Volume 3, Issue 17
August 16 - August 29, 2001

The Dining Guide

by Alex Neth and Chris J. Magyar
photos by Sean Hartgrove

Finally a guide to eating in denver that's not cream-filled with kiss-ass copy. we tell you the real deal on what' s good, and what's not, around town. read i t all; you might learn something.

THE LUNCH REPORT

The best take-out and delivery for office grub

We polled some workers at companies with more, uh, gracious lunch budgets than ours, and got the low-down on what's tasty, and what the janitor dreads finding in your desk trash bucket.

DELIS/SANDWICHES

Corporate Deli (303-825-5353): has the holy trinity ... it's fast, got good sandwiches, and can whip up a mean breakfast in a pinch.

Manny's Underground (303-308-0110): they don't deliver, but worth dropping in for a take-out grilled sandwich.

Fat Jack's (303-830-SUBS): perfect for big appetites; gargantuan sub sandwiches at rea-sonable prices, and they deliver.

Spicey Pickle (303-860-0730): great subs and panini, though one reviewer noted an ironic tendency to serve gross pickles.

Colfax Center Deli (303-830-7283): amazing egg salad (a rarity in Denver) and interesting specials to liven up that client meeting.

Mead St. Station (303-433-2138): small place, good sandwiches, highly recommended.

ASIAN/ SUSHI

Mori (303-298-1864): could it be the best in the city? ... a touchy subject, but easily the best lunch take-out spot downtown.

Swing Thai (303-777-1777): great veggies for when you need the green, and speedy delivery ... just avoid the tofu.

Tommy's Thai (303-377-4244): two foreign words: pad thai ... also, better tofu than Swing, if you're into that.

Sushi Redi (303-296-3215): perfect for spe-cial catered affairs, and more reasonably priced than most sushi restaurants.

ITALIAN/ MEXICAN

Chipotle (several locations): famously stuffed burritos are great, as long as you have time for an afternoon nap.

Jack-N-Grill (303-964-9544): great Albuquerque Mexican food, very fresh (especially the chile), and good hamburgers, too ... take-out only.

La Fabula (303-934-7995): a different take on Mexican, but slow to deliver, so for catering only.

Noodles & Co. (several locations): lives up to its name with tasty noodles, and that's about it.

Pasquini's (303-863-8252): great lasagna and pizza, and on-time delivery ... just be ready for a larger-than-usual bill.

Baja Fresh Mexican (several locations): aptly named, lard and microwave free Mexican food with the taste left in ... the anti-Taco Bell.

PLACES TO AVOID

Ciao Baby (" food from the gas station"),

Heidi's (" dry"),

Wahoo's Fish Taco (" good chance of feeling ill later").

ALL ABOUT THE ATMOSPHERE

restaurants we love for no real reason

The Breakfast Palace (2000 S. Broadway)
It was once the Sunnyside Up Café, but when the name changed, the food didn't-- sub-standard greasy breakfast fare, fit only for a quick choking down. Still, the staff gets credit for being unfailingly friendly amid the grime. Stop in and have some coffee with your hashbrowns, far and away the best item on a limited menu. Read one of the 645 newspapers stacked by the front desk. Don't try to pay with a debit card. Be prepared for table muck.

Bastien's (3501 E. Colfax Ave.)
Some restaurants are like inherited insanity: they skip a generation. Bastien's has skipped several. Established in the '30s and housed in one of those grand old flying saucer diners that were once thought to represent the future (good thing they didn't), this is a steak house for steak lovers and Commie haters. Just walking in the front door makes you feel like Bob, the post-war construction worker with a doll-faced wife and a tow-headed kid named Timmy. A great place to take your grandparents when they visit. Incidentally, a great place to eat meat on a limited budget, too.

Gunther Toody's (several locations)
This is an absolutely reprehensible venture. The food could double as medical waste. The servers and bartenders all have to dress up like extras in a junior high production of Grease, and they all have names like "Cookie" and "Bubbles" and "Snake" (I think I saw "Kerouac" and "Ginsberg" rimming each other out by the dumpster). There is only one reason to come here, and that is to revel in the debasement of your fellow man. Have the meatloaf meanwhile.

The Spaghetti Factory (1215 18th St.)
Without a doubt, this is Denver's worst restaurant. But if you are a sugar-crazed pre-teen, then you love it. Your parents hate it, but you love it, and you're why this place exists-- without 8th birthday parties and kindergarten graduations, this sauce-stained den of disgust would have been closed long ago, and its owners shot in the street like war criminals. The only thing that an adult with normal brain functions can enjoy here is alcohol. Sweet, sweet, alcohol. Has it ever abandoned us?

Also in the running...

Casa Bonita (a.k.a. "Casa Don't Eat There")

THE NEWEST DEFINITION OF HIP

sex and the sushi

Hapa (2780 E. 2nd Ave.)
Simply serving sushi is no longer sufficient. To be truly hip, the Denver restaurant needs three things in 2001:
1) a Cherry Creek address;
2) runway models for waitresses;
3) a tongue-in-cheek menu. Hapa has it all.

Take the selections listed under 'advanced'. In no particular order, you can enjoy, in public, Foreplay (a California roll wrapped in smoked salmon), Climax (Foreplay inside out), an Orgasm (Foreplay in cream sauce), or a Multiple Orgasm (cream cheese, crab meat, smoked salmon, all baked with "the sauce"). The head chef here has a dirty mind, and we like it.

Other imaginative and delicious sushi offerings include the Caterpillar Roll, which is long and heavy on the avocado, and the Mork & Mindy, a concoction best described as dessert for people who hate dessert. And have the Magic Mushrooms. They live up to the name. Especially when taken in conjunction with sake.

Speaking of sake, the list is extensive, and the presentation is just as good as the food's. Spend a little ($20-$40) and get a full flask for yourself and a partner. The beaker comes with a colored center filled with ice to keep your sake chilled, and starts spinning once enough of the contents are imbibed. Well, maybe it didn't actually spin. Hard to say. As my dining companion for the evening remarked, "Sake makes the edges roooound." Uh huh.

Hapa isn't getting any medals. For one thing, the service can most generously be described as "slow, but worth the wait." And, since this is Cherry Creek, there are no indoor opportunities for smoking. Also, since this is Cherry Creek, be prepared for Cherry Creek.

But these drawbacks are minor-- expected even-- when dealing with Denver's new definition of dining chic. I've seen the future of raw fish, and it's surprisingly sexy.

FOR PETE'S SAKE!

which pete owns which pete's in denver?

"Pete and Repeat went into the store. Pete came out. Who was left?"

The only thing more plentiful than Pete's restaurants around Denver are puns that avail themselves for the title of an article about them. Re-Pete-ing. Com-Pete-ing. Petered Out. It's a Seuss-iphean struggle, an ugly process for journalistic hacks similar to the making of law and sausage. Not that sausages are bad, for we have laws which keep them good.

Just ask Petra Barnes (a feminine version of Peter) of Petra's (2700 E. 3rd Ave.) in Cherry Creek. Petra's is an eatery of a Cajun persuasion, a cuisine that relies upon andouille pork sausage for dishes like jambalaya. Or ask Pierre of Pierre's Supper Club (2157 Downing), where they serve up prime rib, catfish and ribs along with the sausage. Pierre, a French (duh) variation on Peter, is indicative of Pierre's roots in Louisiana. But Pierre has lived in Denver and been in business since 1947, which makes him the old school godfather of all Pete's restaurants in Denver.

Seniority is one way to define a pecking order in a competitive field. There is nothing, besides wayward Beltway interns, that reporters crave more than competition. I wanted strife, sword crossing drama, a Peter rivalry in a business notorious for vicious conflict to put in my story. But I just couldn't get any.

"I've been knowing Pete for years," Pierre said.

"I know Pierre," said Pete Contos, who owns most of the Denver Pete's, including Pete's Kitchen (1962 E. Colfax Ave.) and Pete's Gyros Place (2817 E. Colfax Ave.). "I'm buying some spice from him. I have no problem with anybody."

"Love Pete. Love that Gyros Place," said Barnes, who has been in business for a year and a half.

Bloody harmony. Even Contos, the king of Pete's, is kind. He bought the Satire Lounge (1920 E. Colfax Ave.) in 1962, Pete's Kitchen in 1987, and Gyros Place in 1990, all on East Colfax. Expansion continued and Contos now owns Pete's University Park Café (2345 E. Evans Ave.), Pete's Ice Cream & Coffee (2730 E. Colfax Ave.) and Pete's Greektown Cafe (2910 E. Colfax Ave.).

But not Pete's Steak House (514 E. Colfax Ave.), which has been on East Colfax since 1971, which makes things confusing. The doozy is that it's not even a steak house anymore. Owner Pete Gatseos serves breakfast and lunch-- ham, eggs and hamburgers-- and closes for the evening. East Colfax is interesting but it doesn't make much sense.

The name is screwy but the food is good on West 44th Avenue, at Pietra's Pizzeria and Italian Restaurant (9045 W. 44th Ave.). Pietra is another feminization of Peter, but in this case it is actually a contraction of the surname of one of the men who started the restaurant in 1963, Pietrafeso. No one remembered Pietrafeso's first name.

When I called Peter's Chinese Cafe (2609 E. 12th Ave.), an unidentified employee told me Peter was in China and could not be reached for comment. "I cannot talk anymore," the worker said. "My boss might fire me." How? I thought he was in China.

So far, 12 different Pete's restaurants went into this blurb. Orange Julius answered the phone number for Pete & Jerry's in Westminster Mall. Who is left? --Andrew Wells

DESTROY YOUR LIVER, NOT YOUR STOMACH

pubs that take the barf out of bar food

The Brewery Bar II (150 Kalamath)
You find the best pub grub in the most desolate places-- a truism as appropriate in ancient Persia as it was when you forgot your pants last Thursday. It may be easily proved by a visit to 150 Kalamath, where the open kitchen at the BB2 dishes out some of the spiciest Tex-Mex in Denver. The memorabilia is plentiful, the staff venerable, the food commendable and the industrial location crappy. Stop in for a Tiny, which isn't-- 32 oz. of pee-inducing American bleh, a perfect accompaniment to the mouth-searing chile.

Club 404 (404 Broadway)
Located, appropriately enough, at 404 N. Broadway, this place doesn't serve food that costs more than a sawbuck. Get a big plate of steak for less than you'd pay at Burger King. Have a Pabst Blue Ribbon (which, by the way, will no longer be produced by the Pabst company as of a recent agreement with Miller, a sign to the faithful that the days of apocalypse are drawing nigh) and chat with one of the regulars or the toothless cook.

The Punch Bowl (2052 Stout)
A wee slip of a place at 2052 Stout in the best part of downtown. The green chile is genuinely green. That, by itself, qualifies it for admission into the top three.

Also in the running... Charlie Brown's (980 Grant)
Platte River Bar & Grill (5995 S. Santa Fe Dr.) The Pub on Pearl (1101 S. Pearl)

THE BLACK LIST

doors bobby will never darken

Our beloved Tattooed Food Critic, Bobby Black, really isn't the pickiest eater in the world. Still, there have been a few restaurants he has found to be incredibly inedible. So, if you're inclined to take your dining advice from a professional wrestler, avoid eating at Domo (1365 Osage St.), Café Odessy (Denver Pavilions), or Original Pancake House (8000 E. Belleview), recipients of the only three 'F' grades Bobby has ever handed out.