Exploring food in the Mile High City

                                                                                                                                               To be totally honest I’ve never really thought of Denver as a culinary mecca ,but its seems that times are changing. In the last 3 years the food industry has skyrocketed. With not just quantity but also with quality. Denver is a huge farm to table scene with fresh ingredients and skilled staff its sure to be a favorite among foodies.

We started our tour at a restaurant called the Blue Agave Grill. They have a primarily contemporary southwest menu with supplemented with things like burgers and fries… I found it a good mix for pretty much anyone even picky eaters. We were served tilapia tacos. Yes I was a little leery of tilapia because it can have an extremely fishy taste but not today. It was fresh and flakey on a homemade tortilla and fresh veggies it was a great start. They also have a full bar. Their sign boasts 100 different types of tequila… i just wish I had time to try them all. Tequila free we moved further down Larimer street where our lovely guide Jordan gave us a little history tour about Denver. She told us about how when the settlers first came to Denver they were met with a very diplomatic and kind indian population. The settlers had come from Kansas city to find gold and silver and were reeking havoc on the land. Chief Little Raven. the chief of the Arapaho tribe was a peaceful man but you can only take so much. Col. Larimer was in charge of the area at that time and knew that he was going to have to step in. So one night he took the Settlers / miners out and got them thoroughly drunk on whiskey. Thats when he gave them a choice…. they could leave and take the barrel of whisky or stay and be hung the next day. Well they were drunk .. not stupid so they left avoiding the clash to seemed to be inevitable. While that fight didn’t happen many more did throughout Denvers rugged history. It was known for a long time as a rough and tumble town filled with swindlers and other people of ill repute. One of those people was known as Soapy Smith. He ran a scheme in which he sold soap.. he would wrap money around a few bars and then in again in a darker paper. He would sell the opportunity to get a bar with the money. The only problem was that Soapy had friends in the audience and they were the only ones getting the soap with the money. That wasnt the only scheme he was involved in and people quickly caught on and he was run out-of-town. Our next stop brought us to a building with dubious history. The building currently contains a fabulous restaurant call Euclid Hall but it was once a high-class brothel during prohibition. Lucky for us alcohol is now legal and there is plenty of it here a Euclid Hall. This stop provided us with some wonderful Kielbasa sausage made fresh in-house. This extremely fresh restaurant makes its sausage from two whole hogs that are delivered weekly. The sausage was pared with four very interesting mustards. First a seedy yellow , then a horseradish, a whole grain brown mustard and then my favorite  a blackberry brown mustard ( it surprised me too!) . The atmosphere is fun with an open kitchen concept it would be a great place to spend and evening. Headed out to the busy streets of Denver we walk a few blocks to a place called EVOO Marketplace. This place is incredible and the owner gave us a very informative lesson about olive oil and balsamic vinegar. She taught us things like most olive oils on the shelves at your local store are only a small percentage of true pressed oil. She also told us that you should always look for a pressed date on your oil and that balsamic will never go bad if its real balsamic. So if yours has a sell by date it’s not good balsamic. The incredible flavors are an easy way to really spice up a meal with very little effort. It’s a healthy option for flavor without heavy fats and balsamic is a good and healthy way to get sweet without sugar. If you’re looking to make better choices with your diet this year this might just be the place for you. Leaving there we found ourselves at another beautiful restaurant called Avelina. The huge open floor plan with an extremely long bar and elegant decor is a feast for your eyes but that’s not what we came for. We sit down to a nice warm soup. Today its a very creamy squash soup with Chinese five spice with a pear and fennel compote and micro greens. I’m sure this would be a great warm up on a cold Denver day. Next stop was a bar called the cruise. Its inside the Oxford hotel, the oldest running hotel in Denver. This bar is modeled after the bar on the Queen Mary …. the Titanic sister ship. It was made to scale even down to the pink lights. The pink light was meant to make the people in the bar look healthier while they were at sea. Our bellies becoming extremely full we still march on to find all the flavors of Denver. We find our next plate at the Wynkoop Brewing  Company. This restaurant / bar brews its own beer on sight. You can even see the brewing as it happens behind big glass windows. Here we had a spicy bowl of bison chili. Exotic meats are not out-of-place here in Denver . We saw several restaurants offering meat that you might not find at your local grocer. Just across the street we find ourselves at Union station and a magnificent restaurant called the Mercantile. This place is both a deli and sit down restaurant. We had the most wonderful goat cheese ricotta and pear butter. The cheese was fluffy and light and pear butter was just enough sweet to make it the perfect bite. This place has everything from exotic cheeses to spices to pickles they jar themselves. Then we head inside of Union station to our last stop… Dessert 🙂 . The Milkbox is an ice cream shop inside Union stations offering interesting flavors like salted Oreo and french toast. We all had different flavors and we all loved what we got. The shop is not the original shop but a satellite shop from the original which I hear is the shape of a huge milk bottle. As we wind down our tour and say our thank you s  we head out to the streets of Denver armed with full bellies and a lot of new and interesting information about Denver and its food scene…. Thank Jordan.