Dry Dock Brewing Company

In our quest for delicious beer across the state of Colorado, I can't believe it took so long for Mr. Oyster and me to visit Dry Dock Brewing Company in Aurora.

Dry Dock is less than a 10-minute drive from our respective workplaces, and the brewery makes an outstanding Hefeweizen and Vanilla Porter.

So a couple Fridays ago, we dodged out of work a bit early to sample some beers at Dry Dock.

Dry Dock's exterior is just as unassuming as you might imagine for an Aurora Brewery.

The brewery won't catch your eye as you drive past it on Hampden, but the interior is impressive. The tap room is a giant, L-shaped space with a small bar and numerous long tables. The nautical motif pervades the decor and beer names.

Dry Dock seems to be the spot to grab an end-of-week beer for the local office-dwellers. In fact, we ran into several of my husband's coworkers there. It was moderately busy when I arrived around 3:30 pm, but was completely packed to standing room by the time we left just before 6 pm.

Dry Dock's brewing philosophy seems to focus on simple yet sharply-flavored beers. Their Hefeweizen is smooth, light, and easy to drink in large quantities, and it has an intense taste of bananas and bubblegum. Their Vanilla Porter tastes like dessert in beer form, with a very strong, sweet vanilla taste.

Dry Dock Vanilla Porter

We tried most of Dry Dock's other brews while at the tap house, but unfortunately none of them lived up to the perfection of their Hefeweizen or Vanilla Porter.

Adjacent to their tap room is Dry Dock's extensive home brew shop, where the staff was happy to provide the recipe for their Hefeweizen free of charge.

Dry Dock's expansive and popular Aurora tap room proved to be a great place to enjoy some of their excellent beers in a low-key suburban location. The ample seating room would make it a great place for a large happy hour - if you can get there early enough.


Website:
http://www.drydockbrewing.com/tap-room


 

Linger

Well, we finally made it to Linger. About six weeks ago, we had made two different dinner reservations at the restaurant: one for Saturday, November 27, and one for Saturday, December 17. Yes, getting into Linger on a weekend currently requires booking about four weeks out. That means the restaurant and I at least have one thing in common: we both have very busy schedules.

We ended up cancelling our first reservations at the last minute due to the irresistible appeal of craft beer at Hops & Pie. We stuck to our December reservations though, and met up with another couple for dinner last weekend to figure out why everyone's so excited about Linger.

Linger occupies the space of the former Olinger Mortuary, and plays on that history throughout the dining experience. In fact, the restaurant's name derives from Olinger with a simple subtraction of the "O". As a genius advertising maneuver, the "O" on the giant sign atop the restaurant that bears the former mortuary's name has been unplugged, leaving the brightly lit letters "linger" looming over downtown Denver.

Besides its influence on the restaurant's name, the "dead people" theme pervades Linger, from the decor to the menu to the beer options.

As the sister restaurant to Root Down a few blocks away, I had high expectations. Root Down is one of my absolute favorite dinner spots in Denver. Both restaurants advertise a commitment to environmental responsibility and good food, but Linger certainly seems to be the trendier, hottest-place-in-town restaurant of the two.

Linger specializes in a dizzying array of international street food, divided into world regions on the menu. They claim to be a "tapas-style" restaurant and they mean it. The menu offers only small plates, with each dish costing roughly $6 to $16.

The restaurant makes a point to cater certain dishes to food allergies, vegetarians, and vegans, although no one in our group had any dietary aversions.

The waitstaff recommends two small plates per person, a suggestion I completely disagree with. We ordered six plates between the four of us, and that was maybe one plate too many. Keep in mind that much of Linger's food is fried or at least very greasy, so it's hard to eat large portions.

Our meal started with complimentary togarashi-flavored popcorn. While I like the idea of popcorn as a light meal starter, I thought Linger's popcorn tasted stale and flavorless.

Our six small plates consisted of one "Asia" dish: Pad Thai with Wagyu Beef; three "Americas" dishes: Scallop Ceviche, Strongbow Cider Mussels, and Maple Leaf Duck Wings; and two "Europe" dishes: Devils on Horseback and Crispy Risotto Arancini. Though we hadn't necessarily intended them to be so, our selections were some of the most pedestrian offerings on the menu.

The dishes were served in two rounds of three plates each.

First up were the Devils on Horseback ($10):

Devils on Horseback

Linger's Devils on Horseback were comprised of goat cheese stuffed Medjool dates wrapped in bacon. These packed quite a sweet-and-savory punch, with an intense sugary taste from the dates.

While I enjoyed the little devils, Root Down offers a different interpretation of the dish - made with sweet-and-spicy peppadew peppers - that I prefer over Linger's.

Next was the Scallop Ceviche ($11), served with avocado and chips:

Scallop Ceviche

The scallops were fresh, light and citrusy, and were balanced with the creamy avocado and salty corn chips. The dish was apparently prepared with habanero peppers, but I tasted no spiciness whatsoever. This was good ceviche, but many other restaurants in town offer something comparable. For $11, I prefer the scallop ceviche at Vesta Dipping Grill or LoLa (just a block away).

Finishing up that round of small plates were the Strongbow Cider Mussels ($13):

Strongbow Cider Mussels

Besides the obvious Strongbow Cider component, the sauce included garlic, thyme, celery, and grain mustard. The shellfish were accompanied by grilled spicy cheddar bread. The mussels were tasty, but like the ceviche above, they were not terribly memorable.

It was time for our second round of tapas, starting with the Pad Thai with Wagyu Beef ($10 + $5 for Wagyu beef).

Pad Thai with Wagyu Beef

The pad thai tasted a little oily for my taste but was authentically prepared. It wasn't very spicy on its own and needed more heat from the chili sauce served on the side. The Wagyu beef was perfectly cooked, but it had simply been thrown on the side of the dish, with no attempt made at meshing flavors.

We also couldn't resist trying the Maple Leaf Duck Wings ($11):

Maple Leaf Duck Wings

I've had a million chicken wings in my life, but never duck wings. I was concerned that they might be too tough and chewy, but the meat was actually impressively tender. The wings were drenched in a sweet and tangy blood orange hot sauce, which made them extremely messy. I realize wings are supposed to be messy, but Linger felt a little too upscale for me to drench my face in wing sauce.

And finally, Linger's menu held one of the high points of my many 2011 dining experiences, the Crispy Risotto Arancini ($11 for three, we added a fourth for an additional $3):

Crispy Risotto Arancini

Arancini are apparently a traditional Sicilian food, comprising of fried rice balls filled with meat sauce. I'm afraid the above "as-served" photo makes them look more like the world's most confused donut holes and does not do justice to the their delicious innards. Let's take a closer look at a severed arancini:

Crispy Risotto Arancini

There it is: a creamy risotto exterior with a crisp, fried shell, filled with a delicious bolognese sauce. The meaty bolognese sauce was particularly rich and well-seasoned. Every bite of the arancini was outstanding, and they were one the few things I ate at Linger that didn't bring to mind a similar-but-better dish somewhere else in town.

Timing of our various small plates was a bit too fast; we were rushed into relocating food to different dishes and juggling too many items on the table. Also, our individual plates quickly became covered in sauces and straggling bits from various dishes. With the extreme array of foods served at Linger, these turned into a flavor hodgepodge that blended unfavorably with whatever subsequent item we tried to throw on the plate.

We finished off the meal with the dessert trio ($10), which included mini versions of the Peanut Butter & Jelly Cup, the Ovaltine & Oreos, and the Mississippi Mud Pie.

Dessert Trio. Left to Right: Peanut Butter & Jelly Cup, Ovaltine & Oreos, and Mississippi Mud Pie

Linger offers a couple more exotic dessert options, but they stuck to close to home with their dessert trio selections (so much for international street food!). The Peanut Butter & Jelly Cup tasted overwhelmingly of peanut butter. Similarly, the Mississippi mud pie was basically a very one-dimensional chocolate cake. The Ovaltine & Oreos dessert was a little more exciting, comprising of a very strongly Ovaltine-flavored Bavarian cream atop an "Oreo" made of chocolate cookies and mascarpone.

I'm disappointed and puzzled that Linger veered sharply away from their international street food theme and instead offers these very tame, all-American desserts. The world flavors that influenced their small plates menu could have easily produced a half dozen interesting and delicious sweet treats, but instead Linger serves boring mud pies.

Other than being underwhelmed by their desserts, Linger basically delivered on an ambitiously diverse menu. All the small plates were tried were well-executed, though only the arancini stands out as a superlative dish. I commend Linger for their commitment to environmentally responsible, quality food, but some of that backbone of substance gets diluted with distractions of the restaurant's trendy feel and the pervasive dead body motif.

Linger felt reasonably priced considering the quality and quantity of food served. As I mentioned earlier, one to one-and-a-half small plates per person is probably the ideal ratio. Visiting Linger with a large group will give you the best opportunity to sample multiple dishes.

As a side note, 5280 Magazine recently published an excellent Linger review in their December 2011 issue. The article discusses Linger's background in depth and reviews many of their small plates. It's well worth reading for more information about the restaurant, and I found myself in complete agreement with the author regarding Linger's food and service.

There are still a dozen or so dishes on the menu that I'm curious to try, and I need to check out the amazing patio views that everyone raves about. Linger is certainly worth another visit, but it may be another couple of months before our busy schedules can align.


Casual Dining

(7 of 10)

Pros: Good food and service, reasonably priced
Cons: Dessert was boring, hard to get reservations


Website:
http://lingerdenver.com/

Larkspur

It's a little-known fact: the tasty yet humble hamburgers at Larkburger's many front range locations actually have their roots at the high-end Larkspur restaurant in Vail, CO. Cashing in on the popularity of their Larkburger served at the bar, the management of the mountain restaurant decided to spin off the burger concept with a proliferation of fast-casual restaurants across the state.

And thus it was that our love of the Larkburger brought us to Larkspur during a recent winter fun weekend in Vail.

It was a big step up for us to go from stuffing our faces with the $5 amazingness of Little Larks and Truffle Parmesan Fries on the front range to the fine dining, ski-slope atmosphere of Larkspur, but we were prepared for the challenge.

Larkspur is situated at the extreme east end of the base of Vail mountain, making it close enough to the slope to ski up to for lunch. Except that during our early-season visit, the lifts near the restaurant weren't open, and Larkspur was only offering dinner service.

We had dinner reservations for 7:15 on a Friday in early December. Getting into Larkspur after exiting the cab required trekking through the deserted Golden Peak Lodge, with the restaurant tucked into the back corner.

Larkspur is spacious, beautifully adorned, and upscale. The bar area where the Larkburger was born lies at the very front as you walk in, and behind it in the main dining area is ample seating, including plenty of space for large parties. The restaurant was mostly full when we arrived and filled to near capacity by the end of our meal.

For those of you who have never been to Vail, it's a beautiful ski town bustling with an international assortment of some of the most beautiful and ritzy people you've ever seen. The top echelon of those beautiful people appeared to be dining at Larkspur during our visit.

We were greeted by our waitress and began the meal with drinks and complimentary multigrain bread and butter.

I should point out that Larkspur offers an impressively long wine list. I would elaborate on this point more except I'm completely ignorant about wine.

As an appetizer, we ordered Larkspur's take on a Shrimp Po'boy ($9.5), which was sort of a deconstructed po'boy served with cornbread slices and a mustard sauce.

Shrimp Po'boy

This dish is an unusual choice for a fine dining establishment in Vail, although we certainly enjoyed it. I couldn't find any mention of it in Yelp reviews, so I assume it's new to the menu.

The fried shrimp tasted just like the ones that my mom, a Louisiana native, uses in po'boys. The use of cornbread and mustard sauce is certainly not traditional, but it was very tasty and a pleasant sweet-and-savory compliment to the shrimp.

As my main dish, I ordered the Snake River Sturgeon ($28):

Snake River Sturgeon

The sturgeon was presented with a crispy crust and served on a bed of red beans. The fish was delicate, light, and perfectly seared. The red beans were extremely tasty; they were very well seasoned, and like the fish, expertly cooked.

My husband ordered the Veal Scaloppini ($32):

Veal Scaloppini

Veal scaloppini is a traditional veal dish prepared with floured, flattened veal cutlets. Larkspur's version was accompanied by creamed spinach, twice baked potatoes, and "lemon buerre fondue." It was an excellent, comfort-food type dish.

The twice-baked potatoes were particularly memorable; they were crisp on the outside and incredibly soft and creamy on the inside. They were served as slices rather than potato halves, with no additional toppings, which was unexpected. As far as the lemon beurre sauce, there's no reason to call it "fondue," it was just a cream sauce. The tartness of the sauce nicely balanced the rich flavor of the veal.

We finished the meal with the Brooklyn Blackout Cake ($11.5):

Brooklyn Blackout Cake

The cake was a simple, almost brownie-like chocolate rectangle. It was topped with what Larkspur referred to as "Fudgesicle Sorbet" and "Fox's U-Bet Froth." I have no clue what the froth flavor was supposed to be referring to, and the sorbet had a deep chocolaty but still light flavor.

Service was very good. Our waitress was helpful and friendly but seemed relatively new.

Larkspur was expensive, but so is everything else in Vail. For comparable food in Denver I would expect to pay about 10-20% less. That being said, I generally felt the food and drinks were appropriately priced for the quality and location. One exception was the dessert, which, for $11.5 seemed a little steep for such a simple preparation.

The food and ambiance were lovely at Larkspur, although for fine dining in Colorado I prefer Opus in Littleton. Larkspur is definitely worth a visit for a nice dinner in Vail.

Fine Dining

(7 of 10)

Pros: Excellent food and ambiance
Cons: Expensive, may be hard to get to without skis

Website:
http://www.larkspurvail.com/

La Loma

In the mood for a quick Mexican food lunch last weekend, we strolled into La Loma on our way back from the north suburbs. La Loma is basically a Denver staple. They must be doing something right, as they've thrived in their spacious location on 26th Avenue for over thirty years.

Anyone seeing La Loma's location for the first time ma be surprised by the residential-looking abode in an otherwise commercial area just north of Sports Authority Field at Mile High. Operating out of a former Denver home built in 1887, La Loma looks and feels more like grandma's house than a giant Mexican restaurant.

La Loma

We've been to La Loma a few times before, always either for dinner or just before heading over to a Broncos game.

On this particular visit, we arrived at a not-ideal-for-Mexican-food hour of 11 am on a Sunday, just after the restaurant had opened for the day. The dining area was pretty empty due to the early hour and a simultaneous Broncos away game.

The interior is filled with homey decorations, including plenty of Christmas decor during the December day of our meal. We were seated next to their tortilla maker, which pops out fresh tortillas on a heated conveyor belt to the joy of nearby diners.

Our server quickly brought us complimentary chips and salsa:

Chips and Salsa

My husband proclaims this to be his favorite chips and salsa in Denver. The homemade salsa is fresh, spicy, and rich in tomato flavor. I prefer a thicker, chunkier salsa, but the flavor of this salsa was excellent.

For my main dish, I ordered the Chile Rellenos ($9.95):

Chile Rellenos with Green Chile

This dish was described on the menu as "Green chile strips with melted aged cheddar and jack cheeses in a crispy shell, served with green or red chile, refried beans and rice."

Relleno is Spanish for "stuffed," but there was clearly nothing stuffed about the chiles used in this dish. Instead, inside the crispy, fried wrapper was a giant log of sizzling, oozing cheese and a small sliver of green chile.

This might make an ideal bar food, but it was too greasy and cheesy of a dish to be a good main meal. To call it "Chile Rellenos" on the menu is a bit misleading, although the menu's description exactly depicted how it was served.

Alongside the chiles were large helpings of rice and refried beans. I have yet in my lifetime to enjoy the sad pile of boring, bland Spanish rice served with so many Mexican-American dishes, so I was similarly unimpressed with the rice at La Loma. The beans, however, were well seasoned and not too mashed up, which I liked.

The chiles were served with a large helping of green chile. La Loma makes a big deal of its green chile, and apparently 5280 Magazine awarded La Loma Denver's "Best Green Chile" title. It's packed with small pieces of pork and has a bit of a thick, floury texture. I found it very tasty, although I wish it had a little more heat.

My husband ordered the Tacos Dorados with ground beef ($9.75):

Tacos Dorados with Ground Beef

The tacos were stuffed with ground beef and topped with cheddar and jack cheeses, lettuce, and tomatoes. Like my chile rellenos, they were served with refried beans and rice.

They were simple and quite tasty, although not particularly special. The ground beef was very well seasoned, but the tacos would've needed more depth of flavor to really stand out.

Service was friendly and extraordinarily prompt.

La Loma offers some decent but not amazing Mexican food for a reasonable price, and it makes a great spot for a reliably quick lunch.


Everyday Dining

(7 of 10)

Pros: Cheap, fast service, great green chile
Cons: Some dishes to greasy and/or one-dimensional

Website:
http://www.restauranteur.com/laloma/

Strings

My husband and I must live under a rock, because neither of us had ever heard of Strings Restaurant, despite living most of our lives in the Denver area. That was, until several months ago when we headed to Strings for a meal after visiting the Natural History Museum.  We ended up having a very lovely brunch, and had been anxious to return to Strings for a dinner visit since then.

Strings is located at Humboldt and 17th near City Park, among a cluster of highly-buzzed restaurants including Parallel 17 and D Bar Desserts. For our Saturday evening reservations, we didn't even bother trying to find a parking spot, and went straight for the valet service.

Strings has been open for an impressive 25 years, and they certainly have the seating area to support a large and dedicated following. The interior of Strings is enormous, with a sprawling main dining area, bar tables, patio seating, a beautiful atrium, and private rooms. It would be a perfect spot for a large party, especially a business dinner.

We arrived about half an hour early for our 7 pm reservations after finishing some nearby errands sooner than expected, which, fortunately, wasn't any kind of problem that happy hour at the bar couldn't fix.

Strings's happy hour menu is limited in both beer and wine selections, but they do offer premium wells, a long list of girly sounding martinis, and some tasty-looking appetizers. I stuck with my usual choice of light beer, while my husband started out with a gin and tonic. We chatted with the bartender for a little bit, and soon learned that she was the buyer for Strings's bar. When my husband asked her for help in selecting a fancy scotch (his buddies drink scotch and he's trying to keep up), she gave us an impromptu lesson in scotch selection. She brought us about seven different bottles, letting us sniff each one, and she explained the fermentation process associated with each type. After selecting his scotch accompaniment for the evening, it was time for my husband and I to get seated.

The hostess seated us in sort of a corridor area, where three tables were lined along the walls on either side. As soon as we got situated, we realized that directly behind the table was the main thoroughfare for waiters grabbing water glasses and silverware. Deciding that the traffic was going to be obnoxious, we tracked down our hostess, who promptly seated us two tables away. In hindsight, considering how much I'm about to gripe about it, we should have asked to be moved a second time, because our new table wasn't any better. Behind where I sat was the hallway to the bathrooms and the bar area, and the non-stop traffic was just as bad in the new location. They could have minimized the traffic nuisance by putting two tables along the corridor area instead of three, but instead they got a little greedy with table space.

Anyway, moving on to something we really loved about Strings: the food. We started with the Crab Cake appetizers, which came with fruit chutney, cranberry puree, curry oil, and crispy onions. Sadly, in our excitement to eat it we forgot to take a picture of the two small crab cakes that arrived. 

Next was Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Bisque. I loved the flavor, although the red pepper was much stronger than the tomato, and there was zero effort put into the presentation.

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Bisque

For our entrees, I ordered the full-size Open Face Ravioli, which came with (directly from the menu) Confit Chicken, Egg, Asparagus, Serrano Ham, Sauce Normande. No matter the occasion, I almost never order pasta, but I was curious what open-faced ravioli would entail. What arrived was basically a crepe-sized noodle at the bottom of my plate, topped with the "filling" described. That giant white blob you see in the middle of the plate below was my favorite part of the dish, a poached egg that oozed yolk when I cut into it.

Open-Faced Ravioli

Overall a decent dish, especially the rich and salty serrano ham, but the chicken was a boring and bland choice of protein. I would have preferred something with more flavor and texture (shrimp maybe?).

My husband's entree choice was the Roasted Lamb Sirloin, which came with Confit Shoulder, Edamame, Pearl Onions, Pea Tendrils, Carrot.



Roasted Lamb Sirloin

 The lamb was well seasoned and perfectly cooked to medium rare. My favorite part of the dish was definitely the confit shoulder, which lay underneath the lamb sirloin and pea tendrils. I've never seen edamame included in a traditional lamb dish, and it didn't really add anything to the meal.

We finished off the meal with the Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake. It reminded us both of the Cheesecake Factory's Adam's Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple Cheesecake, but in cylindrical form.

Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake

It was, as expected, rich and extremely sweet and satisfying. However, it didn't offer anything that Cheesecake Factory couldn't.

Our bill came to $78 for the food described above (booze had all been paid for separately at the bar). All of the dishes we tasted were very well executed, and the staff was excellent. However, nothing really set the food apart from a good meal at a lot of Denver restaurants, and I can't get past how poor of a dining area our table was located in.


Casual Dining

(7 of 10)

Pros: Great food, endless seating options, excellent staff
Cons: Watch out for bad seating areas, food lacking in imagination and presentation for the price



Website:
http://www.stringsrestaurant.com/