El Diablo

We're not trendsetters. We are decidedly not trendsetters. Normally, no matter how appealing the press, we wait a year or so for the crowd to thin out before we visit a restaurant. There are restaurants at the local mall that have been appealing to us since they first opened and I think that was more than a year ago. So what, pray tell, led us to a brand-new, just opened the day before restaurant?
We're planning a vacation in Mexico and there was this article about a new restaurant that offered high-end Mexican food and, most importantly, OpenTable found us a reservation time that worked for us.
So now you have the long story of how two old fogeys found themselves at El Diablo, 101 Broadway, Denver on it's second evening of official opening.
My advice, don't go unless you have time and don't expect to carry on a conversation. As is the current trend, the acoustics are lively and the room is noisy. At the risk of sounding even more old fogey than I already have, I am not a fan of noisy restaurants. As for needing a lot of time, the menu offers a lot of choices, even when the Tortas and Combinaciones sections are not available as was the case on Saturday. The kitchen is small. If you take this to the logical conclusion, it takes at least half an hour to get your meal. Were the room less noisy, one could enjoy a conversation with one's dining companion and the time would fly by. In a loud room, one can only look at the interesting decor and wish the headache would go away...
The drinks are served quickly. My fellow old fogey ordered the O.G which is described as their original house margarita, made with 30/30 reposado and triple sec. All margaritas are made with fresh squeezed lime juice. The drink had a bit twinge of unpleasant aftertaste, maybe the result of not-so-great limes or something.I went for the Especial, described as a coin style made with Gran Centenario Plata, Agave nectar and fresh lime juice. It was smaller, stronger and avoided the odd taste we both found in the O.G. Of course, by the time our food arrived, I had nursed my drink for far too long and the melted ice gave the drink a water-down tone.Still, I would order this drink again. One of the interesting things about the tequilas at El Diablo is that they are from small taquerias (I think I spelled that correctly) that do use only the best ingredients and do not sell in liquor stores. Also, El Diablo freely allows the customer to specify any tequila in any drink at no extra charge. The priciest of the margaritas is just $9.50, a very reasonable price in my experience.
When our meals finally arrived, they were tasty. Robert's Pecho de res, described as all day roasted organic beef brisket with chile cascabel, frijoles charros and cilantro rice, featured fork-tender brisket on a bed of rice (we didn't notice cilantro in the rice) with some beans and a couple of tortillas. There was a bit of annoying fat on the brisket which I know is typical of the cut, but it would have been nice to have had it trimmed before serving.I had nice guacamole tostadas, described as crisp corn tortillas with frijoles negros, guacamole, quesco fresco, "El Diablo" salsa, rice and frijoles negros. I think the frijoles negros must be listed twice because they appear in the tostadas as well as on the side. The rice was, I suspect, a casualty of the busy small kitchen rushing too fast and too new to the large menu to remember everything that is supposed to be on the plate.
I loved the freshness of the guacamole and the crisp tortillas, but the guacamole was piled high on the tostada and it was almost too much of a good thing to have two identical tostadas. It might have been nice to have a different flavor to the second tostada for more variety or just one tostada with the promised rice.
We split a dessert of Tres Flanes, which were actually creme brule, not flan. Each little cup held a treasure of flavor, the Mexican vanilla being the favorite of both of us. I expected that Robert would prefer the Abuelita chocolate, but it was more a nice chocolate pudding than either of us expected. A more intense chocolate, perhaps with the intensifying quality of certain chiles, would have been better. The third dish described as Horchata and translated by our waiter as a much loved drink of milk and rice, was a nice dessert. I like the idea of three choices, but each needs to have more intensity. The Horchata and the vanilla were rather similar and it might be nice to switch out one of them for a tropical fruit flavor like mango, but only if it had an intensity to stand as unique among them.
We will return in a few weeks to see how things sort out in this new restaurant, to see if the menu doubles in size as our waiter promised (and I hope it doesn't until the kitchen can handle what it has right now), and to see if the chefs make the necessary tweaks so the food lives up to its potential.

El Diablo on Urbanspoon

Amazing Deceptions

I just watched the You Tube video of Wendell Potter discussing his new book, out this fall, Deadly Spin. This former insurance industry spokesperson outlines in great details the techniques the industry uses to appear to be supporting reform while underwriting "grassroots" or "business people" shadow groups to undermine the same reforms. While I probably knew, deep inside, from my own years in public relations that a lot of this goes on, it turned my stomach to hear his description of something so detrimental to so many people in this country.
It makes me wonder how many other shadow groups operate in politics. Certainly we see less sophisticated and hidden efforts when Republicans are involved in crafting legislation they know they will vote against. At least they can't use a shadow group to vote...
We've seen something like this here in Colorado when the Romanoff campaign used someone to secretly shop a negative story about Bennett to national media. They may succeed in defeating Bennett in the primary. In the end, their opponents may publicize such under-handed techniques to the detriment of Romanoff. The end result? The people of Colorado lose! It happens all too often in politics. Good candidates knock each other out of the ultimate race with dirty tactics and negative advertising.
I was raised to be honest. My faith leads me to seek justice and truth. Everything in me seeks a way to help good people triumph over evil. Yet I am at a loss to see a way to overcome the evil that runs so deeply throughout the layers of society where real change can happen.
Sigh...

Off the Subject

Okay, this post has nothing to do with food, religion or politics -- unless you count slurping the pages of a book as food. I have one other obsession that I don't talk about much -- I am a voracious, indiscriminate reader. Much of my reading is non-fiction -- theology for my adult education work, organizational development for paid and unpaid work, books for cook club and so on. Recently though, I found a web site called Read It Forward. My first book was a SciFi thriller called Ancestor by Scott Sigler. I picked it up about 7:30 last night after a hard day of curriculum development, designing promotional materials and creating PowerPoint to back up my presentation. I put it down at 2 this morning when I finished the last page. I can't tell you if it was plausible or if it was well-written, I can only tell you I was immediately sucked into a world of medical research gone horribly wrong. This would be a great beach book, but only if you never burn and you have really high SPF sunscreen!

My Latest Favorite

My instructions to Robert regarding a restaurant to celebrate my birthday: Here is 5280's list of top restaurants in Denver. Start with Fruition and call. When you reach someone at the restaurant, say, "I need to make a reservation for my wife's birthday. She's a vegetarian who cannot eat tomatoes, citrus or chocolate. Is that a problem?" When you reach a restaurant where they say "No problem," that's where I want to go for my birthday.
He only had to make one call. The person who answered at Fruition said it would not be a problem and she would leave a note for the chefs.
When we got to the restaurant, Matt, the manager, was handling the front of the house. He knew it was my birthday and he knew I was a friend of Jackie Rebideau. The waitress knew I was a vegetarian with food restrictions and the chef knew that he would substitute mushrooms for the tomato chutney that normally accompanies the vegetarian entree. I was thrilled not to have to explain any thing. I could sit back and enjoy a wonderful meal! This level of service was not limited to friends of friends, but offered to each diner who entered the restaurant.
Needless to say, Fruition won me over before a single dish hit our table. While the best front of the house people in the world cannot make up for lousy food, great service really enhances a restaurant experience when the kitchen is good.
That Alex Seidel of Fruition is one of Food and Wine Magazine's Best New Chefs of 2010 is no surprise to anyone who has eaten in the restaurant.
Don't expect huge quantities of food. This is not one of those places where you expect to eat tonight's leftovers for dinner tomorrow. This is a place where the servings are adequate, not super-sized. And that is as it should be. The food is superlative. I savored each bite and marveled at how each ingredient balanced another and the flavors bounced around in my mouth.
We enjoyed bread with butter topped with sea salt and parsley. Robert commented that it was nice to have room temperature butter to spread on the bread. It is a small detail, but, if the bread is not warm to melt butter, the butter should be room temperature. Who hasn't struggled with the icy cold butter clump on a slice of bread? I probably should have taken a picture of the butter, but you will have to imagine butter in a tiny white ramekin with a frosty looking topping of salt and parsley.
Apparently, the vegetarian option at Fruition generally involves two or three courses. Last night was a two course night called Grazing Vegetarians. The first course involved a single ravioli atop a bed of vinegary greens and topped with shreds of peppery radish and sweet white raisins. I forgot to take a picture until I had toppled the whole thing for my first bite, but imagine this all carefully in a tower. It was savory, vinegary, smooth and creamy, sweet, tart and more in bites that picked up all the ingredients.

The entree was similarly a tower of contrasting and complementary ingredients that pleased the taste buds with every bite.
Robert had the Prosciutto Wrapped Scallops.
There were carrots, peas, micro-greens and fingerling potatoes atop the scallops and all this rested in a puree of peas. Robert is not overly fond of peas, but he certainly cleaned his plate.
I don't know that there was a specific name for my entree. Unfortunately, the colors in the photo are not nearly so intense as they were in person, but it was a beautiful dish.
Bits of lettuce and mushrooms toppled off the grilled fennel and polenta into a pool of veggie puree that I thought was pea until I saw that Robert's English pea emulsion was much more intensely green. At any rate, I loved the blend of flavors and textures. the fennel offered a slightly licorice flavor, the mushrooms were tiny bursts of earthiness and the polenta was amazingly creamy but with a crisp crust. I don't have a list of all the ingredients, but whatever they were, they went together quite well.
I could have been quite content after the two courses, but a birthday dinner requires dessert!
My first choice would have been the cheese plate with apple beignet. honey-orange marmalade and petite radish salad, but the cheese, Vendeen Bichonne, is made with animal rennet. My second choice, the warm vanilla crepes, was delightful!
Those little dots and swirls around the outside of the plate tasted like a balsamic reduction. There were lovely chewy pistachios on top of the whipped marscapone cheese. It was a lovely birthday dessert in it's strawberry-rhubarb sauce.
Robert loved his chocolate cake.
I had a nibble of the peanut brittle in the salted caramel sauce. I loved salted caramels the first time I had them, but I am getting tired of seeing the combination everywhere. Robert thought the sauce and peanut brittle set off the intense chocolate in the flourless chocolate cake.
The owners of this restaurant label their food as comfort food. It certainly is comforting and comfortable, but it has a level of sophistication that goes far beyond what one would normally consider comfort food. If comfort food is the kind of food your mother made, this is comfort food if your Mom was one of the Food and Wine Best New Chefs.
I know that we will not wait for a special occasion to visit Fruition again!

I love the Olympics!

There is a reason I don't blog about sports -- I'm hopeless. I wore bifocals starting in kindergarten, so I was the last kid chosen for any athletic team. Yet, I love the Olympics! I am in awe of the talent collected in one place. For the most part, the Olympics we see as spectators is the epitome of sportsmanship. Yeah, the Russian figure skater bad-mouthed the US win, but, hey, that's left over from the cold war. Usually, when a skier goes down, there are many countries represented in the group rushing to help. The Olympics bring out the best of international relations and remind us of what the world could be.
In terms of the sports, I cannot imagine being competent at most of the sports. I know Courtney Zablocki who finished fourth in luge in Torino and I know how hard she works and how easily she is injured. I simply cannot even imagine being able to do what she does. I stood at the top of the ski jump hill in Park City and I got dizzy standing there, never mind sliding down the hill with the intention of jumping 1 centimeter, let alone 100 meters or whatever distance they fly through the air.
There is one event even we couch potatoes can relate to -- curling! At the moment, I am watching the American women lose miserably to the Canadians, but I can relate to this sport. These women are "real" women -- sizes 12 and 14 are represented. There are little rolls around the waists, thick thighs, hips, even arms that don't even hint at muscles, all the less attractive aspects of our physical selves are visible on the athletes in this sport. If we concentrate, we can see the strategy. Granted, seeing the strategy and actually placing the rock where one wants are two completely different things. This sport is bocce on ice with a few extra twists. The strategy is not unlike pool -- place your rocks where you want them while knocking your opponent's rocks out of play. The catch is that the cue is a human sliding on ice without benefit of skates. I'm not saying I could master the sport of curling, but I can imagine not embarrassing myself in the sport. It is good to have a sport where a mere mortal can imagine some success.
I love the Olympics! There are times to dream the impossible dream and times to imagine our own participation. Most important of all, the predominant theme is one of peaceful competition. And that is a theme that we can dream would predominate even when the Olympic torch is no longer visible.

This is the place for seafood in Las Vegas

When the Sampsons and the Eichenwalds do anything together, one of the major components of the planning process involves food. Our excursion to The Lion King was no exception. The discussion began almost as soon as we got the tickets. Now, where shall we eat? Because the show was at the Mandalay Bay, it made sense to eat in that facility. We read reviews, we asked people, we tried to look at menus to assure that I could find something to eat there. We heard a lot about RM Seafood. Interestingly, after the show, Thom Smesma (Scar in The Lion King) suggested RM Seafood if we were looking for a good place to eat. Ahhhh.... even I can eat at RM Seafood. Actually, I can eat quite nicely at RM Seafood!
Our waiter was George and he was quite a personable sort. We had a fun bread basket of little biscuits and cornmeal muffins. Very homey! That bread basket set the tone for a meal that was comfortable, with food that was simple in that there were no fancy sauces and complex gimmicks, and with no pretensions.

Robert and I chose Hawaiian Walu which was served with broccoli and little bits of puffed rice in a shitake-dashi broth with shitakes on top as well.
The firm-fleshed, mild fish had a little top crust formed with a soy glaze and run under the broiler. This was a dish created with a lovely light hand. The fish was the star of the dish and there was nothing to compete with it. The veggies and broth came along to add their unique flavor perspectives and it was truly enjoyable and comfortable food.
Sonia and Howard chose Diver Scallops. I tried just a tiny taste of the accompanying cauliflower gratin in which the cauliflower was clearly the point of the dish, not the sauce. The scallops sat on a golden raisin emulsion.
Chef Moonen used couscous as a crust on the scallops and we all marveled at such an interesting idea. Again, the theme of this dish was the simplicity that featured the fish.
The four of us agreed on a lovely Austrian Gruner Veltliner. It had a nice minerality that complimented both scallops and Walu. I am kicking myself for not recording or remembering more than the grape because I would certainly buy a few bottles when I get home. I have a vague picture of the label in my head and I hope it will serve me when I go looking for this wine. When George served the wine, we had a little conversation about the screw-top and its increasing use in the fine wine industry. George proudly pointed out that the screw-top fit well with the restaurant's policy of sustainability.
It is my habit, following a couple of times when I forgot major features of my food before I sat down to blog as I did just now when I forgot the vintner for our wine, to admit that I am a food blogger and ask for a menu to help me get things right on the blog, to admit I am a food blogger and request a paper menu to take with me. George jumped on it. He even introduced us to Rick Moonen, the man whose initials provide the name of the restaurant. He graciously discussed with us his concept in using a couscous crust for the scallops and generally answered our questions about the meal. He even agreed to pose with me for the picture below. Chef Moonen is getting a bit of national attention, so plan accordingly!
If you are in Las Vagas and looking for a superior seafood dinner, don't hesitate -- head to the Mandalay Bay and RM Seafood. It is just outside the casino in the Mandalay Marketplace for the more casual dining (about $50 a person) where we ate or up the escalators to the more formal version (around $95 a person). The official website tells me upstairs is RM Seafood and downstairs is RM Casual. Phone is 702-632-9300.

Spago Las Vegas Style

One of the amazing things in Las Vegas is that, no matter when you want to eat, the restaurants are packed. Our best choice at the Forum was Spago. We were too hungry to wait for one of the choice tables that project into the mall and allow one to see the storm come in and the statues move. the large back room was farther from the crowd and a pleasant break from the noise and crowds that are a fact of life around the Strip.
The meal started with a lovely selection of breads, all of which were good, but the crispbreads were exceptional. The bread disappeared fast, but I caught a picture of the accompaniments -- salt, butter and rosemary-infused oil.
In fact the breads went so fast, we had to ask for a second go around to be sure they were as good as we thought and not "good because we are so hungry."
It required quick photography with my new 'Droid to get shots of the meals before they were devoured. That was particularly true of my friend, Howard, with his pancetta-wrapped meatloaf
on a base of potato puree, mushroom gravy and port wine sauce and topped with three lovely onion rings.
Sonia grew up on Lake Como, so she knows from Bolognaise. She pronounced her Pappardelle a la Bolognaise very good. The menu described braised beef, roasted double blanched garlic, plum tomatoes, house-made Ricotta and Italian parsley.
Robert ordered the mesquite grilled Snake River Farm Kobe Beef Burger which he pronounced some of the "smoothest" beef he ever ate.
I nibbled some of the pommes frites which were, I promise you, some of the best fries I have ever eaten. Dusted with parsley and just the right amount of salt, they were absolutely the perfect level of crispness.
I had hand-cut fettuccini with mushrooms, peas, and glazed shallots.
What sounded innocuous in the menu, glazed shallots, turned out to be glorious -- shallots glazed in a lovely balsamic vinegar reduction that changed what could have been a somewhat ho-hum pasta dish in to a flavor explosion. In fact, about half of that lovely pasta is in the refrigerator, so, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll enjoy it again.