The text of Breaking the Chain courtesy of Wordle (www.wordle.net).

Rack and Rye Denver

Within one block of my downtown Denver office building there are three Starbucks. Within one block! While not quite as pervasive as the ‘bucks, there are also a hell of a lot of Subways and a handful of McDonalds. Finding a chain restaurant in the city isn’t just easy, it’s unavoidable.

However, there are a lot of us to feed, and the adventurous 9-to-5er can find something beyond Taco Bell and Chili’s if they’re willing to look. This week I met an in-the-know friend for lunch at a restaurant of her choosing – the brand spanking new Rack and Rye. R & R’s location has cursed many a restaurant since I’ve worked downtown – including Sambuca, a jazz bar/restaurant that is single-handedly responsible for me meeting my husband.

Confession time: I can be an incredibly selfish, competitive person. If another writer for my publication does a review of or feature on a restaurant that I wanted to try, the restaurant immediately obtains notoriety in my mind. Of course this is illogical and I fully realize that this is a character flaw for which I should probably engage the professional help of a therapist. But hey, perseverance over perfection, right? Anyway, another writer wrote the R & R story and selfish me had mixed feelings about going to the restaurant.

I got there and didn’t love the menu. Then the waitress/barkeep tells me they’re out of pork belly. Maybe I’m glad I didn’t review this place, I smugly thought to myself. I ordered the 5-spice roast duck sandwich, mainly because I’ve eaten more Cubanos lately than poor little Elian Gonzalez and decided to try something different.

A few minutes later I did my favorite thing in the world – something I do more than 1,000 times each year but which still gives me butterflies in my stomach as if it was a really good first date – I took the first bite of my meal. It’s really unfair to call what I ate a sandwich; a sandwich is mustard spread on grocery-store wheat bread with slimy turkey slapped in between. Maybe there are pinkish tomatoes and limp lettuce involved, who even knows. But R & R’s “sandwich”, well, it was an experience.

The sauce – a far cry from mayo, mustard or anything else you’d find in a grocery store condiment aisle – was sweet with a bite. The duck, which can really overpower its accompanying ingredients, meshed with the sauce perfectly but yet contrasted sharply with the pear and Swiss cheese (yes – Swiss! It was still that good, even with the only slightly cuter step-sibling of American cheese!) that joined it inside the buttery baguette.

The duck sandwich was fantastic and, to boot, my colleague who reviewed the place didn’t even try it. So ha. One would think that eating great food would be its own reward, but not to vindictive little me.

Denver Restaurant Week 2010

OK, OK, so I might be jumping the gun on this one, but with Christmas over I need something to look forward to. Here's the link to Denver Restaurant Week 2010, where 2 people can get a 3-course meal at some of Denver's finest restaurants for $52.80.
http://www.denver.org/denverrestaurant/default.aspx

My wishlist? Fruition, Twelve, Duo and The Squeaking Bean. Or anywhere offering pork belly or rack of lamb. Reserve the big ones early - Mizuna was booked within minutes of being posted on the Restaurant Week website.

Doing Good by Eating

It's Christmastime, which means you bitch about lines at the malls, embarass yourself at your office Christmas party and, hopefully, do some good. Here are a couple of restaurants where doing good will fill you up and delight your tastebuds: SAME Cafe (http://www.soallmayeat.org/) and Cafe Options (http://www.cafeoptions.com/).

SAME (So All May Eat) Café doesn’t charge for its food (which is almost entirely organic and made in-house, by the way). You read that right – their menu comes without a price tag. Customers are encouraged to pay what they can, or what they feel the meal was worth.

On any given day, SAME will be filled with lawyers, ladies who lunch and out of work day laborers. Instead of a cash register, they have a donation box. If someone can’t afford to pay anything, they can trade an hour of washing dishes or helping out for a soup, salad and pizza (or whatever else they want). At SAME, you can even go back for seconds!

SAME’s owners had been volunteering at soup kitchens and homeless shelters for years. While they loved helping down on their luck people get food to eat, they realized it wasn’t the healthiest or the most delicious. Instead of the canned, boxed, preservative-filled food that stocks food banks, the owners of SAME wanted to give those who need it the most real, healthy food.

Somehow, this philosophy of giving away fresh, high-quality food has worked. SAME has been around for 3 plus years, and in this troubled economy, is cooking up more meals than ever.

Café Options, which does charge for their food, is also in the business of bettering our community. This downtown deli is staffed by graduates of Work Options for Women (WOW), a nonprofit that teaches impoverished women culinary skills to obtain employment, gain self-esteem and improve the lives of them and their families. All of Café Options’ proceeds go to WOW.

The Café roasts its own pork and ham and makes soups daily from scratch (I’ve worked in a couple chain bakeries/delis in my time, and none of them did more to make soup than heat up the block of ice corporate sent them). Sandwiches range in price from $6.50-7.25 – a little high for me, but right on par for downtown Denver.

The Cubano I ate at Café Options was excellent, and the knowledge that I was funding a program that helps low-income women get jobs and better themselves made it taste even better. I think I’ll have a hard time getting a sandwich anywhere else.

It’s true that chains give a lot back, too – as they should since they’re making the lion’s share of the profits – but you probably won’t see the CEO of Arby’s telling patrons to pay what they can or what they feel the meal is worth (for one, they’d probably be out of business in about 5 minutes).

If you have any restaurants like SAME Café or Café Options in your neighborhood, I urge you to try them out. You might be surprised by just how good “charity” food can taste. Plus, you'll feel good about where your money is going. I don't think the guy at Chili's can say the same thing.

Boulder Restaurant Week

You've got a few more days to get up to Boulder for Restaurant Week - aka you pay just $52.80 for 2 people to eat a meal that would normally run you $100. Check out First Bite Boulder for participating restaurants and menus:

http://www.firstbiteboulder.com/

Last night we went to Q's, which is inside the Hotel Boulderado. To be honest, I hadn't been salivating over Q's, like I do Frasca, Black Cat and the Kitchen, but the menu looked above average. For the appetizer, I ordered the carnitas tamale, which was very good and much bigger than I expected for a first course. Peter thought outside the box and ordered the asaparagus over crispy polenta cake with mushroom vinaigrette, blue cheese and prosciutto. It may not sound or look that delicious, but it was! I don't think I've ever in my life ordered a vegetable-centric appetizer, but I would order this over crab cakes any day.

The entrees were good - gnocchi and short rib ravioli - but the portions weren't as generous as the apps. In a rare selfish move, Peter ordered an apple dessert and didn't even finish it. Since I think cooked apples taste about as good as my dog's eye boogers, I was forced to watch the uneaten morsels make their way back to the kitchen for disposal without finishing it. I had a chocolate banana brulee cake. The banana and chocolate stood up well to each other, but the banana sorbet was too grainy.

Overall, Q's was well worth the $52 price tag, although after drinks, tax and tip it was back up to the $100 range. Go eat, people! Help your tummy and economy!

Back to N'Awlins (is that how you spell it?)

The first thing Jenny and I did when we got to New Orleans was buy a large beer (for her) and a Smirnoff Ice (for me) and walked down Canal Street sipping out of our brown paper bags. For us Colorado girls who don’t go out a whole lot, drinking on a public street was quite exhilarating. We stuck out so much that pretty much everyone we spoke to (asking directions, paying the bus fare, buying the booze) asked where we were from and warned us to be careful. Now I know how Woody from ‘Cheers’ felt.

After dinner at Cochon (more on the food later), we did what pretty much every traveler comes to New Orleans to do – drink on Bourbon Street.

A few things about Bourbon Street – it’s expensive (compared to Colorado), most bars are cash only and there are a lot of men looking for more than good conversation. A few things about Jenny and I – we’re cheap, we haven’t had cash since our middle school allowances and we love to (innocently) chat up guys and get them to buy us drinks. Not exactly a match made in heaven.

After gaping at the sex clubs and old men taking shots out of 21-year old girls’ cleavage, we managed to find a credit-accepting bar. Being the efficient economist that I am, I ordered a $3 shot of Bacardi 151. A much better alcohol-to-dollar ratio than the $7 beers and $13 slushies.

Feeling brave, we started talking to the seemingly least depraved men out and about. The first group, there for work from Iowa (even more country than us!), bought us more shots and showed us a karaoke bar. The karaoke club provided us with several more shots (courtesy of a birthday trip from New York City) and a chance to perform Coolio’s ‘Gangsta’s Paradise.’

Perhaps the highlight of the night came when an oil guy bought Jenny and me an entire tray of Jell-O shots. Well, I guess that depends on your definition of highlight. Considering what happened a few hours later, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a highlight now.

However, those Jell-O shot did get us wound up enough to ride the whale. The whale is a mechanical Shamu that bucks its rider around in an attempt to toss you off. It’s pretty much a mechanical bull, but the bar wanted something unique so they made it a whale. The whale was fun, although neither Jenny nor I will be applying at Sea World any time soon. And my inner thighs were sore the rest of the trip.

The fun, easygoing night turned unfortunate, as it does, when we, as we do, got hungry. It was a little after 2 am and even though we’d probably consumed 2,000 calories worth of alcohol since our 2,000 calories worth of dinner, we still, in our drunken state, insisted upon eating more. We wanted breakfast; specifically eggs benedict.

We beligerently stumbled through the streets of New Orleans, asking people where we could find our craving at such an hour. After false leads that took us to places we shouldn’t have been, we found ourselves hungrier than ever. And standing in front of the Harrah’s casino.

Even with my judgment clouded by shot of alcohol strong enough to corrode a diamond and a tray of Jell-O shot, I still objected to eating at the Harrah’s – the only place serving breakfast we had found – on the basis of it being a chain. However, my judgment was also easily swayed by Jenny telling me that the restaurant was 100% independently owned and operated. Of course it’s not a chain just because it’s inside a chain, she reasoned. And at 2 am, stomach pumped full of vodka, rum, everclear and God knows what else, I bought it.

That’s how we ended up eating the worst breakfast of our lives, which wasn’t even the eggs benedict we wanted. That’s saying something, since the last time I ate when drunk it was a McDonald’s double cheeseburger that I proclaimed to be the greatest thing I ever put in my mouth. Typically alcohol dulls the taste buds, thus making whatever I eat taste like a Michelin-starred restaurant’s cuisine. But the Harrah’s omelet was just that bad.

We shuffled back to our hotel, sick from the food and wishing we would have just waited until morning to find breakfast. I felt slightly guilty for eating inside a Harrah’s, even though Jenny still insists that it doesn’t count as a chain. Damn you tray full of Jell-O shots!

Instead of writing about the race that brought us to New Orleans – which didn’t go very well – I’m going to list everything I ate during the course of my 2 ½ day trip:

Wood-fired Oysters – Neither Jenny nor I like oysters, but we always like to try new things, so we gave them a shot. They were fantastic.
Fried soft shell crab – So weird to eat the legs without having to de-shell! Good, but the fried aspect was too heavy for me.
Louisiana Cochon – not as good as I remembered from my last trip, but still very tasty.
Harrah’s omelet – makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
Sushi – It may be odd to eat sushi in New Orleans, but we walked past an all-you-can-eat lunch deal, so what could we do?
Muffaletta – the best one from the French Market restaurant, of course.
Taste of Orleans Sampler – red beans and rice, gumbo, crawfish etouffee and shrimp creole. All fabulous.
Shrimp Remoulade – Honestly, I’m not sure what remoulade is. But this couldn’t possibly have been it.
Seafood platter – An obese fishophile’s wet dream. A pile of fried shrimp, crawfish dressing balls, oysters, catfish and soft shell crab.
Beignets – I didn’t even look at Café Du Monde. I went straight to Café Beignet and ate my deep-fried batter like a good chain-avoiding girl.
Turtle Soup – It’s a good thing we didn’t believe it was made with actual turtle when we ate it.
Jambalaya – Not typically one of my New Orleans to-die-for’s, the Jambalaya at Desire Oyster Bar was the best I’ve ever tasted.
Eggplant eggs benedict – The eggplant and hollandaise were terrific, but why on earth did they overcook my yolk? Is this a New Orleans thing?

Oh, and after that first night, we didn’t get drunk on Bourbon Street. Harrah’s taught us our lesson.

Dinner at 1515

I had a great dinner tonight at Restaurant 1515. Everything with pork (the cheek, belly) were fantastic, and the potato foam flavored with chevre and bacon was even better than the sous vide-prepared lamb that accompanied it. They're doing some very creative things, like olive oil powder and mandarin orange caviar - all made in their test kitchen.

I noticed that they're having Thanksgiving Day dinner for just $18 (for adults; $9 for kids). Sounds like a great deal for a restaurant of this quality!
http://www.1515restaurant.com/thanksgiving_menu.htm

Thursday I'm off to New Orleans, where my little chain experiment will prevent me from eating at Cafe Du Monde, Acme Oyster House and any restaurant whose proprietor says "Bam!"