Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill

I don't care if it's a fast-casual, cheap chain restaurant; I love Garbanzo.

I love the fact that I always walk in there starving and I immediately get handed a warm, freshly fried falafel to sample. I love that they pile my plate high with enough food for two meals for less than $10. I love that I can mix everything together on my plate to form a hummus-heavy pile of Mediterranean goodness.

Garbanzo locations have shot up around the Denver area like delicious weeds. I've eaten at four of their Front Range locations, all in the south suburbs. 

Garbanzo has a Chipotle-style setup where you select the shape and style of your entree, and customize it to your liking. Customers can choose from a plate, a pita, or a laffa (think Middle Eastern burrito). I always go with the plate since I seem to get more food that way, and they provide a pita on the side. Plus, I can grab a lid for the plate and eat the remainder of my giant meal later.

My standby is normally the Steak Shwarma plate ($6.99).  I order it with plenty of hummus, a generous helping of veggie salad, red cabbage, a dolma, and a little bit of tzatziki sauce. It's very filling, and as long as I can take it easy on the hummus, it's generally low-calorie as well.

Recently, Garbanzo has added steak and chicken kabobs to their menu. I tried a Chicken Kabob Plate ($8.99) at my last visit, with the usual fixings plus some Mediterranean rice.

Chicken Kabob Plate

The chicken was marinated and perfectly cooked. It was skewered alongside green and red bell peppers and red onions, which added a sweetness and crunchiness.

My biggest complaint about Garbanzo? The restaurants post nutritional stats and ingredients online, which is great, but it reveals the fact that they include preservatives in their hummus, falafel, and many of their sauces. I would expect a place that prides itself on freshness to avoid such additives.

Garbanzo is a Colorado-based chain, with locations across the Front Range. It's not terribly authentic, but it's tasty, fast, and cheap.



Everyday Dining

(8 of 10)

Pros: Cheap, fast, delicious
Cons: Not terribly authentic, preservatives in some foods

Website:
http://www.eatgarbanzo.com/

CJ's Frozen Custard

CJ's is the ultimate mom-and-pop custard stop. Their small location is located in Lone Tree at Lincoln and Yosemite, in a strip mall near Safeway and in between a couple of random stores.

The interior of CJ's is pretty bare-bones, with six or so tables and fliers everywhere for every local thing imaginable.

CJ's offers the traditional custard-stand staples of chocolate, vanilla, and "flavor of the day" custards, as well as Vienna hot dogs. I've never tried the hot dogs, but I do know all about the custard. The frozen treats are offered with a variety of standard toppings, and can be ordered as part of a sundae or malt. CJ's also sells "flavor of the day" pints.

My husband's favorite thing ever is the marshmallow malt, made with vanilla custard ($5.5).

Marshmallow Malt

My selection on this particular visit was a small cup of chocolate custard with peanut butter cup pieces ($3.5).

Chocolate Custard with Peanut Butter Cup Topping

And one of my husband's favorite "flavor of the day" selections, in pint form:

Cherry Amaretto Custard Pint

CJ's isn't anything terribly unique, but it is a solid neighborhood custard stop.

Everyday Dining

(7 of 10)

Pros: Unique flavor of the day options, custard in every form consumable
Cons: Slightly expensive, very average custard options

Website:

http://www.cjsfrozencustard.com

Silver Creek Diner

The Quest: To find a plate of biscuits and gravy as delicious as the ones my husband used to eat at the local diner in his tiny rural hometown. He's been looking for a worthy contender ever since a recent visit back home.

The First Place We Started: Silver Creek Diner. We've seen it off C-470 a hundred or so times, and the use of the word diner in the title suggests the presence of some sort of biscuits and gravy.

This place has a bit of an unfortunate location. Anyone can see the huge DINER sign from C-470, but actually getting into the restaurant from there takes a lot more work. It's housed at the end of a string of retail spaces, something I wouldn't quite call a strip mall, on the C-470 frontage road alongside all kinds of random small businesses.

The yoga studio next door gets plenty of regular visitors; Silver Creek didn't seem to have the same appeal. We were there at about 11:30 am on a Saturday, which I would expect to be peak hours, but they were only at about 1/3 capacity.

The interior of Silver Creek looks as though the location used to house a Chinese restaurant, then a Mexican restaurant, and now a diner, and throughout the successive changes in restaurant theme, no one has changed the decor. Instead, they've just added random item after random item, turning the interior into a mishmash of bizarre paintings and photos and excessively bright wall colors.

As you probably guessed, my husband ordered the biscuits and gravy ($8), which came with eggs, hash browns and sausage. I went with a Denver omelet ($6), which came with hash browns and toast.

Just a matter of minutes later, out came our food.

My omelet was decent. It tasted exactly how I thought it would.  The cheese was sparsely applied, which I appreciated, the peppers were fresh and crunchy, and the ham....just tasted like regular ham. The hash browns were ok, very average, and the toast was strangely only toasted on one side.

Denver Omelet

My husband's biscuits and gravy were also very average.  He loved the buttery flavor of the biscuits, but the gravy was a letdown. It wasn't proper country gravy with a rich, meaty flavor and sausage pieces strewn throughout. Instead, it was thin and chicken brothy and too salty. The eggs, hash browns, and sausage were all decent but nothing special.

Biscuits and Gravy

We both felt very "eh" about Silver Creek Diner.  We may come back for another visit....or we may not.  It was cheap and quick and OK tasting, but just nothing to get excited about.

Everyday Dining

(6 of 10)




Pros: Good service, cheap, fast
Cons: Everything is very average tasting, weird location