Bones Baby!

For the past couple of years, my friend Meghan and I have been taking each other to dinner for our birthdays.  It was my turn to take her.When I asked her where she wanted to go, all she kept talking about was the place with the Lobster Ramen. I had never heard of such a thing, so naturally, I Googled it. Imagine my surprise to find out it was being served right by my house at a restaurant called Bones, on the corner of 7th and Grant.  I have lived just up the street from Bones since it opened and have never gone in. I had always just assumed that it was simply a wine bar. It is, but they also serve Asian fare, primarily noodles dishes. It turned out to be quite a surprise.
We stared out with the Escargot Potstickers, and they came with this amazing sauce. I don't know how I have been lucking out with sauces lately but hey, I'm not complaining. We enjoyed our potstickers with a couple of Tsunamis, a cocktail made with with sake, blackberry liquer, and ginger ale. For our entrees, Meghan obviously went for the Lobster Ramen, and I had the fish special. We'll start with the Ramen; it came in a gigantic bowl full of noodles and large pieces of lobster and edamame. The broth was a buttery miso. You have the option to have a poached egg served on top, and the yoke breaks into the broth, making it creamier. I thought it was decent, and Meghan said it was basically what she expected but without the "wow" factor she was hoping for. I have to say I agree. Good, but not something to write home about. My entree was fabulous though. It was a filet of snapper served over a bed of vegetable noodles. What I mean by "noodle" is that the vegetable was in fine, long shreds and cooked like noodles. The whole thing was in this garlic sauce with some other stuff that I couldn't distinguish but that made it phenomenal! I really enjoyed every bite of my meal. I wish that Meghan, this being her birthday dinner, would have been as blown away as I was. But she did enjoy her overall experience. For a dish that has supposedly put this restaurant on the map, the Lobster Ramen was not as spectacular as it should have been or could be. But nevertheless, if you have not tried Bones, then you should make a trip.

Ototo

After my terrible crepe experience last week, I needed a come-back or sorts. So I went to dinner with my mom at this great restaurant on south Pearl. It's called Ototo Food and Wine Bar, and it was beyond wonderful. Let me just give you the history before I talk about the food. Basically, the guys at Sushi Den have done it again. As if Sushi Den and Izakaya Den weren't already amazing, let's open up another restaurant that will knock your socks off! But this isn't sushi, this is an oyster bar and wine bar that showcases a mix of many different flavors and culinary styles and because it is all small plates, you can taste a few and share them with your table.
We  started off with the New Style Diver Scallops, and they were so perfectly cooked that they melted in my mouth. They had a touch of jalapeno that added just the right amount of heat, and well, they were awesome. After that came the P.E.I. Mussels,which were swimming in this white wine, garlic broth that was so good, we started eating it with a spoon because we ran out of the equally delicious toasted ciabatta bread that accompanied the mussels. My mom was still slurping it down when the waiter came to take our plates away! I was, admittedly, devastated when they told me that they didn't have the Lobster Gnocchi because anytime you have lobster, bacon, and pasta in the same bowl, something stupendous  is bound to happen. But we decided on one of the main fish  dishes instead. It was a white fish, and for the life of me I cannot remember what it was except that it wasn't the halibut, but it came with a white bean ravioli and this awesome sauce that warranted ordering more bread to sop it up with. After having our fill of savory delights and several glasses of the house red, there was no way I was going to leave without trying some dessert. We shared the Rhubarb Panacotta. Holy S@#t! This dessert was so thick and creamy and fruity and nutty and buttery good that it was hard to share it. Luckily I started to feel full or I would have ordered another one! This was such a different experience than others I've had where the food had a flaw here or there or the service was sub-par. Ototo delivered with flying colors. It's one of those total package places; food, atmosphere, location, wine and service. This was one of those meals where I found my self making little noises with every bite. And , yes it was awkward because my mom was there too making the same noises.
So if you have a few extra bones to spend and want to treat yourself to an amazing meal, head to Ototo, sample a few things off the fantastic menu and go home feeling sated and warm, but without the food coma from heavy meals.

Beware the restaurant that sounds too good to be true.

I'm back! I know it has been a long time but life tends to get in the way of everything else. And since it has been sooooo long, I have decided to open up this blogging cycling with a tale about the worst meal/dining experience I have ever had in my entire life.
But first a little back story....
I am a huge fan of Vietnamese food, and in my dining adventures I have discovered the Boba Smoothie. This is a delicious fruit smoothie that is offered at most Vietnamese restaurants. The Bobas are giant tapioca pearls (I know it sounds awful) that float at the bottom of your cup. You may have seen these, they have to be drunk with really thick straws so that the Bobas can make it to your mouth where you then chew them. (Yuck!) The wonderful thing is that you can opt to have the Bobas omitted and just enjoy the fruit.
Next to Vietnamese food, French food would be another favorite of mine. And who doesn't love the classically french street food, crepes? So what sounds like a little piece of heaven to me is a place where you can get both Boba smoothies, sans Bobas, and crepes! It's like the best of both worlds right? Wrong.
As I was driving through Denver on Sunday night trying to figure out where I wanted to have dinner, I whipped out my phone and started searching for new restaurants. Long story short, I found a place called Bobas and crepes on Colorado and Mississippi. So I looked at the menu on my phone and it didn't seem all that interesting, but it didn't seem all that bad either. It was. We pulled up and there was nobody in the restaurant, first red flag, and the people inside seemed surprised to see us, second red flag. We ordered a savory crepe, shrimp and crab, and a sweet crepe, mixed fruit. I should have made us leave the second the guy behind the counter asked if we wanted everything on the savory one. When I looked up on the menu it said that all crepes had lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise cucumber, corn, onions, cheese and ketchup. WTF?!? We didn't know what to make of it so we said no ketchup and onions and hoped for the best. What we should have done was run for the door.
The Boba smoothies came out right away and were delicious, but that's a no brainer. The savory crepe, however, was something else. It was imitation crab, those tiny salad shrimp and all that other stuff they put on them, rolled up in a cold, pre-packaged crepe that was frighteningly stale. I had two bites, the second only to see if I was imagining what I had actually put in my mouth. My boyfriend was in the same boat. So we set it down on the plate and waited for the fruit crepe. It came and, stale crepe aside, was exponentially better than the other one, but then the staff started to make things really weird.
I asked for a fork and was treated like I had asked for an explanation of the theory of relativity. The guy came buy to take our plates, asked if we wanted to keep them and then made me take mine back because I still had the crepe in my hand. And then when my boyfriend said he wanted to go and got up, the guy came over to us and asked if we were in a rush. He had been hovering near our table the whole time anyway and staring at us, and then he followed us to the door. So as if the food wasn't already bad enough, the hovering staff just made us even more uncomfortable.
So what did we learn? Just because they serve Boba smoothies doesn't mean the food will be good. Leave the crepes to the French because, let's face it, they do it better anyway. And if it sounds to good to be true, it almost always is.