Denver, Colorado

Colorado State Capitol Building

Ursa and I find it sometimes difficult to plan our trips to Denver because we are always trying to balance our time between all the friends and family we have there and our time spent just enjoying what this wonderful city has to offer. We spend so much time in fact, juggling our time with friends and time in the city that we never get much of a chance to take advantage of the outstanding outdoors activities, such as skiing, hiking, or biking; that surrounds the city. It's ironic that our biggest problem with the Mile High City is that there's too much going on and too many wonderful people there.


THE SITES

I love art museums. I hesitate mentioning them in this blog though because usually it is more noteworthy if I find the rare museum that I DON'T like. That being said, the Denver Art Museum is above and beyond what you find in most cities. The outside alone is a must-see!

The new expansion building, called the Fredric C Hamilton Building has become one of the city's great landmarks. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind, and opened to the public in 2006, and is designed to be emblematic of the Rocky Mountains themselves. It now houses most of the DAM's modern art and special collections, while the old building contains it's classic works and native culture exhibits.

Hanging out at The Tattered Cover

Spending a day in Denver's historic Lower Downtown (LoDo) District is a day well spent. Go shopping at the phenomenal book store The Tattered Cover, then head over to Wynkoop Brewing Company for a couple of pints of microbrews for which Colorado is so famous.

Afterword you can take a tour of historic Union Station. Currently the area around the station is undergoing a redevelopment project to become an interchange of several modes of public transit, intended to return Union Station to being a bustling hub of the city's center.
You can also find Coors Field in the LoDo District, home of Major League Baseball's Colorado Rockies. I got lucky enough to score 4 tickets to game 4 of the 2007 World Series at Coors Field between the Colorado Rockies and the Boston Red Sox. Jonathan Papelbon closed out the game for a 6-5 Red Sox win and a sweep of the Rockies in their first trip to the World Series.

Denver has a wonderful art district on Santa Fe Drive. It is an exciting and vibrant area filled with a variety of galleries, a museum and a theatre as well as a variety of restaurants. The art studios banded together in the early '90's as they all started to find Denver's booming downtown area to be too cost prohibitive for such small buisnesses.  But here in their new neighborhood, these little shops make for a wonderful day of art gazing, especially on the first Friday of every month when the Art District on Santa Fe has it's Art Walk.


THE FOOD

Tuscan rubbed New York strip and a Sapphire Negroni at Elway's

On a recent trip to Denver Ursa and I had the pleasure of enjoying a 5 course dinner and cocktail pairing at Elway's. The food was fabulous, but the interesting part was that each dish was paired with a cocktail made with Bombay Sapphire Gin. My favorite was the Hoisin pork belly and spicy ramen noodle paired with a Monkey Gland Cocktail (Bombay Sapphire, orange juice, grenadine, and Absinthe). The funny thing about that dish was that by this time in the dinner the three rather petite women sitting next to us were swiftly approaching their limit for the booze so they all passed their Monkey Gland Cocktails over to me! So by the end of that course I was approaching MY limit as well.

Other wonderful places to eat in the Denver area include: Lucile's Creole Cafe for breakfast. The beignets are heavenly.  For lunch you've got to rock some Famous Pizza for some absolutely awesome Pizza. For dinner we've enjoyed La Fondue. Though honestly, the whole fondue restaurant thing, while it is delicious, is not the kind of dining experience that I want on any kind of regular basis. The food was fabulous and the desert was absolutely decadent, but strangely will I be going back? It could be quite a while. But if you've never eaten at a fondue restaurant before, you really should try it, just to have experienced it for yourself.

Home Cooking

Every time we travel to Denver, we always set aside an evening to eat dinner at Jerusalem Restaurant which really does have some stellar Middle Eastern food. We go there with SUCH regularity, that I now make an almost pavlovian connection between Denver and Middle Eastern cuisine. Now, whenever I post a recipe on this blog, I always make sure to dust it off in the kitchen right before I post it, and cook it up for Ursa and I (some of these I haven't made in a while) but in this case I've never really done much Middle Eastern cooking, so I decided to start with Baba Ghanouj, a easy but delicious dish, which is essentially a dip made from whipped eggplants.

Baba Ghanouj
2 small eggplants (larger eggplants have more seeds and are therefor more bitter)
1/4 cup tahini
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 pinch ground cumin
salt to taste
1 Tbs chopped parsley
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Prick the eggplants in several places with a fork. (If you don't prick them they could explode) Roast eggplants in oven for 30 minutes or until very soft.
Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly. Peel skin from eggplants (the simplest way is to wrap them in plastic wrap, then cut off the top of the eggplant and squeeze the insides out like a tube of toothpaste) Place eggplant flesh into a strainer over a bowl. Allow to drain for 30 minutes. If you don't drain them they will be bitter.
Transfer eggplant to food processor, and add tahini, garlic, lemon juice, and cumin. Pulse until smooth. Add salt, tahini, and/or lemon juice to taste. If your Baba Ghanouj is bitter, add a little honey.
Transfer to serving dish and drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle with parsley. Serve at room temperature with pita bread.


THE TUNES

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears at The Bluebird Theater

On our last trip to Denver we were able to catch one of my favorite live bands, Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears playing at the Bluebird Theater. Black Joe plays a rollicking brand of old school, James Brown-style funk. But don't think of them as a throwback band. Their sound is fresh and fun. I liked the way the Bluebird was set up with a tiered floor rather than the open dance floor you so often find, allowing everyone throughout the building to have a good view of the stage. 
If you ever find yourself planning a trip to the Denver area during the summer, make sure you check to see who's playing at Red Rocks Amphitheater first. Red Rocks is arguably the most beautiful place to see a concert in the world. The natural amphitheater sits between two great 300 foot sandstone slabs which have been pushed out of the ground, and offer unbelievable acoustics. Couple that with a panoramic view of the city and you have a concert experience not to be forgotten.
We also recently had the privilege of seeing the insightful, funny, clever, and generally terrifying Henry Rollins doing a speaking engagement at The Soiled Dove. It was there that Mr. Rollins said something that very much gave birth to this very blog. He talked of his own travels and how he understood what a very special opportunity he had been given to travel the world and see things that most people never get to see and do. To experience other cultures with his own eyes. And he said that he came to the realization that it was part of his job to report back to everyone else on what he discovered. I couldn't have agreed more. Thank you Henry, you are as always a source of inspiration.

Until next time, thanks for reading everybody.

Me and John at the 2007 World Series