Started this in “Denver/Boulder Recs?” but it grew to something huge, so here we are.
Back from a 2.5 day weekend in Denver, with a half day in Boulder.
Summary: Liked it way more than I thought I would, and liked it way more than I remembered from doing grad school there over a decade ago. The air is still great; the beer is excellent; so too the food. I’ve developed as an eater and so too, I trust, has Denver.
Friday: Basta
Solo afternoon/evening of Friday in Boulder, and met up with my thesis advisor. I made a reservation for Basta (opened 2010), which has been on the bib gourmand radar ever since Michelin started doing its thing in CO in 2023.
Basta does pizza mostly, with three entree options; they mill their own flour from local grain at a facility they own nearby. The only source of heat is from a single wood-fired oven. Located in the quieter, eastern part of the city, far from hooplah of Halloween at the university campus and downtown walking mall, I was thoroughly bummed to have visited only now, especially that I’d lived about five minutes away from them in my first year. Its location is odd also for that it’s one of the anchoring businesses of a large residential complex, mainly for young professionals of some means – you know the kind with anonymous architecture and zero personality. Somehow this is representative of Boulder’s weirdness, which is often not a productive kind of weird, but an accident that ends up in something interesting.
My advisor wasn’t in the mood for pizza, so we got a small dinner of the chicken, two breads, olives, and parsnips.
(Would have liked a little bit more color on the skin, but the flesh was cooked nicely. The jus is necessary, though I’d spilled my water into the plate; staff promptly replaced it with some more. Thanks, team).
(Piada bread. Melted butter inside. Very fluffy crumb and nutty. Recommended bread for sure).
(Smoked olives with citrus. Bib gourmand-recommended. Nice bowl of olives.)
(Foccacia. Hearty crust with a crumb as you’d like it.)
(Parsnips. Almost a meh. They were a little under done.)
In this instance, I can verify the bib gourmand characterization. For the quality of cooking, as well as ingredients, this is a high-value restaurant in a town known for its restaurants’ high price/middling delivery. While I can’t say I’ve eaten at Frasca, its reputation precedes it a bit. Basta is a restaurant that doesn’t reach beyond itself while also confident it’s doing better than what its expected to.
The coffee game in Boulder likely should have improved since I left, though I didn’t get to try Boxcar again.
Saturday (Denver): Middle State Coffee, Sap Sua (bakery), Raquelitas Tortillas, Ratio Beer, Lou’s Italian Delicacies, The C[r]uise Room @ the Oxford Hotel, Sap Sua (dinner)
We had an early morning at Middle State Coffee with a very nicely prepared latte and fresh batch brew. I can’t speak for the quality of pour overs, but Middle State has long been one of the state’s best speciality coffee roasters (my preference is for Huckleberry though).
We took the coffee to grab pastries from Sap Sua’s new morning bakery concept. We were very hungry so I didn’t even take pictures, but if they continue, you’ll hope that the pho-braised ox tail hand pie persists. As it should: It was delicious. The lemon-zucchini cake was also grand. We’ve got a cookie waiting for us back at the house.
We went to RiNo in the northeast part of the city to visit Carbon Knife Co., Japanese knife purveyors extraordinaire. On the way, we passed by Raquelitas Tortillas, a Denver-based tortilleria opened in 1960. They sell from the factory on the weekend, and their butter flour tortillas were so good we bought a pack and shepherded them carefully back to LA.
At Carbon, Japanese knives occupy half the store, whereas the other half is all home goods. They carried the whole Gestura line of cooking tools, as well as mini Kunz spoons, Modernist Cutlery spoons designed for quenelles, and these great blunt-end spoons from a manufacturer in Los Angeles.
We were then set on hitting Temaki Den, but when we asked staff at Carbon about where to eat, they recommended we try Stowaway, Lou’s Italian Delicacies, or Domo restaurant (more on this below). Stowaway is a breakfast/lunch concept that uses Japanese dishes as a template, blending health-first ingredients with something parallel to European/Australasian/LA affects. As in, crispy mackerel breakfast, but spritzy and healthy, accessorized with an expensive pair of sunglasses and a good dose of self-awareness that one is eating at a hip restaurant. We couldn’t go as we were too close to their 2PM closure and their waitlist was too deep.
We got beer at Ratio up the street. Excellent, excellent beer, but for the wasps congregating at a tree near us. We stopped by Lou’s to share a sandwich, as dinner at sap sua awaited us. Lou’s is part of the Bridge & Tunnel restaurant group, which started with Rosenberg’s Bagels. I have fond memories of the latter in my two years in Denver, where I made a pumpernickel bagel with scallion cream cheese a Saturday ritual. It has since then been embroiled in labor conflicts during COVID, and reports on Reddit of subsequent mediocrity.
Napped. Then, we made ourselves presentable for drinks at The C[r]uise Room before dinner at Sap Sua. Great Art Deco bar in Lower Downtown with a great cocktail program. The space was designed by the same person who did one of the lounges on the Queen Mary. There are a handful of N/A drinks, though we didn’t try them.
(Sazerac; cut-off at the left, the Beet Farmer)
(Blossom Sour)
We made our buzzy way to Sap Sua.
A lot of you probably already know/have heard of Sap Sua, but to be brief: Chefs Ni and Anna Nguyen have been using the "Sap Sua” name since its pop-up origins during COVID onto their full restaurant opening in 2023, whereupon it garnered a lot of national attention and some venerable first-restaurant awards.
Set into an interior space at the front of a prominent arts-oriented shopping complex on East Colfax that houses an independent theater (Sie Film Center), the city’s most prominent record store (Twist & Shout) and book store (Tattered Cover), the restaurant is one long hall that ends in an open kitchen, partitioned partially with a glass panel.
In my girlfriend’s and my estimations, the restaurant earned the attention paid with its attentive, friendly service, and exciting dishes that were less nostalgic than seriously fun and exploratory. But we don’t think we were able to fully experience the restaurant’s concept and offering because of our poor order, and what follows should mind that.
(The only picture I took of the interior / dining; you go look elsewhere for better pics than mine!)
7:30 reservations and the dining room was half full. This changed quickly as 8:30 rolled around.
We hit:
(soft scrambled egg, brown butter, fish sauce, trout roe, rice. A level above custard and remiscent of its source material, this was 1 of the 2 more straightforward Vietnamese preparations of our order. I went back and back for the trout roe. Though it was one of three dishes that featured a butter/roe sauce that began our erroneous ordering strategy.)
(endive salad, winter melon, pear, cane sugar vinaigrette. Not listed on the menu are bonito flakes and fish sauce. Very good salad incorporating Asian-favored fruits and western vegetables/templates. The mild winter melon and pear played nicely with the endive; the salad overall was a welcome and tasty counterpoint to the rice. The dressing had 1-2 tsp’s too many of fish sauce, which overwhelmed the acid on the vinaigrette.)
(pan-fried skate, crab beurre blanc, braised fennel, banana blossom salad, trout roe. The protein adequately prepared, but there wasn’t much happening with it outside of the sauce, which was delicious on its own, though might have done with more crab coming through, as well as an acidic counterpart. The dish was too heavy. Additionally, the braised fennel had lost much of its character. Had it retained more of its anise flavor, perhaps it would have provided enough of the balance we were looking for. More on this below.)
grilled pork shoulder, lemongrass, tamarind, herbs. Top one of the evening. This achieved the kind of balance we were looking for: When met with the deep and salty soy, the tamarind sweetens and boosts, all lightened by the fresh herbs. The 2nd of 2 more straight forward Vietnamese preparations. I imagined this on top of rice, rice noodles… Now that I’m looking at the picture, would have liked to have seen the pork shoulder pieces more, but this was delicious
(shrimp cake, beurre blanc, trout roe, mint. All hand-minced shrimp, obviously, with the occasional nugget of a bigger piece. Usually not a big fan of shrimp, but the cake had great texture. The beurre blanc, though, was too heavy, and overwhelmed the whole dish; it seemed thirsty for a bright lift. The two beurre blanc-based dishes, in the mix of the other stout dishes, was too much for us. More on this below.
spiced sweet potato semifreddo, apple cider, condensed milk, candied nuts. I was so so full! So was my girlfriend. But this was very very good and tasty! I believe Chef Anna trained as a pastry chef, so she’s running all the desserts. I am not familiar at all with Vietnamese desserts, so I don’t know how this converses with the restaurant’s source material and inspirations/aspirations.
.
We had a thoroughly enjoyable time at Sap Sua. It was so great to see the dining room full of Denverites eager to try cooking that would find a welcome home in either LA, NYC, OC, or Chicago, but is part of a leading pack of exciting Denver restaurants that is convincing Americans of the city’s increasing visibility in food and the arts more generally. Our general reflections are that the exploration of Vietnamese flavors in western-presenting formats was exciting and innovative, but were hampered by our own self-sabotage through a less-than-ideal order. Though we followed the recommended 2-3 dishes/person, which we found to be good guidance, we leaned too heavily on the midsize to large entrees, and of those, two featured beurre blanc, and one brown butter. Our coursing was thus unfortunately overwhelmed by the sauce; but we also believed those two dishes needed a more assertive acid lift, as well as their salt levels toned down.
Service rhythm and staff relations were spot on. Attentive and consistent, and never intrusive; Knowledgeable staff and genuine (never affected). Kudos to owners and management for naming all BOH and FOH names on the menu – Aiyana was fantastic!
We look forward to visiting again and exploring other parts of the menu!
Sunday: Huckleberry Roasters, South Pearl Farmer’s Market, Domo Restaurant
Didn’t take many photos this day. We were flying out at 4:45 and planned for some airport chaos (which did happen, but not at Denver Int’l Airport), so had a solid half day. The previous two days were a part of the coldest of October, but Sunday swung way up to the low 80s.
Huckleberry in Larimer Square: Outpost of the award-winning specialty roaster. Great drip! Girlfriend’s latte was a touch over, though I’d predicted, by the sound of the wand, that it was pretty spot on. I’m rusty.
South Pearl Farmer’s Market: Denver loves produce and its farmer markets, and there’s many of them for how small the city is. These run until the 2nd week of November, so we were lucky to visit. Wish I got pics of the incredible looking mushroom and tomato game; We chatted a bit with the proprietor of High Balsam Farm, who cames to market with a decommissioned fire truck for the Japanese fire department (imported, Toyota). She sent us home with some huge oyster mushrooms. We came not only to kill some time, but also to visit a ceramacist I’d been following for a while, O’baware, who sets up a temporary space next door to Tokyo Premium Bakery, which had a very long line at 8:30am.
Our last lunch was at Domo Restaurant, recommended by the staff at Carbon Co. When I looked it up, I was instantly embarrassed – how had I never found this place when I lived here over a decade ago?!
Opened as an ancillary business to the main Aikido dojo, chef Homma Gaku had been quietly operating the restaurant as a part of a larger business concept that comprises dojo, restaurant, and philanthropy; various shrines to the rear of the patio showcase Homma-san’s humanitarian efforts of opening and operating schools, dojos, and food distribution centers across southeast Asia. Then in 2021, he went Tik Tok viral and was overwhelmed, pushing him to shutter the restaurant. He did eventually re-open with a smaller menu and, according to local redditors, lesser quality.
Domo Japanese Country Foods Restaurant, as its official name is, is in the northern part of the city, converted from a disused warehouse in a former industrial area. A wide wooden sign, painted to attract the attention of passing drivers, is cracked; gravel surrounds the perimeter of the building and onto the driveway, which is decorated with a curved Japanese roof, which leads to a more rustic thatched roof over the restaurant’s entrance.
The interior is dark, with slabs of stone set atop tree stumps for tables. It does indeed feel like a period drama, or a Samurai movie in the mold of Zatoichi.
We’re led into the main dining a room, an airy space with a pitched roof and light fixtures fashioned from inverted papier mache shades and branch forms. The same tables and stools stand in the wide dining room.
As evinced by its name, Domo serves “country” foods; in its various interpretations, this means accessible favorites (katsu and curry dons), familiar staples (soba and udon), and, the draw for us, two of Homma-san’s Akita specialties: Kiritanpo nabe and Gattsuri Okoge. The menu describes the former as a specialty from Akita, and comes with three broth options: miso dashi, soy dashi, and spicy soy milk, recommending to choose the third. We chose the third.
We also chose the Gattsuri Okoge, which is a spicy stir-fry of squash, peppers, and a protein (in my case, beef), on top of okoge, cooked rice that’s been molded and baked to replicate the flavor of crusty rice from a stone pot.
(Kiritanpo Nabe. Wow. Spicy soy milk broth! I was a little dumbfounded that I’d never come across this before in LA. I was Googling while we were eating – the only recent citation I could find of this dish was at a lunch omakase set from Eigikutei last year. Does anyone in LA know where I can get it?!)
(Gattsuri Okoge. What you see is what you get; reminded me a lot of Korean spicy stir-fried pork. There’s like eight rice cakes under there. Yahoo.)
After we ate, we perused the rest of the space. The various restaurant, dojo, garden, and shrine components made it feel like a compound.
Homma and Domo don’t make any claims to culinary elegance, refinement of technique, or elevation of presentation. A sign at the front of restaurant, likely posted in response to the attention paid by the flood of “self-claimed bloggers” looking for discounts and/or disrupting patrons, advises that the restaurant is the equivalent of a greasy spoon. Indeed, as we made our way back through the restaurant after visiting the patio garden and shrines to the organization’s humanitarian work, I spied a bottle of Silk soy milk in the kitchen. In addition to the novelty of the space – an article about Domo explains that all the interior decorations are cataloged by staff, and were collected over years of trips back to Japan with his dojo – and the remarkability of it being in Denver, a city I have never associated with a strong Japanese community (though subsequent research enlightened me to how it has been a known place of settlement for Japanese immigrants, as well as Japanese Americans after internment), eating at Domo became the overall highlight of the culinary trip because I also did not expect to eat a regional Japanese dish that I have yet to find in LA.
We dropped off the rental and then drank a bunch of beer at the Great Divide at Gate C at DIA. We boarded the plane and were then spammed with indecisive updates from AA about our flight time – delayed or on time, make up your mind! We sat on the plane for about an hour because government shut down, but ate Del on the way back to our place in LA.
Thank you for a fun weekend, Denver! I would like to come back soon.