bacon, no chipotle mayo, no pre-fab grill marks, but it’s made with such good, moist breast meat that anything else would be a distraction.
Drifter’s still has a way to go to equal In-N-Out. The fries are good but frozen. The shakes come from a big, steel machine. And the somewhat sticky floors don’t live up to In-N-Out’s squeaky-clean standards. Beaven said he is working on using hand-cut local potatoes for fries.
“I’d love to use Colorado farmers, but that’s going to take some work to line up the connections,” he said.
Let’s hope he keeps on that track. Plenty of chains are willing to serve frozen, mass-produced combos with dubious backgrounds for a few cents less, but if In-N-Out and places like Chipotle and Starbucks have taught us anything, it’s that there are also plenty of people ready to pay more for fast food with integrity.
After all, real, fresh ingredients taste better. And if a local, all-natural double cheeseburger isn’t exactly good for you, at least it’s a little better for society.

Recently, a young woman walked into Sabores del Peru for lunch and scanned the menu. The white plastic letters spelled out one classic Peruvian dish after another: Seco de Carne, Cau-cau, Carapulcra, Anticuchos.

After staring blankly for several seconds, she looked down at the Luis Pagan, the chef/owner, and said, "I can't understand anything on that menu. Do you guys have, like, burritos?"

It's a common mistake. Many Americans assume all south-of-the-border Spanish speakers eat only items found on the Taco Bell menu. In fact, Peru lays claim to one of the most varied, intriguing cuisines in the world: a mix of old Incan ingredients, Spanish- and Asian-immigrant influence, and a geographic diversity that reaches from the rich coast to the high, dry Andes. Much of it has been adopted around the world. Anyone who has ever eaten a mouthful of potato or tangy citrus-cured ceviche has had Peruvian food.

"We do a lot of stews, a lot of rice, a lot of seafood," Pagan told the woman. "Tell you what, I'll make you some Lomo Saltado. I know you'll like it."

Pagan disappeared into the tiny kitchen of the strip mall restaurant he and his wife opened recently (they plan to add a bakery soon), and one could hear the clanging of pots. First, he deep-fried some french fries, then he threw them in a hot skillet with sliced red onion, tomatoes, yellow pepper, spices, vinegar and soy sauce. Finally, tossing the mix on high heat, he dropped in slivers of tender toploin beef and a sprinkling of parsley. The Lomo Saltado ($9.50) that emerged looked like sort of a "Fast Food Nation" stir-fry — an East-meets- West dish served in almost every Peruvian restaurant. It's a tasty mix. After cleaning her plate, the woman vowed to come back for lunch.

Sabores del Peru isn't always as surefire. The menu is confusing and often frustrating. You may have to visit several times to find what you want available. The service is slow. The timing is clumsy. And a few of the dishes are in dire need of better ingredients. But the family-run place is absolutely authentic. No foodie in town should pass up a visit.

Where else can you get the intense and delicious Papa a la Huancaina ($6.50), a traditional plate of boiled potatoes blanketed in a canary-yellow sauce made from cheese, milk, crushed crackers and fiery yellow aji peppers?

Or cans of syrupy sweet Inka Kola ($1, tastes like bubble gum) and Chica morrada ($1.75), an ancient, spiced, chailike drink made from blue Peruvian corn?

Where else can you get Carapulcra ($9.60), a slow-cooked comfort dish with big chunks of pork flaking apart among mounds of small, tender potatoes dried on the arid, frozen hillsides of the Andes?

Of course, you can only get Carapulcra on Sundays, and you better order it early because it runs out. Same with the Arroz con Pollo ($8.50), which is slow-cooked with beer. And, for that matter, a bright-yellow chicken stew called Aji de Galina ($8.50). The menu tells you none of this.

Most lunch dishes take 30 minutes to prepare, which makes a quick lunch pretty much out of the question. Pagan hands out cards urging customers to call in orders ahead of time. What the Chicago-born Peruvian needs is a little old-fashioned, American streamlining.

If you're not in a hurry, though, the place is great. Saturday and Sunday afternoons are the best time to come, when Peruvian families visit and the full menu is simmering in the back.

One Sunday, my wife and I ordered Jalea Mixta (a big plate in which almost the whole cast of "Finding Nemo" is deep-fried and served with pickled onions, $11.50), and, at the owner's urg- ing, Anticuchos, ($6.50) a traditional plate of lima bean-size kernels of Choclo corn (neither too sweet nor too starchy) and deep-fried yucca with big, seared hunks of beef heart.

The obligatory half-hour wait for the plates gave me a chance to tell my best and worst food story, about the time I ate a whole guinea pig — teeth, nails and all — in the Andes. If you don't mind losing your appetite, check out the story at gazettedine.blogspot. com.

Our beef heart arrived in a much tamer fashion: tender slivers on a stick, hot, salty and spicy and delicious.

The Jalea Mixta plate of seafood was a little more scary. We weren't turned off by the little stars of whole, fried octopus, the rings of squid or the dark nuggets of oyster covering fried tilapia. I love all that stuff — the weirder, the better. But it soon became clear none of it was particularly fresh.

What's a great, easy meal on the coast in Lima doesn't translate that well to the middle of Colorado. The kitchen needs to start with better ingredients or cut the plate from the menu. We didn't finish it. It's an exception to a generally tasty, high-quality menu.

On the way out, I asked Pagan whether he planned to start serving guinea pig.

"You know, I just found out I can get it frozen, so probably," he said.

Don’t order the pierogi on your first trip to PJ’s Bistro. They are so damn light and fluffy and delicious that no matter how many times you go back, you’ll never order anything else.

You may think the fresh-cut fries drenched in goulash on the odd but delicious Polish-American menu sound intriguing. You may yearn for a taste of the fat, glimmering Polish sausage practically hanging off both sides of a plate that whisks just past your nose on the narrow patio. You may, after years of ordering the pierogi, decide that finally, this time, really, today, you will order something else — maybe the savory porkstuffed cabbage with tangy tomato gravy. You’ll swear to it. You’ll check the menu to make sure you pronounce the new dish right.

And a European server will arrive with a pad and say, “OK. What you have?” And you’ll order the pierogi.

There are several places in town where I can only ever order one thing (El Taco Rey: pork-avo burrito, smothered; Josh and John’s: Dutch chocolate in a cup.) When you know something is that good, why take a risk?

Fortunately, some days PJ’s runs out of pierogi and you are forced to branch out. At that point, you’ll encounter one of the most peculiar menus west of Interstate 25.

PJ’s calls itself a bistro, which originally meant an informal neighborhood restaurant in France, but stateside generally is a place that serves burgers with cloth napkins and calamari instead of onion rings. PJ’s is neither. It’s a variety show of American dinerisms and Poland’s greatest hits, served mostly — especially in summer — to a steady procession of Midwestern tourists foot-weary from looking at too many store-window dream catchers.

Located on the ground floor of the Victorian Barker House hotel, it has a prime people-watching patio that fills quickly on hot days. The service is excellent, and while the prices are a tad high, you won’t go away hungry.

The menu is diverse enough to include burgers, salads, bagel sandwiches and bigos — a Polish hunter’s stew spiked with a blend of meats, wild mushrooms, sauerkraut and cabbage.

Adventurous diners who order from the Iron Curtain side of the menu are rewarded with Golabaki ($8.95) — thick, tangy cabbage leaves baked around seasoned pork meatballs and decorated with a bright-red creamy tomato sauce — and a chunky Hungarian beef goulash ladled over potato pancakes.

The pancakes are a real work of art. Instead of little latkes, these giants almost obscure the plate. They look like the short stack at a truck stop and still manage to deliver the golden crisp outside and springy, glutinous inside that only potato pancakes can. Order them at breakfast for the ultimate hash brown alternative.

The domestic offerings don’t slouch, either. The burgers are big, hand-formed, wellcooked and loaded with freshcut toppings. In the absence of any cohesive restaurant theme, the reigning “everything” burger, the Royal ($8.75, lettuce, tomato, pineapple, cheese, fried onion, bacon and a fried egg), fits right in.

I dragged a young college student, back in her hometown after a year at an Ivy League School, to PJ’s. She looked at the burger, which was far too large to actually eat, and said, "It’s like a metaphor for . . . for. . . for . . . I don’t know what."

It’s like a metaphor for the whole place: mixed up, delicious and generous with the ground meat. And minutes later, it was gone.

Still, the real reason to come is the pierogi.

No culture has been able to escape the appeal of a little dumpling, whether a samosa, ravioli or spring roll. I suppose modern America’s version is the Hot Pocket. Eastern Europe has the pierogi.

At PJ's, the crimped, moonshaped sheets of pasta come stuffed with either mushrooms and cabbage, sauerkraut, fruit, "Russian," which is a light, slightly sweet mix of mashed potato and parsley, or a blend of beef and pork. (all are $7.50) Order a batch pan-fried, and they hit the table with spots of lovely golden-brown singe.

Cut them in half with a fork, dip them in sour cream and say hello to the pierogi you’ll be spending the rest of your life with.

In certain neighborhoods of Miami, where Irvin Rey, owner of Cubanacan, grew up, the smell of frying sofrito wafts through restaurant doors on almost every block. Juice bars blend frothy tropical fruits right before your eyes, and any time of day you can get a cup of Cuban coffee strong enough to wake the dead.

But Rey followed a job to Colorado Springs, and the chances of getting a decent Cuban sandwich, or a steaming plate of picadillo, or any of the other foods he had grown up with, went from good to almost none.

So he did what Cubans have been doing since Africans and Europeans first arrived on the island: He brought the food he loved along with him.

Cuban food, like Cuban music, is a spirited marriage of African and European style with a distinctly Caribbean flavor. The food is slow-cooked, simple, full of savory sauces, rice and plantains.

At Cubanacan, a tidy nook in a bleak, gum-spattered strip mall, the results are hearty, humble dishes of meat and rice, and perfect Cuban sandwiches that can make diners who have never been to Miami's Little Havana salivate at the thought of a Cuban sandwich stand on every block.

There's just one problem with Cubanacan: the prices. Let's just say they're not as sweet as the fresh-squeezed juices.

But food first.

Rey has gone to lengths to make it as authentic as possible.

He hunted down a supplier for Cuban sodas such as Materva, ($1.79) which tastes a bit like Red Bull mixed with iced tea.

He found a bakery in Chicago that could send him Cuban bread for the Cuban sandwich ($8.99), a stack of garlic- and citrus-marinated roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, mustard and pickles, pressed like a panini.

The secret to Cuban bread, a doughy baguette with a good crust, is a moist, chewy center that comes from the addition of lard or shortening.

The entrees don't stray from the slow-cooked Cuban classics, and do them proud.

The ground beef of the picadillo ($12) is gradually simmered with sliced green olives, raisins, tomatoes, peas, and sofrito, a near-universal Cuban starter seasoning made from onion, green bell pepper, garlic, oregano and ground pepper. The result is the type of old-school richness you find in a really good meat loaf.

The chunks of beef cross shank in the carne con papas ($12) must slow roast in sofrito and tomatoes for three hours to reach fall-from-the-bone tenderness.

Arroz con pollo ($13) - a mix of shredded chicken and rice in a saffron-hued blend of seasonings - is a slightly lighter option, although for the three or so people in town still on the Atkins diet, the baked yucca root on the side (which tastes like a slightly gummy potato) is definitely a no-no.

So are the plantains, both the ripe, sweet maduros ($2), which are delightfully golden deep-fried, and the starchy tostones, which are fried, mashed into a patty, and fried again until they turn into a delicious chip served with garlicy mojo salsa.

Cubanacan uses only Ranch Foods Direct beef, which tends to cost a bit more, but has a nice flavor with no hormones or antibiotics.

"My wife works for the health department," Rey said. "So she's concerned about all that stuff."

The juices, ($3.95) which include papaya, mango and my favorite, maracuya or passion fruit, are so gloriously fresh that they're still fizzing from the blender when they hit the table.

Service can be slow. It's a good idea to order an appetizer.

The flaky, homemade empanadas de camaron ($6), packed with melted cheese and shrimp, are a nice way to start. The empanadas de guava, ($6) packed with guava preserves and steaming-hot cream cheese, are a nice way to finish.

Especially when paired with a sweet, strong café con leche.

But beware the end times at Cubanacan.

The bill is hefty. When I took three friends for lunch (lunch!) it added up to almost $100.

Granted, this is a familyowned joint that makes everything from scratch.

It deserves to charge more than the Burger King next door.

But most of the meals at Cubanacan are simple starch-andmeat combos: picadillo with rice and plantains or chicken and rice with yucca.

They should cost less than $10.

Right now, they're at the level of some of the ritziest lunch places in town, and the food can't quite match.

The Cuban sandwich is very good, but at $9, it doesn't even come with a few plantains on the side.

That will keep a lot of people from making Cubanacan a once-a-week lunch favorite.

Every weekday, on a rotating schedule, the kitchen serves two specials for $6.99, but in all the times I've visited, I have yet to have the servers tell me of their existence.

I eventually found them on the back of the menu, hidden behind coffee and dessert.

Let's hope as Cubanacan gets into a groove, prices will come down a bit.

After all, the flavors of home may be priceless.

They may be worth crossing the ocean for.

But most of us are just looking for a good place to get a bite to eat.

I’m thinking about starting a sushi preservation society and holding weekly meetings at the sushi bar of Akasaka Japanese Restaurant.

I can’t think of a better place to pay tribute to the very best cuts of the very best fish served with no distraction, not even cooking.

And sushi needs a preservation society. It seems as if the growing popularity of sushi restaurants in Colorado is directly tied to how unsushi-y they are. Naked cuts of raw fish on rice can be a hard sell compared with overstuffed and often deep-fried rolls.

So “sushi” is becoming less about the subtleties of good tuna and more about gimmicky rolls dominated by fast-foodlike flavors. Sushi places have even started preparing most rolls “inside out” to hide the green seaweed wrapper. One popular haunt even has bacon in its maki.

Jae Cho doesn’t play that game.

The skilled Korean chef worked for years in Hawaii, a place that teems with good fish and discerning eaters. He ended up in an easy-to-miss Academy Boulevard strip mall when his wife came to Colorado Springs to go to school.

He has not tried to dumb down the sushi at his new landlocked address. The menu has a few rolls, and they are excellent. But the real reason to take a seat at the bar is his fish.

Unlike all but a few places in town, it is fresh, not frozen.

The cuts are glossy and voluptuous, and so generous they completely hide their pedestal of rice.

And the flavor — well, it’s an argument for keeping the sushi in sushi.

The tuna on a recent sashimi platter had a faint, alluring minerally zing, almost like the smell of sea foam at high tide. It was the first time I’ve bitten into fish and tasted only the sea.

The salmon is just as stunning — so rich you’d swear it had been swimming in heavy cream, with an elusive nutty aftertaste you have to hunt like a shark. The fact that millions of these fish swim upstream every year, where they can be easily caught and eaten raw is an argument for a higher power.

We tried everything, looking for a weakness — surf clam, giant clam, yellowtail and even tough, grayish halibut. It was all so delicious, so skillfully prepared, and served with such perceptive timing that we gave up and just enjoyed ourselves. Even the green tea and miso soup were a step above.

Like I said, this man doesn’t need a critic, he needs a society.

The nonsushi menu has the same genuine flawless flavors. I can’t remember anywhere in town where I’ve been able to order zaru soba ($6.50) — cold brown buckwheat noodles served with a cup of soybased broth. You’re supposed to dip the noodles in the broth, then loudly slurp them into your mouth to enhance the flavor.

Either way, it’s divine stuff.

Akasaka also serves shabu shabu ($28.75 for two) — a traditional soup with platters of vegetables and thin slices of raw beef on the side to be cooked at the table.

With such an authentic menu, it’s not surprising that most of Akasaka’s customers are Asian immigrants. Almost every time I’ve been there, I’ve been the only Anglo diner in the room.

Here’s what is surprising. I’m usually one of the only diners in the room. The place seems to be hurting for business. Last time I went, at 7 p.m. on a Friday, there was one other table of diners. No others came in.

By 9 p.m., with no other diners in the room, Cho excused himself and sat down at the next table to have shabu shabu with his family.

When he saw us staring (I’d never seen shabu shabu before) he invited us over for the best part, when the rice in the bottom of the pot is mixing to make a savory porridge.

It was delicious. I wondered why more people don’t come here.

With my last spoonful of shabu shabu, I decided this town did need a preservation society, not for sushi, but for Akasaka itself.

You can't get everything you want at Alice's restaurant.

Everything else about this hidden downtown spot pretty much lines up with the old Arlo Guthrie song "Alice's Restaurant": walk right in, it's around the back (behind Josh & John's), just a half a mile from the railroad tracks (actually 0.35 mile, but close enough). And the name of the restaurant isn't Alice's Restaurant. It's actually Alice's Mexican Cuisine.

But even if you can't get anything you want, you can get something very, special and rare: real, honest-to-God Tex-Mex made from scratch using owner Alice Ballesteros's old family recipes and fantastic ingredients. This place is so authentic, it's museum quality.

The whole thing started about 50 years ago when Alice was growing up on the border in El Paso, Texas, with five brothers and sisters. Her mom made all the hearty meals that became the standards of every Mexican restaurant: tacos, tamales, chiles rellenos and eggs with chorizo.

In the 1960s and 1970s, that now well-known Tex-Mex menu was introduced to the country by a wave of restaurants that simply called the food "Mexican." Something was lost in translation. A lot of that first wave of taco joints, with their ketchupy salsa and shredded yellow cheese, were nothing like the food in Alice's mom's kitchen, nor like the food in Mexico. That started to give Tex-Mex a bad name. People were pretty sure they weren't getting the real thing. And over time, that original single beam of Mexican dining was split by a prism of immigration and increasingly sophisticated tastes. The result was a rainbow of different kinds of Mexican: dingy taquerias, yuppie mango salsa bistros, northern New Mexican places with blue corn and green chili, Baja-style fish taco joints and made-for-immigrant family restaurants with thick pumpkin seed molés from Oaxaca. Tex-Mex became a slur for that dreadful, proto-Taco Bell Mexican you might get in a school lunch line, with bland ground beef and Styrofoam tomatoes under a toupee of shredded lettuce.

Anyway, it was about 50 years after Alice (Remember Alice?) learned to cook her mother's traditional Tex-Mex recipes that she got tired of a corporate job she had been working for decades and decided it would be nice to open a little restaurant with her son, John, a trained chef.

But even she doesn't call her food Tex-Mex.

"I call it Texas border style," she said on a recent visit.

Don't split hairs over the name. Just sit down and order anything on the menu. You can't go wrong.

The tacos ($6.95) are what tacos were supposed to be before the 12-pack of pre-shaped shells - a real, fresh corn tortilla, shaped by hand and fried, then filled with beef or chicken, lettuce and tomato. The difference between Alice's and the cafeteria line: the beef comes deftly seasoned Texas-style with cumin and garlic and chili powder, and the tomatoes are deliciously sweet and ripe.

The chile relleno ($7.95) comes under a sash of red sauce that's more tomato and oregano than chile. When combined in one bite with the crispy green chile beneath, it's a heavenly mix.

"I think that's my favorite of my mom's recipes," Alice said.

The gorditas ($7.95) are another classic border dish: a fluffy fried disk of cornmeal, split in half and packed with the same taco fillings, and crowned with crumbly white queso fresco.

"Some people ask me if they're the same as at Taco Bell. I take great offense to that," Alice said.

That's the thing, though. There's nothing on this menu you haven't seen at Chi-Chi's: tamales, enchiladas, flautas - this isn't an exotic menu. The setting isn't particularly sophisticated. It's just darn good food - a testament to real ingredients and practiced hands. Even the beans and rice that accompany most plates are fresh and deliciously handmade.

Breakfast is best time to see the pains Alice goes through to achieve authenticity.

She couldn't find decent chorizo in Colorado Springs, or even Denver, so when she needs more of the peppery pork sausage she drives 650 miles to a small meat packer in El Paso, Texas.

Ask for it with eggs on the side of chilaquiles ($7.95) - a traditional breakfast meal in which yesterday's tortillas are sliced to ribbons, sautéed and drenched in mild green chile.

For desk jockeys running late to the office, the breakfast burritos are cheap ($3.50), huge and served to go.

For the lucky few who choose to linger on the right day, Alice makes the best tres leches cake I've ever had. She jazzes up the Mexican sponge cake soaked in three milks (whole, condensed and powdered) with crushed pineapple and a rich frosting. The cake ($3.75) is somehow light and dense at once, and not too sweet even though it arrives in a pool of sweetened cream spiked with brandy.

So maybe you can get everything you want at Alice's restaurant. Because, frankly, after having it, I can't imagine wanting anything else.

On a recent weekend morning, one table in the bustling morning melee of this west-side breakfast institution held four war protesters inspecting the photo from their mistrial on the front page of The Gazette. Just above them on the wall hung a blown-up photo of five hot, dirty men in a desert (presumably Iraq) sitting on the turret of an Abrams tank on which they had written "WESTERN OMELETTE OR BUST."

It just goes to show the unifying power of a good, cheap breakfast.

Many things divide the country, but who could argue with perfectly crisp, light, not-toogreasy hash browns, well-priced fluffy omelets and pancakes that are billed as "plate-sized" but actually hang over the plate on all sides?

Apparently no one. Western Omelette always seems to be packed with diners from both the Fox News and NPR sides of the cultural schism, and a fair number of grizzly, graying bikers who probably would just as soon give the finger to them both. But everyone seems to get along over plates of steaming plates of huevos rancheros and bottomless tankards of coffee.

The "Western" behind Western Omelette is owner Bill Borders, a part-Navajo who has run the place for 19 years with a slant toward Southwestern dishes.

He was born in Gallup, N.M., but grew up in Trinidad, where he developed a gift for green chili. The stuff he sloshes over eggs and burritos is a savory green paste that takes his mother's pared-down New Mexican recipe and spices it up with major heat from hand-ground habanero peppers and Coloradostyle chunks of pork added by his son, Preston, who runs the kitchen.

It's one of the best in town, and probably hot enough to use in particularly stubborn exorcisms.

It's so hot, in fact, that it's very hard to order. Servers generally make you swallow a sample to prove you can handle it before they'll pour it over your plate.

Once, when I ordered the mild over a chicken chimichanga, the waitress said, "You're ordering the mild. That means you've been here before. Everybody tries to order the hot once . . . only once."

Even the mild has a good deal of heat on most days. If in doubt, order it on the side.

Other than the green chili, Western Omelette is your typical diner: vinyl booths, morning sun streaming in through closed blinds, regulars at their familiar tables, newspapers crowding a drawn-out meal of eggs and conversation.

The service is always great, if somewhat harried at peak times.

The coffee predates the Starbucks revolution (both in philosophy and, seemingly, in roasting date). It's a weak, dirty-tasting slick. But what it lacks in flavor, the staff makes up for in volume. The mugs are huge, and try as you might, the passing servers will never let you reach the bottom.

It's hard to go wrong on the menu. The huevos rancheros ($7.05) - perfectly cooked eggs resting on a pile of spicy chorizo and salsa - are a sure hit.

The Harley ($7), a pile of eggs, hash browns and sausage or bacon with a "plate-sized" pancake on the side, could keep you going all the way to Sturgis. The pancake is a little too airy, and the syrup, of course, never came near a maple tree, but it's still a good deal.

Lunch also reels in the regulars, though it doesn't get quite the hype of breakfast.

Pick from a menu of greasy spoon favorites with a Mexican accent. Like the breakfast, it's generally unpretentious and covered in sauce.

The Hot Turkey ($7.65) is reported to be an open-face turkey sandwich under country gravy. The only thing evident on arrival is sweet, white, pepper-speckled gravy.

"I'm sure there's bread in there somewhere," a friend said. So we dug in, and it was surprisingly good: not too salty, with good, thick slices of turkey. And sure enough, somewhere in there was a slice of bread.

The Mexican dishes are also a step above normal diner standards. The pinto beans are not refried, and the whole beans retain a more delicate flavor. The Spanish rice is rich with tomato and not overly salty.

The chicken chimichanga comes packed with delicate, shredded meat, a hint of salsa and a warm bath of chili.

This isn't the type of food that steals the show, but it's a nice lubricant for a meal full of small talk and leisurely stacks of weekend newspapers - easy-going food in an easygoing place.

And that's good because if you're looking for a fight, the two choices are the bikers and the green chili, and you probably couldn't handle either.

The name of Sheldon’s Luncheonette says it all: This place is not hip. Not hip at all. It’s so not hip, that it’s kinda hip. Not in a purposefully nothip-so-it-can-be-hip way, but genuinely, absolutely, not hip (and consequently hip). Like Joey Ramone. Sheldon’s is hip because, like Joey Ramone (the 1970s front man of The Ramones, who was punk before it was punk to be punk), it does its own thing.

The longtime local greasy spoon has two woefully unhip locations: in a strip mall on Nevada Avenue north of the deserted dog track, and on 8th Street, hidden behind La Casita. And both are pretty packed with regulars every day for breakfast and lunch.

You could give a marketing executive an aneurism getting him to try to figure out the appeal. Both dining areas have all the charm of an interrogation room: Vinyl chairs, bargain-basement tables, dingy walls and slightly flickering neon lighting. But the gruff, working-class disciples of Sheldon’s probably don’t care what marketing execs think.

That is why I like Sheldon’s. It’s sure of itself and unpretentious — that, and the fact that the kitchen makes almost everything from scratch.

Oh, and the fact that during a recent visit, a sleeveless tough guy with faded tattoos from the marines, hidden under a layer of sun spots, shared his table with a sil- ver-haired woman in a neat, powder-blue cardigan who was reading “Robinson Crusoe.”

The place has broad appeal.

Sheldon’s menu is classic diner. Hamburgers, eggs on the grill and patty melts back a steady improvisation of daily specials, such as beefy burritos and open-face roast beef sandwiches.

I figured the real way to test this place was to throw a bunch of different diners at it and see what stuck. Over several visits, I brought a bourgeois Colorado College student from Philadelphia, a line-backer-size vegetarian pub-quiz champ from Indiana, and a Gazette reporter with tastes so bland that if he weren’t married, he’d probably subsist on Twinkies, mac and cheese and diet Pepsi the rest of his days.

Everyone liked it.

The CC student had the burger — a fat, hand-formed patty with a good roll, lettuce, onion and tomato. It was nothing fancy, he said, but “totally legit.”

Mr. Bland ordered the small open-face roast beef sandwich ($7.50). It arrived as massive pile of pink, shaved roast beef doused in brown gravy. Somewhere in the depths was a small, soggy piece of bread, but it was like the plot of a summer blockbuster — thin, limp, and frankly, beside the point. The sandwich came with mashed potatoes on the side — no garlic, no sage butter, just house-made mashers with more brown gravy. Mr. Bland was in nirvana.

I was able to trade him some of the excellent (and equally titanic) meatloaf special ($7.95) for a bite. Not half bad.

When the vegetarian asked the waitress if there were any meatless entrees, I could swear the room went silent.

She put her hand on her hip and, chewing her gum, said, “How ‘bout a burger without the burger? Some folks have done that before.”

He shook his head.

“How ‘bout some eggs?” she asked. No.

Eventually, he ordered a peanut butter and jelly sandwich ($3.15) and a basket of fries.

Sheldon’s cuts its own fries. No frozen spuds here. That can make them somewhat inconsistent, but when they are good, they truly rock.

The basket arrived hot and crisp on the outside and velvety light on the inside.

The vegetarian liked them so much he e-mailed me twice that afternoon to say how tasty they were.

This is real blue-collar, middle-American food without the short cuts. It’s made like diner food was made before nationwide restaurant suppliers and ready-made entrees. Sure, it’s old-school, but it could teach newer restaurants a few things about how to keep customers of all stripes coming back.

When Joey Ramone started punk, it was to get rid of all the needless flourishes and 10-minute drum and guitar solos and pare things down to the bare bones of rock ‘n’ roll. The songs were short. The chords were few. But they rocked.

Sheldon’s really is the same.

For lunch one day, I had a Reuben ($8.75). It could have been straight out of the 1950s — just two thin, grilled slices of rye, a little sauerkraut, a thin smear of dressing, a slice of Swiss and a mound of lean, tender pastrami. It rocked.

The Ritz Grill has been many things in its 20 years on Tejon Street.

In the late 1980s, it was a sophisticated downtown pioneer, serving high-octane martinis and live music when the only other restaurant on the block was the candy aisle of the Walgreens across the street.

(Before that, in 1982, the space was a jewelry store that was the scene of one of Colorado Springs’ greatest heists. Thieves drilled through the green-tiled floor of a beauty shop on the second floor into the store’s vault and made off with $600,000 worth of loot.)

In the late 90s, it was a smoky hangout where graying boomers with streaks of anti-establishment angst idled Harleys, talked tech stocks, and reveled and commiserated in recent divorces.

In the past few years, though, the smoking ban cleared the air and the motorcycle guys moved down to Southside Johnny's. Now, the defining element of the Ritz is Jay Gust, a talented young chef who has won the local culinary challenge, the Champion de Cuisine, three years in a row, beating out cooks from the best restaurants in town with such delights as delicate lavender-crusted, crackerlike fried foie gras. His first-place ribbons hang above the Ritz’s stylish Art Deco booths.

With Gust at the helm, you'd expect the Ritz's latest incarnation to be a culinary gallery with daring ingredients, cutting-edge presentation and foodies crowding in to mull over lavender infusions and rare micro greens. You'd be a bit disappointed.

The Ritz's 20 years have shown that it's a great place. If you want a real dinner after 10 p.m., there's no better place in town. The servers are pros. The retro Deco atmosphere nice. But if chef Gust really is as gifted as ribbons and trophies suggest, Ritz doesn't let it show.

The menu is good. Not great.

Lunch is dependable, but hardly prize-worthy. Thoughtful surprises, such as the ahi appetizer ($8.50) with thin, pink shavings of raw bluefin tuna crusted in pastrami seasonings and served with a boutonniere of pickled ginger and a drizzle of bitter wasabi, show a mischievously inventive streak. But they are outnumbered by boilerplate chicken cheese steaks ($7.95), spicy chicken tenders ($8.95) and Chinese chicken salads ($8.95) that are tasty but feel like they could come from anywhere.

Dinner is the same.

The chicken saltimbocca is an adequate, but unadorned copy of the classic Mediterranean dish: a chicken breast layered with house-made mozzarella and prosciutto, with a side of ovenroasted tomato and spinach salad. It barely rises above the level of banquet fare, and, at $16, it's overpriced.

So is the flat-iron steak ($16). It's seared well and served under melting gorgonzola, but the cheese overwhelms.

Gust's knack for flavor does come through in some unexpected dishes. The side of mac and cheese is a masterpiece: a gooey home blend of cheeses and smoky green chiles. Order a bowl with a beer and house salad for a great light dinner.

I couldn't figure out, though, how a guy recently named Best Chef in The Gazette's Best of the Springs would settle for good bar food. So I called him.

Gust told me he saves the fancy prize-winning dishes mostly for classes and wine dinners.

"As far as the Ritz is concerned, it's more about making food that sells. We have a good menu; that's why it's been around for 20 years," he said.

He has set costs and confines he works in, he said. The creative outlet comes with the daily chef special. The other day, he cooked up curry-seared Peruvian scallops served on the half shell with a garam masala coconut foam.

Gust said the limits of the Ritz have taught him enough about managing numbers and people that he is looking to open his own fine dining address downtown, though he doesn't have firm plans yet.

In the meantime, the owners of the Ritz should let him do more. Otherwise, if I were them, I'd worry that someone will come in one night, drill through the ceiling, and steal their gem away.

Adam's Mountain Café, with its vegetarian friendly, socially conscious vibe, is such a vital part of Manitou Springs that if it ever left, Earth would probably rumble and swallow the town in a fiery cataclysm.

Fortunately, Adam's has moved only down the block. And its new space, in the under-renovation Manitou Spa building, strikes a perfect balance between Manitou's old, quirky Birkenstock weirdness and its rising yuppie tide of inns and lofts.

Some things at the new Adam's have changed - generally for the better - but the fantastic menu has wisely stayed more or less the same.

In the new cafe, the long dining room windows reach up to the high ceiling. Beyond them, a patio tucked between two of Manitou's century-old stone bridges on Ruxton Creek offers an unmatched view of the foothills.

Adam's kept the mismatched tables and tiny terra cotta pots of succulents that lent the old address a certain groove. It kept the drawings by cheery Gandalf-looking local artist Charles Rockey. It also kept the eight-seat "community table," where diners can rub elbows with local pagans, flatland tourists and whomever else has the munchies for huevos rancheros but no reservations.

Adam's food strikes the right balance - healthful but not preachy, gorgeous without any hint that it knows how good it is. At a recent dinner over flickering candles, my wife and I shared a heaping plate of smoked salmon enchiladas ($9.50) and Thai Prawns with Mango and Mint ($18).

The salmon brimmed with the sophisticated spice of home-smoking, mellowed by mild melted cheddar and sweet corn. Like most items on the a la carte menu, it was a real value. We ate until stuffed and still took most of it home.

The shrimp was perfectly cooked just a few seconds past raw, resting on a vibrant, delicious nest of diced carrots, sliced cucumber, fresh mango, red onion, garlic, roasted peanuts, Thai chiles, cilantro and some of the best noodles in town. I can't think of a Thai place that can stand up to it.

What makes Adam's such a great place, though, is that the same thought and care are put into the most peripheral dishes. The lime chipotle vinaigrette on the house salad has the simple expressiveness of a Miles Davis riff - not too many notes, just the right ones.

A humble appetizer of shiitake, oyster, porcini and portobello mushrooms under bubbling fresh mozzarella with fresh baked crackers on the side ($8) offers a beguiling, rich earthiness that only comes from great ingredients.

Adam's version of the apple crisp, which at some restaurants is a dumping ground for mealy, moribund fruit embalmed in sugary goo, proves an aromatic delight of nutmeg and cinnamon with a fantail of tart, crisp apple slices standing in a pool of raspberry puree.

I was gushing with so much praise during the meal that my wife put her hand on mine and said, "You can't like everything. You're supposed to be a critic."

"OK," I said. "I don't really like the wine glasses." Then we dove back into the crisp.

At the next table, a server was explaining that Adam's is really better-known for breakfast. Reservations are a must.

Listen to the servers. They're good. Very good.

Not surprisingly, so is the breakfast. The famous huevos rancheros and the almond French toast with real maple syrup are well-honed crowd pleasers.

It pains me that Adam's refuses to serve meat - not even the most Earth-friendly breakfast bacon. A few slices of hog would really jazz up that French toast. But I guess being a vital part of a community means standing by your convictions. Manitou didn't get where it was by marching in step with the majority. If keeping the town weird means no smoked sow's belly at breakfast, then, hey, let your freak flag fly. details

How could chef Lawrence "Chip" Johnson improve his game? As head chef of the Briarhurst, his game was game: wild boar, red deer, elk, bison, all strategically arranged in delicate sauces. How could you beat that playbook? Well, knocking a few bucks off would be nice. And when Johnson bought The Warehouse in July, that's basically what he did. In this downtown dinner spot, diners can dig into the same impressive dishes without all the fuss and forks of formal dining, and save a little coin.

Fans of Johnson will immediately recognize the hands behind blends such as Red Deer braised with carrots, celery, garlic, onion and tomatoes with m o u n t a i n mushroom risotto ($29), or Colorado lamb shank slowcooked in a sweet molé, with rich, bitter red chile crepes and cilantro-lime roast red potatoes on the side ($28).

Sure, $28 a plate isn't cheap. But a similar lamb dish at Briarhurst is $34. Same with the cashew-crusted crab cake: $17 at Briarhurst, $15 at The Warehouse.

This is good because The Warehouse lacks the white-starched tablecloths and other frilly touches of similarly priced places. In fact, the place really used to be a warehouse and still has the iron beams and raw brick walls (now they are graced with bright, abstract canvases.) If anything, the dining room, dominated by a big wooden bar, is too casual for the price. It feels like a brewpub (which it was, and may soon be again), not the type of place you drop $100 for a special occasion. Some light renovations - maybe a few banquettes to break up the room, could go a long way.

These concerns melt away, though, as soon as the food arrives. On one plate, a stunning arrangement of fat alabaster scallops swimming around a tower of wild mushroom risotto in a shallow pond of Ferrari-red jus ($25) had the power to dissolve all peripheral concerns.

It was hard to resist dipping a spoon into the jus, just to see what could make it so bright. On the tongue, it was clear: red pepper, puréed and strained, then laced with the licoricey accent of fennel. It's fabulous and light - a perfect bath for such gorgeous scallops.

Johnson really is a master.

His grilled pork chops come marinated in garlic and rosemary with a sweet-and-sour apple-rhubarb chutney and a stack of light, crispy, deepfried, sweet yellow tomatoes.

Even the most humble sides are true talents. The quartersize sautéed baby pattypan squash piled on the side of a bass (I never thought I'd say this) tasted better than the stuff out of my own garden. Johnson sometimes serves roasted elephant garlic from local farmer Dan Hobbs that is infinitely more interesting than its California brethren - somehow more bitter and at the same time more floral. There's nothing better.

But The Warehouse has some work to do. The great menu is there. Now Johnson now needs to watch it like a hawk because the consistency isn't.

The soup of the day ($5) recently was a miso beef with udon noodles swirling with green onion, sprouts and ribbons of carrot. Great idea. Way, way, way too much salt. Even my wife, who sometimes adds extra salt to tortilla chips, pushed it aside. Perhaps just a simple mistake by a low-level cook, but it should have been caught.

Same with the Broiler Flambeed Fussili ($13). The jumble of squiggly pasta, forest mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, pinyon nuts and asparagus tossed with a red-pepper coulis sounded like a great light lunch. But whoever did the tossing added too many squirts of oil, and this well-conceived meal arrived as greasy as pay-by-thescoop lo mein.

A close eye on every dish should easily fix the inconsistencies. And it better happen soon because with construction on Cimarron Bridge closing down easy access, The Warehouse is going to have to bring its A game to survive.

“Moonstruck,” the sweetly romantic 1987 movie in which an unsmiling Cher falls for her fiance’s compatibly dour brother, begins with a familiar song: “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.”

At about the same time, if you’ve ordered the movie menu at the Margarita, a lovely little pizza pie decorated with a scattering of fresh basil and truffle oil hits the table while the movie plays.

A few scenes later, when Cher decides, while peering at a menu, that she’s never going to fall in love and might as well marry someone safe, she tells her soon-to-be fiance that ordering the fish will disagree with him, and he should have the manicotti instead.

Then manicotti appears before you, stuffed with wild mushrooms, asparagus and ricotta, and doused with a peppery tomato sauce and delicate, handpeeled artichokes. Then there is chocolate cake. And, when you least expect it, popcorn with real butter.

Film writers often say watching a movie with a crowd in a theater enhances the experience. It’s nothing compared with watching a movie with a crowd, a paired three-course meal and a nice wine list.

So it’s happy news that the Margarita at PineCreek has brought back its movie dinner nights for a second summer.

The Margarita is one of the great secrets of Colorado Springs. It’s fun, smart, fresh, constantly changing and seriously delicious. The never-quite-the-same menu prepared from scratch by owner and chef couple Pati and Ken Davidson and chef Eric Viedt has a fervent following among savvy longtime locals.

Few newcomers have heard of the Margarita. No surprise, considering the funky little adobe is hidden on old family land that’s been inundated with a T.G.I. Friday’s, a Microsuites Inn and other modern flotsam. No one would come across it by accident. And the driveway is guarded by oddlooking giant carrot sculptures, so anyone who did could be forgiven for shrugging and driving on.

The normal drill at the restaurant is this: either make a reservation for a full, fivecourse prix fixe meal ($37), or order from the fabulous bar and patio menu.

Every Friday through September, patio diners can order the three-course movie dinner ($32).

But get there early or you won’t get a seat; the Margarita takes reservations inside only.

At dusk, weather permitting, the patio bar’s broad, corrugated metal roof creaks upward on hinges, like a squeaky drawbridge, to reveal a screen underneath. Diners scoot their chairs to one side of the table. The show starts.

It’s usually a quirky classic. This year, they’ve played “The Freshman,” “Indiana Jones” and “Rear Window.”

Don’t feel like eating a threecourse meal? The bar menu offers well-priced standards with a Margarita twist: chili-cornmeal-crusted fish tacos with honey-tomatillo salsa, avocado, and citrus-jicama slaw ($9); braised ribs with orange-chipotle-soy glaze and roasted cornjalapeño slaw ($11); a burger with Spanish sheep’s milk cheese, avocado, smoked bacon and a roasted red pepper-Dijon aioli.

I love how the Margarita does away with formality and focuses on what’s important. There are no tablecloths. The silver often doesn’t match. But everything is whipped up fresh and fabulous. When possible, ingredients are local and organic.

On a recent visit, the server made an apology everyone loves to hear: “Sorry, your guacamole will be a minute. They have to make it from scratch.”

The inside dinners are slightly more formal but just as phenomenal.

Diners choose an appetizer from an ever-evolving roster that includes delights such as roasted poblano peppers stuffed with shrimp, manchego cheese and chorizo, or beef carpacio with a mustard-glazed spinach pancetta salad drizzled in horseradish-lemon aioli. Soup and salad du jour follow.

Then there’s a choice of chicken, red meat, fish and inventive vegetarian entrees, all constructed with the same haute whimsy seen in the rest of menu.

Not every experiment works. On a recent night, an ahi tuna steak dredged in what was billed as tempura batter and deep fried ended up tasting like a doughnut. Great idea, wrong batter.

Generally, though, the place is not just good; it’s fascinating. They make a deep, dark sachertorte with layers of marmalade and raspberry jam that is so good it should be illegal.

What I like most though, is seeing people who love what they do. Too often smart chefs get bored after several years. They stop hanging around the kitchen, or worse, try to run several restaurants at once. The food usually suffers. Instead, the staff at the Margarita keep things interesting — every day a new menu, every week a new movie.

The love shows in the food, and the good feeling it exudes is contagious.

I went back the Friday after “Moonstruck” because the Davidsons were showing the Steve Martin knucklehead comedy “The Jerk,” and I couldn’t wait to see what the chef would prepare.

I was disappointed to find that equipment problems in the kitchen had caused them to nix the movie menu that night. Or at least I was disappointed until I saw the food scenes in the movie. If the chef had been true to the script, he would have either served a carnival snack called “pizza in a cup,” or the main character’s favorite meal, “tuna fish on white bread with mayonnaise, a Tab, and a couple of Twinkies.”

It's perfectly understandable to see the Seared Lamb Loin at Nosh, with it's delicate bonnet of mint and shallot salad and a bright drizzle of sweet chutney, as a sign of the Blue Star's stylish expertise. It's understandable to see the tender bites of Nori Wrapped Beef in their tidy seaweed kimonos, or the exotically delicate Lemongrass Ginger Crème Brulee as a clear continuation of the Blue Star's tasty, thoughtful to-hell-with-therules fusion.

That would makes sense, since early reports were that Nosh, the Fine Art Center Modern's new restaurant in the Plaza of the Rockies, was now being run by Blue Star founder Joseph Coleman, one of the region's true culinary lights.

But Nosh has nothing to do with the Blue Star - at least that's the story.

"I don't even know what goes on over there," Coleman said recently.

"There's no real connection. We're totally separate," said Seth Elwonger, Nosh's top chef.

Nevermind that Elwonger cooked at the Blue Star for years, Nosh's general manager and top bartender both hail from there, and other Blue Star chefs loiter at Nosh's bar after work.

"Nosh is it's own place," said Elwonger.

Why go through the trouble to separate Nosh from a place with such a good reputation?

One look at the menu and it's clear. This place deserves to be its own star.

Nosh's collection of gorgeous small dishes and well-priced, interesting wines takes diners on a whirlwind taste expedition at remarkably modest prices.

The space, formerly the Jazz Bistro, is a scattering of tables beneath bright modern art, ranged around a huge granite bar.

But the real focus here is the food. Long, rectangular plates arrive with concoctions like bite-size Summer Shrimp Tacos ($4.50), so colorful and carefully arranged, with "Nosh" scrawled in bright basil oil on the white china, that you could easily mistake them for sculpture.

Dressy nouveau cuisine can sometimes be as distasteful as a 10-year-old in high heels - dolled up to cover a lack of sophistication. But the flash of Nosh has real heat behind it - not just the flame of seasoned chefs parrying with tried-andtrue delicacies, but the warming embers of sustainable community-based ingredients. The menu is peppered with local, small-ranch bison meat, freerange pork and fresh greens and herbs from down the road.

"It's good to support local growers," said Elwonger. "But it's also some of the best-tasting stuff I've ever had."

Take a bite of the crab cakes ($6) and you'll understand. Three crispy little balls, loaded with crab rest on a hearty base of creamed corn succotash with bright local squash and natural bacon from outside Pueblo that steals the show.

The plates are small. Expect to order several. And since the value-laden wine list is available in three-ounce pours, ask the knowledgable staff to pair a wine with each course.

That's the idea behind Nosh: try a little of a lot, linger, talk, nibble at a fresh, zesty smoked trout ($7) served with a crisp horseradish potato croquette, marvel over the light, delicious asparagus-mushroom soufflé ($7). Stay for dessert, primarily the brain child of the Blue Star's talented pastry chef, Alicia Prescott. Sweet little cannolis ($6) crusted in lavender and laid over roasted peaches, or the absurdly indulgent Brownie Bomb are a sin to miss.

The best part of the Nosh, though, may be when the Crocs-clad young waiters deliver the check. It takes a smart chef to create the kind of efficient kitchen that can deliver at prices people can afford more than once a year.

Not that Nosh is cheap. This ain't an Applebee's. You're not going to be able to spend $10 and still take most of your food home in a box. But anyone could have a very nice meal, with a couple of very expressive half-glasses of wine for about $25, which may be one of the best deals in town. The $2.50 white sangria is fabulous.

And the deal gets better. At lunch, everything from buffalo burgers to salmon in chipotle aioli is $7.

I hate to tell you this, because it's already getting so crowded that I'm having trouble finding a seat, but from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., the whole bar is half off, and everything on a pared-down menu with dishes like tempura-fried scallops is $3.

I hate to see Nosh get so popular I can no longer sit and chat about wines at the quiet bar, but like any true star, it is bound to have a huge following.

Marigold Café & Bakery has long been the little black dress of the Colorado Springs restaurant scene: fabulous but not too formal, stylish and deceptively simple, fit for everything from a casual night out to a must-impress date.

But here's the thing about the little black dress: For all its stunning simplicity, it takes a lot of work to truly pull it off - especially as the years go by.

Marigold has been open for 15 years and has reveled in a glowing reputation for just as long - which made us wonder on a recent night, as we walked in the door, if that old dress would feel as good as it did years ago.

As soon as four steaming dinner plates hit the table and we lifted our forks to our lips, the answer was a moaning, meditative, taste-bud-exalting yes. It might even feel better.

The pan-roasted California sea bass ($20) was so ethereally light that it tasted like a ghost of a fish haunting a creamy ocean of oyster mushroom-crab sauce. It came crowned by a laurel of fresh, pungent basil that wafted the scent of sweet licorice over the whole table. The total effect was divine.

The fettuccini jambalaya ($18) was a snappy Mardi Gras of color and flavor: fat, tender shrimp, bright roasted peppers, earthy slices of Cajun Andouille, smoked chicken and a sauce as thick, muddy and complex as the Mississippi. But what was giving the whole plate that wonderfully robust bitterness?

"It's got a lot of things in it," said the server. "Wine, cream, garlic, celery, crushed red pepper." No, no, none of those were it. She went back to the kitchen.

"Cajun mustard," she said when she returned. That was it.

More traditional entrees hid the same beguiling layers of precision. The flat iron steak ($18) - a humble, grilled slice of top blade beef - came swimming in a marvelous blood-red pool of balsamic, red wine and shallot demiglace.

The beef Stroganoff ($17) - yes, that gray, tasteless standard from the hotlunch line - arrived on the table as slow- cooked beef tips glistening in a white wine-veal reduction without a hint of the traditional sour cream. It was so tender it fell apart in ribbons at the first nibble. The waitress warned that it harbored a treasure of unpitted olives, saying, "I don't want you to just chomp down and hurt yourself."

The restaurant, like its food, is more than it seems at first. From the outside, Marigold looks like a Denny's. Inside, it's a fun mix of sophistication and kitsch - expert lighting and odd retro silver Christmas tree-type things.

It's a fitting pair for the place's well-heeled but informal attitude. At the table to our right, a couple was ordering a bottle of wine whose price would cover most of my car payment. At the table to our left, a family of three with a young daughter had their fourth chair occupied by a stuffed bunny rabbit.

Granted, the rabbit was wearing a jacket and tie - this is a nice place - but it is also part of the staff, available upon request. Apparently, solo adult foodies who come to dine here sometimes ask for his company at their booths. It just goes to show that husband-and-wife owners Elaine and Dominique Chavanon's priority is fantastic food, not being snooty.

Of course, all this wonderful food presents a problem for the first-time food critic. I invited my wife and two friends to dinner with the understanding that we'd share plates. Everyone would taste everything.

But an insurgency developed, and the meal turned out to be too good to want to share. Elbows bent close over plates as if we were dining in prison. Even my dear wife shoved the best morsels of oyster mush- room to the far side of her plate so my fork couldn't reach.

This was before we even had desert.

The desert menu is two pages long and so good it should come at the start of the meal. Many discriminating chowhounds come just for these sinfully rich sweets. Servers don't bat an eye when you order a giant wedge of cake, then order another to go.

The double chocolate cake ($3.95) actually contains five distinct chocolate layers. It looked too good to be true - many American pastry cases are full of luscious-looking tortes that turn out to be Potemkin villages of margarine and sugar. Not here. The ganache is rich, cold and solid, the cake, light and springy. It's enough to stop talk until clanging spoons have scraped the last streak from the plate.

The citrus cheesecake ($3.95) is just as alluring - crumbly but sticky, rich and creamy with resonating lemon and orange accents.

The service is attentive but easygoing. The wine list has 28 varieties by the glass, including some delicious values. The menu knows how to do simple, too. Pizzas, salads and soups ($5-$11.50) are prepared with the same care as more pricey entrees. The complimentary slices of baguette are some of the best in town.

The appetizers are the one neglected hem on this dress. While still deliciously prepared with due expertise, offerings such as the thick-breaded calamari ($8.50) aren't as stylish as they might have been years ago.

These frays should be easy to mend for the well-trained, inventive kitchen.

For diners, they are easy to overlook, especially when the prospect of ordering appetizers AND entrees AND a stunning desert or two could make that next black-dress dinner a much tighter fit.