Things To Do In Denver When You're Hungry
This week I traveled to Denver, CO to attend the Defrag conference with my co-worker & friend Todd Clayton. It was my first visit to Denver and fortunately we had the opportunity to explore the city a bit. With some assistance from Yelp, knowledgeable friends, and sheer luck, we managed to stumble across some excellent restaurants. Here's a quick summary in case other Denver travelers are interested:
Cafe Berlin - it was a good sign that this quaint little German restaurant was hopping at 8pm on a Tuesday night. The hostess was very friendly and improvised a table in the bar area for us to sit at. I enjoyed a 1/2 liter Paulaner Oktoberfest, and Todd & I split the Kartoffelpuffer (potato pancakes) as an appetizer. My dinner was the Kassler Rippchen (smoked pork chop served with the best horseradish I've ever tasted), and I chose the German fried potatoes & spatzle as my sides. Just a great little place to enjoy dinner, and they didn't even mind that I butchered their language while ordering! The Yelp review link that convinced us to try this place is here.
Jimmy John's - we stumbled into this place for lunch, and I'd never heard of it before the trip. I love good subs and this place was fantastic. Todd & I were astounded by how efficiently the staff pumped out the orders, but part of what made that possible was the simplicity of the options. There's only one type of bread (white, baked fresh on site), one type of cheese (provolone), and no option to toast. I had the Turkey Tom with no tomatoes, and I subbed oil & vinegar for the mayo. I also added avocado to the sandwich. It was a great change from Subway. The thing to remember if you go to Jimmy John's is not to unwrap the sandwich (it's meant to keep the thing together). By unwrapping, we immediately exposed ourselves as tourists. Oh well...
Fogo de Chao - apparently this place is a chain. We were drawn here by the fantastic Yelp reviews. We walked about a mile to get here from the Denver Hyatt Regency, and it's a good thing we did since we were about to gorge on a variety of delicious steak, lamb, & chicken. We started with the salad bar. Besides vegetables & meats, it also had some delicious cheeses. Once we got through the salad, we flipped over our cards (the universal indicator for "bring on the meat!"). We were immediately swarmed by waiters carrying skewers with huge cuts of top sirloin, filet mignon, lamb, bacon-wrapped chicken & pork. Along with that we enjoyed garlic mashed potatoes and some bread which apparently stays fresh for less than 40 seconds since the servers continued to swap it out. I enjoyed a signature dark beer called Xingu and a glass of Mendoza Malbec, both of which paired well with the meats. The service was fantastic. I think it's accurate to say we waddled out of there and were happy to have that mile+ walk ahead of us.
Sushi Sasa - I'll admit, I'm not very adventurous when it comes to sushi. I enjoy eating it, but spicy tuna is about as crazy as I get. Todd & I joined some business partners for dinner at Sushi Sasa the night before we came home. This was the nicest sushi restaurant I'd ever been to, but that's probably not saying much considering I buy most of my sushi at Roche Brothers. One of the folks we ate with had lived in Tokyo for a year and a half, and the other had a taste for monkfish liver (I passed on this). The miso soup, California roll, tuna roll, spicy shrimp, spicy tuna, and crab were all delicious. I was shocked that I managed to leave a sushi restaurant with a full stomach! I also tried a nice brew, Great Divide Samurai Rice Ale. This won't be something I go out of my way to purchase, but the light body paired well with the sushi.
Overall my favorite thing about eating in Denver was that nice restaurants maintained a casual dress code. I felt comfortable in jeans no matter where we went. That's my kind of town.
I'd be interested to hear if we missed any other great places to eat in Denver. If you know of any, please leave a comment so I can hit those places on my next trip!
