Getting my drunk on (and appetizer on) at Linger in LoHi
Posted on: January 22, 2012
So I recently got an opportunity to get nice and knackered with some coworkers at a place I’d never been to before, a bar called Linger in LoHi here in Denver. First off, “LoHi” is such a weird term for me. I know it means “Lower Highlands”, but from a taxonomy/linguistic standpoint, couldn’t you just say “Midlands?” And, what’s to distinguish it from “Higher Lowlands?” And then, why isn’t there a “Higher Highlands?” separate from that? I mean, I’m pretty sure the higher area is just called “Highlands”, but then if we look at this from a set theory perspective, would “Lower Highlands” be a subset of “Highlands” or in it’s own class? Naming schemas are important, people!
Moving on to content people might actually want to read, did you know that Linger used to be a mortuary? Pretty crazy! They’ve got that fact incorporated into their interior design. Well, if you imagine a disco morgue or something. But no, it’s really cool! The menus look like toe tags and the bar upstairs is constructed with Light Bright pieces. And there a pile of pool balls in the stairwell, along with a gorgeous sweeping view of downtown Denver. Hmm, so much for my disco morgue theory.
Anyhow, the food! The menu is total frou frou, what with it’s fennel and deconstructed regular food and whatnot. Kinda intimidating at first, so it might be a good idea to point and choose at random, or consult with a conveniently placed waitron. Or just get a beer first (they have Left Hand Milk Stout on tap, w00t!) and let the alcohol decide later on. In any case, we started off with the “organic waffle sweet potato fries.”
Tasty! They came with chipotle-tomato ketchup, which is just like regular ketchup, except kinda weird! I’m still trying to warm to the idea that I can a.) eat sweet potatoes and that b.) it is possible for them to taste good. I seriously didn’t like them at all growing up, but I’ve had a few good experiences so I’m growing here. Anyhow, if I’m gonna learn to like sweet potatoes, a great method is to deep fry the bastards, which certainly worked for these fries.
By this point, my camera had had a wee bit too much to drink, as you can tell by the poor quality of that photograph above. Anyhow, these guys were poppers. Or rather, deconstructed poppers. “Popper breakdown”, as the menu called them. Someone was all like, “If Heidegger wanted him some awesome poppers, what kind of poppers would he eat?” and thus this menu item was born. Peppers sitting separate from some breaded and deep-fried cheese curds. Actually, I could totally overlook the pretentiousness of this menu item due to those amazing cheese curds. As I’m not too good at spice, I just ignored the peppers completely and stuck to the cheese. Holy cow, deep fried cheese curds! Genius!
So I have mixed feelings about mussels as bar food. They’re slimy and get all over your fingers and are apt to go flying at any moment. However, as this is the same argument I have against eating wings (which, much to my chagrin, is a very accepted form of bar food), I’m thinking I have no real footing on this one. Anyhow, I got over my aversion to the gooey and chomped down on several of these. They were in a flavorful sauce and tasted better than the majority of such shellfish I’ve eaten over the course of my life. So yeah, would totally recommend.
And then at some point, these tiny burgers showed up! It’s like at some point I stopped having any input into what menu items actually got ordered, and all of the sudden there were tiny burgers staring me in the face. With bacon! This might have been a better “early on in the drinking” item to get, actually, when the hour is closer to the dinner hour and one’s stomach is not so saturated with beer. But, still pretty good. Came with more of that chipotle ketchup – and it’s not that there was anything wrong with the ketchup, but I think I would have preferred a straight up barbecue sauce instead. This of course did not prevent me from downing a tiny burger (or slider, or whatever the heck the kids call them these days), and then later using my ninja stealth skills to eat all of the bacon off of a second one. Actually, this is the danger in getting such a dish later on in the drinky part of the evening. My Id takes over and is all like “Hmm…why eat the entire thing when I could just fill up on BACON!” Actually, wait, why is this a bad thing?
Anyhow, I’d totally go back to Linger. Place gets kinda packed on a weekday night (a good or bad thing, depending on your feelings on such things). But, pretentious menu aside, the food and ambiance are both pretty awesome.
Whereupon I crack out on Mexican food at Blue Bonnet
Posted on: January 18, 2012
So I’m still not sure who decided Blue Bonnet was a good name for a Mexican restaurant. I mean, you’d think they’d at least call it Capo Azul or something? Anyhow, I ended up going to Blue Bonnet over on Broadway in South Denver with a few friends not too long ago, and it was magic and delight all up in ma belly.
They have an extensive margarita menu, and the one above is the frozen sauza swirl. Alcoholic strawberry blend in my mouth!
As we were pregaming for a party here, I decided to *try* going light on the food, and got a vegetarian burrito. This baby is what showed up to greet me!
SO MUCH CHEESE. Really, cheese is very important to me. And this sucker was coated with the stuff. This is the sort of burrito where I’d like to fill a bathtub with a bunch of them and just roll around in that pile for awhile. Melty in my mouth! Stuffed with rice and beans and pure unadulterated Joy. And totally the sort of burrito where you suddenly realize that you only have 3 bites left and your stomach is attempting to annex other parts of your body due to it’s overflowing status. I was actually pretty good about that this time around – I started from one end and managed to cut myself off at just over half done, leaving the rest for the next day. Well, except for the part where I totally left the leftovers in my friend’s car. Oops! I swear, more restaurants need to rent out carrier pigeons to forgetful fools like me. I’d get home later and there’d be a pigeon waiting for me with burrito deliciousness. Crap, I’m not really sure what you’d tip a pigeon though (cause you know they wouldn’t work for free). Not even sure they’d accept US currency. Shoot dang!
Practicing the Fundamentals: California Rolls
Posted on: January 14, 2012
So when it comes to sushi, I’m a total plate presentation whore. Well, I guess if someone paid me for sushi I could call myself a plate presentation whore. But since I’m generally giving it out for free, I’d be that other thing. You know, um, generous? Yeah. Anyhow, usually when I have the opportunity/urge to make sushi, I try to figure out at least one thing I’ve either not done before or am still struggling with. Lately, it’s been wrapping the outside of rolls with thinly sliced fish and avocado, as well as color combination experimentation and interesting bonus ingredients (can we say “mango?” Yum!). However, I recently just made a big ole pile of California rolls for me, myself, and I, and it was a good reminder that sometimes you just gotta work on the sushi-making fundamentals.
I’m pretty pleased that grocery stores now sell mini-packs of fake crab (or “krab with a K” as I call it). Four tubes of krab is the perfect amount to build out a nice serving a California rolls. I also used half a cucumber and a varying amount of avocado.
On a related note, the state of avocados in our grocery stores is tragic. I mean, $1 an avocado is considered a sale? For realz? Not to even go into how much those poor suckers that buy organic are paying. I mean, you go to any major Latino market out here and they’re 3 for a buck. Unfortunately for me, there is no Latino market in walking distance of me, and parking around here is way too hellish for me to justify driving to a market and back just for avocados. So, my solution is to complain about it on here instead. Yay!
Anyhow, I rolled out these awesome tubes.
One thing I’ve figured out from making sushi is that, in a multi-ingredient roll, it’s important to balance out the hardness and softness of your ingredients. Too many hard ingredients and the roll might not get as tight as you’d like it, which can result in pieces of filling threatening to fall out after you slice up the rolls. One way to help with this is to slice harder ingredients (i.e. cucumber, carrots) super thin. Too many soft ingredients and you’ll risk your roll oozing all over the place when you cut it (this has happened to me more than once when my spicy crab involved a little too much “spicy” and not quite enough “crab”. California rolls are a great balance though – hard cucumber, medium firmness krab, plus soft avocado.
OK, so I threw in some fish roe for good measure. I’ve got a little container I just keep in the freezer all the time and pull out for sushi-making purposes. Great for adding a bit of salty zing, as well as a really nice orange color, whether inside the roll or outside. Tim Tebow approves of fish roe!
Best Thing Ever #4: Cookie Butter from Trader Joe’s
Posted on: January 3, 2012
As awesome as living in Denver is, there are a few of life’s necessities that it lacks. I mean, if I woke up tomorrow and was all like “Hot dog! I’ma swing by Trader Joe’s then go take a dip in the ocean!” it’s just not gonna happen. Well, the ocean’s easy to fake – as any Hunter S. Thompson fan knows, enough mescaline and a bathtub will take you anywhere you want to go. But Trader Joe’s? No way, no how. The nearest one’s a long ride down over the New Mexico border. So sad! Especially since, when I was in California recently, I got the opportunity to swing by one and grab a jar of cookie butter.
This stuff is some serious gingerbread flavored crack right here. Like, if I ever wanted to go on the Most Delicious Weight Gain Diet ever, I’d just eat a jar of this stuff a week. So far, my preferred method of intake is to smear it all over bananas.
Bonus chocolate never hurts. If you are going the fruit method, might I recommend melting the cookie butter first for delightful dipping purposes – this works especially well with apples. I want to try this stuff with bananas and ice cream for glorious Banana Split Action. I can also see high hopes for spreading this on a sandwich with, well, a banana, plus marshmallow spread. It’s not your uncle’s fluffernutter!
Best Thing Ever #3: The Double-Double from In-N-Out
Posted on: December 28, 2011
So, from my experience at least, when you get a burger somewhere, you’re often stuck with two choices: moist or substantial. Moist can be very luscious, and it’s that greasy moistness that causes most of the cheap fast food places to thrive. A McDonalds burger is not a burger so much as a pod o’ grease, but it’s satisfying and slides down well. At the other end of the spectrum is substantial. There’s more substance to the bread, the meat is thicker and there’s actually vegetables involved. I’ve had too many of these where they didn’t seem to mesh, however. A good burger is better than the sum of it’s parts, and too many giant burgers just seem to be a giant pile of parts without the cohesive whole. Part of that problem might be that you’ll never experience the burger as a cohesive whole if you can’t fit it into your mouth. Maybe it’s a reaction to the undersized fast food burgers. Maybe some people genuinely like eight inch tall burgers. They just frustrate me, and I usually try mashing them down with my hand. Oh, but substantial burgers often confuse “a quality bun” with “an overtoasted bun”, so even after squashed to mouth-height, you bite into that burger and half the sandwich squirts out the other end.
Which brings me to In-N-Out. I’d never eaten at one before, but have had them aggressively recommended to me. So, finding myself in Southern Cali not too long ago, I took it upon myself to seek one out, and got a double double.
Freaking magical. Moist, succulent and cohesive, yet having plenty of substance (and decent vegetation). And, I could successfully squish it to fit in my mouth! Score. Not too much on the menu, meaning they’re focused on this one thing that they do extremely well. I do know about the “secret menu”, but a straight burger was good enough for me!
There seems to be a trend towards burgers that are actually awesome. I wonder if maybe places like McDonalds used to be better than they are now, and then they started lowering the quality of things to be cheaper, meaning other restaurants could jump in. I dunno, my education in burger history is pretty lacking. But, the In-N-Out burger is reminiscent of a Five Guys burger, which is reminiscent of a Shake n Steak burger. Is there a town that contains all three of these restaurants? I totally want to get a double whatever from all of these places and have the Best Taste Test Ever. And then go lock myself in a gym for like 3 hours (one for each burger). Hah!
Best Thing Ever #2: Freaking Latkes Fried in Oil
Posted on: December 20, 2011
First of all, there’s a good chance that half the things that fall under this fabulous new category of mine will involve being fried. This is because everything becomes 20% more awesome when fried, it’s simply how the world works. Second of all, every time I worry one of my photos might turn out poorly, I’m just going to use Instagram to take that picture. This is because Instagram makes even awful photos look awesome!
Yeah, latkes are freaking awesome as well. I just sorta improv them when I make them, recipe schmecipe I say. So you grate a bunch of potatoes into a bowl, and try to avoid grating your fingers as well. I totally failed on that latter part, much to the chagrin of my thumb, ugh! Dump in an egg, some flour. A bit of pepper. Think I added some garlic as well. Chopped up some green onion for bonus festiveness, mix. Boil oil, plop potato blobs in and fry until delicious. Yay!
Traditionally you’re supposed to eat them with sour cream or applesauce (which tastes a lot better than you might expect it to) but as I had neither, I went the “hash browns” route here, and doused these bad boys in ketchup. Yum!
Best Thing Ever #1: Acorn Squash
Posted on: December 10, 2011
There’s a lot of foodstuffs that I will, for the next minute or hour or week, depending, declare to be the Best Thing Ever. So, I figured I’d start a category called that, and start recording them as I think of and eat them.
Acorn squash has managed to completely grow on me as of late. I used to eat it pretty regularly as a kid, but was pretty ambivalent about it, and found it mediocre at best. No more! I recently had a craving for it, so I got me a squash from Ye Local King Soopers. I hacked that sucker in half, baked it for a good 50 minutes or so at 350 degrees, and plopped a blob of butter and a spoonful of brown sugar inside a half.
Mixed it up, ate it all, so freaking good.
I wonder if my active desire for things I found to be rather boring as a kid is a strong indication that I’ve hit Taste Bud Adulthood. Like seriously, my 6 year old self would be disgusted by how small the amount of cake frosting I can consume before I start feeling nauseous. Next thing you know, I’ll be loading up on butter pecan ice cream and Metamucil or something. But you know, I crave what I crave. And holy cow, acorn squash are apparently freaking awesome.
Whereupon we stuff our faces late at night at Pete’s Kitchen
Posted on: December 3, 2011
True story: if you are cheap and greasy, there is a good chance I will love you forever. Or at least until I get a chance to digest you. So yeah, when I’m feeling some cheap and greasy, heading to a diner is a pretty standard choice. Or, you know, when hungover. I’m not really sure why it is that one craves greasy, salty food with a hangover. Maybe the excessive amounts of beer inside of you, through the magic of osmosis, absorbs a bunch of salt, which your body needs to desperately get back the next day to get over that hangover? No clue.
Anyhow, we found ourselves late one evening at Pete’s Kitchen on Colfax. The menu is pretty big, and has standard diner fare plus breakfast and Greek food. It had been a long evening full of beer, balls, and screaming soccer fans, and thus nourishment was required. When it’s super late, I often lean away from getting anything too meaty – meat takes longer to digest and I’ll totally get nightmares if I go to bed on a full stomach – so I went for the classic grilled cheese with fries.
It was as greasy and delightful as one should expect diner grilled cheese and fries to be, and it certainly hit the spot.
While I didn’t get chance to feed upon everyone else’s food, I forced them to sit there and wait while I took pictures of their food. So, I’ll stick those pictures up here anyhow.
This was…some kind of dip sandwich? French dip? Hmm. There was meat between those buns (huh huh…), beef I believe. The dip was a red sauce, and I totally dipped one of my fries in it. It tasted like red sauce (big surprise!). This looked really good, actually, and I might have gotten this myself would the beef not have given me horrid nightmares!
This would be a delightful burrito, a breakfast burrito I think, smothered in what I’m thinking is green chili sauce, but does not look particularly green here. Actually, I tend to assume that if a burrito is doused in something, it’s probably green chili sauce, cause that’s how these Coloradoans roll. If only I actually liked breakfast burritos. I just can’t deal with scrambled egg hanging out in there with all of the other ingredients. Maybe I could do a vegan breakfast burrito. Except then I would miss all of the delicious cheese.
And, pancakes. Ordinary pancakes become extraordinary with strategic Action Photo! Watch syrup get poured like nothing else! Actually, I’m a big fan of eating breakfast at hours of the day which are not associated with breakfast. This is an excellent choice for someone who is not full of beer and doesn’t desperately need to replenish all of the missing salt in their body.
Anyhow, Pete’s Kitchen is pretty awesome. Apparently this is one of several restaurants owned by the same person, I’ll definitely have to go check out some of the others at some point to see if they are equally as delightful!
Category: Entree, restaurants
Tags: Colfax, Denver, grease, grilled cheese, Pete's Kitchen
How to make badass beef and barley soup
Posted on: November 21, 2011
That whole “colder weather” thing has gotten my mind on soups. I’ve had my fill of chicken soup lately, and there’s been a little gastronomic fantasy dancing around in my noggin as of late involving those cheap packs of “stew beef” that you can get at the grocery store. To complete the ultimate party in my mouth, I also picked up a bag of barley. Beef and barley soup is awesome, but barley in general is awesome. It’s like a heartier version of rice, and works great for many things where you want a fun grain.
So anyhow, we start with a giant slab of beef chunks dumped unceremoniously into a bowl.
Note how nicely the beef still holds the shape of the container that I purchased it in!
Next up, I dumped in a bunch of seasonings, plus water, and slow cooked this thing for like 7 hours.
Hmm, heck if I can remember what all seasonings I put in there! Definitely sage, some oregano, parsley? Thyme? Whenever I try to think of what to season meat with, I just crank up some Simon and Garfunkle and let the music lead the way. Also, I think one of the best times to slow cook meat is by starting right before bed, and letting it go all night. Then, when you get up in the morning, you get to be all happy cause your apartment or house smells all brothy and delicious. And you can totally pick at the meat for breakfast. Or, you know, mix it in with your cereal if you don’t possess taste buds. Or mix it into someone else’s cereal if you are a bastard. The possibilities are endless!
Mmm, nothing like a little murky substrate to start your day right!
So I saved a bunch of the broth, and likewise stuck half of the beef in the freezer for future delights, and proceeded to make soup with the remainder.
So, here’s everything I chopped up or dumped out to go with the beef:
- carrots
- potatoes
- celery
- onions
- barley
- salsa
I totally recommend the salsa bit when making soup, by the way. Gives the broth a nice spicy tomatoey kick!
So I looked around online at other people’s recipes for beef soup, and, based on what was in my fridge, dumped in a bunch of seasonings that seemed like a good idea. I suppose I could have actually, you know, followed a recipe, but what’s the fun in that, right?
The above includes:
- apple cider vinegar
- extra virgin olive oil
- soy sauce (I totally didn’t have worcestershire sauce and decided soy sauce was close enough!)
- Three pepper lemon hot sauce
- oregano
- thyme
- garlic
- pepper
Oh, and a bunch of salt as well. So all of this I had slow cook for about 2.5 hours. Came out freaking awesome.
Like, I just didn’t know it was possible for a soup to be badass. But indeed, this one was. Probably the best soup I’ve ever made. Which in a way makes it a shame that I never keep track of my portions when I throw ingredients in, oops!
Yet another sushi post. Because raw tuna is pretty much the Best Thing Ever.
Posted on: November 17, 2011
So you know how it is when someone makes a bunch of food, and you eat it and are all like, “This is awesome, you shouldn’t have?!” But the person that made it seems just as grateful to you for liking it and eating it? I TOTALLY SYMPATHIZE. If you like to make food, it’s one of the saddest things ever to only have yourself to make it for. I mean, you’d have this awesome thing to eat, but it would take you a bajillion days to eat it all. Because most things that are both delicious and homemade are rarely single-serving. And then you’ll get sick of it halfway through, and things never taste as good when you don’t have someone else to help you appreciate them. Which is why I freaking love potlucks.
My work decided to hold a potluck – on my birthday no less! So I, in typical fashion, use that as a good excuse to make sushi. I picked up about a half pound of really good tuna from the Pacific Mercantile, along with some fake crab (or krab, rather) from King Soopers. I already had some fish roe in the freezer, so I used that as well. I sliced up some avocado, cucumber, scallions, made some spicy mayo, and some tamago.
Ah yes, the tamago. You can make a fairly authentic tamago using a bread pan. For future reference, if you’re gonna use a bread pan, please use a metal one. In one of my many waves of obliviousness, I decided I could totally use pyrex on the stove. Didn’t work nearly as well as a metal bread pan, and then when I stuck it in the sink afterwards, the pan immediately did this!
Yeah, both of my eyeballs are very thankful that the pieces flew out and not up!
Anyhow, the egg turned out decent regardless of the fate of it’s container, so that was good I suppose. I had a lot of fun making this sushi, and got particularly creative as I knew I had a willing audience. So I decided to do my own version of a rainbow roll.
I think a little more rice would have made this rainbow gradient really stand out. However, the combination of ingredients made it stand out in my mouth, so it was all good.
Here’s some rolls, awaiting the cutting board.
And here’s a closeup of one of the nicer looking rolls, with assorted others in the background.
You can have a lot of fun with putting spicy mayo in a frosting applicator (a ziplock bag with a tiny hole cut in the corner will work as well) and drizzling it on rolls, topping that with a range of ingredients. Looks and tastes good! I need to get some unagi sauce and do similar things. And get some unagi as well. Tuna and eel are in a neck and neck race for which is my favorite sushi fish!
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