The Setup
I keep trying to take Erin out to a nice meal, but sometimes I think that it just isn't going to happen. Something always comes up, or the restaurant just happens to close early that day. The other night was no exception. I've been telling her about D Bar for a while. D Bar (Dessert Bar) is the restaurant owned by pastry chef and Food Network regular Keegan Gerhard. It's a hip, award-winning restaurant that happens to be a couple hundred yards from my house. It's a foodie haven known for creative dishes and plated desserts-you need to plan on spending a few hours if you want to do it right. We were running late, so we decided to postpone our visit and head to City Grille, on Colfax. It's known for top-notch burgers (imagine that!) and she had a 2-for-1 coupon, so we parked in the alley and got ready to walk around the building. At that exact moment, the heavens came crashing down with several close lightning strikes, a little hail, and pouring rain. We decided to wait it out in the car, but as the rain came down harder, I noticed that water was starting to roar through the alley. After last weeks in-town flash flood (3-4" of rain in an hour) I decided to back my car out and leave our precarious parking spot. Intent on heading back to my place, I turned north on Sherman and thought about taking a right on 17th, but I could see raging water covering the road, so I kept going to 19th and took a right. We went one block and realized that the middle was the only part of the road NOT under water. Cars that were parallel parked on the side already had water to their doors! I put the hazards on and realized that the only place to go was straight forward with momentum and even then I didn't know how deep the water was. A car crossing the street in front of us plowed through what was at least a foot of water. Against better judgment and fearing being trapped in our spot, I decided to chance it and drive through the intersection. In this case, it worked. We made it through to Park Boulevard. We turned off on Ogden and pulled into a lot on a hill, along with several other cars. Several side streets were under a decent amount of water, so we waited there about a half hour and realized another pressing issue: My car was about to run out of gas! So, we carefully made our way back to Colfax and headed back to downtown. Apparently, Denver streets are incapable of handling heavy amounts of rain in short periods of time. Colfax was submerged, and driving down the street, you could actually feel waves of water hitting the side of the car door from cars and trucks headed the other direction! We couldn't make it to the gas station, but luckily we made it back to Erin's apartment on Capital Hill. I'm not going to lie, I was relieved to make it back to her place. It was a miserable, stressful hour and a half drive around central Denver, and to top it off we were still starving!
The Conundrum
It was close to 12 on a Tuesday night- not much would be open, not too many places still delivering. Denver looks like a bigger city than it really is..... the Capitol Hill neighborhood is pretty happening, but in reality there are very few true 24 hour cities. So, at a late hour, with limited options and a low desire to venture far from the house, we did a little inventory of what may be open in the neighborhood. I've had too much pizza lately, and I wasn't really feeling Asian cuisine, so Erin reminded me that
City, O' City, a vegetarian/vegan restaurant/bar four blocks down, stays open until 2 a.m. I've been wanting to check it out for several months, but it was always the wrong time to check it out, so it's fitting that I'd finally get my chance on a night when it wasn't even an option several hours earlier. Vegetarian food is a weird thing to me; I don't partake too often, but I honestly like the flavor of a lot of meat alternatives and textured proteins. I also love garbonzos, eggplants, and other beans and vegetables used in place of animals. If the place knows what it's doing, I find vegetarian or vegan cuisine to be quite creative. BUT, I have to be in the right mood for it, and I was not in the right mood.
The Restaurant
I wanted a burger earlier, after all. But, given the situation and all we'd been through, I just wanted a place that would serve me food and a drink. So, after one more extremely close lightning strike to keep us in check, we finally headed down the street to the restaurant. It's a popular place, but not pretentious, which is refreshing considering that it's located in Denver's most bohemian neighborhood. Punks and hipsters abound, but City, O'City is casual, comfortable, and dimly lit. It looked like a great refuge from the bizarro weather that had plagued the city all evening, so we sat down and ordered glasses of wine. They've got great drink specials, among them $2 Great Divide drafts from 7 to midnight and $3 glasses of wine. Glasses of wine in hand (stout pours) we eyed the menu.
Erin ordered the Gaza Grinder, which consists of hummus, greek salad, french fries, feta, sriracha aioli, and flat bread. I decided to order the Seitan wings. Several people have told me that they're unlike anything they've ever had, and they show up frequently if you search Yelp reviews, so I gave them a shot, with buffalo sauce and a house-made, non-dairy ranch dip. About ten minutes later, our food arrived:
City, O'City is low on lighting, but high on flavor
Now, for those of you not familiar with Seitan (and I'm by no means an expert), it's made with wheat gluten or flour, and can be prepared in a variety of ways. It's been used in Asian cuisine and is growing in popular in American health food stores and restaurants, as it is high in protein and similar in texture to meats. It's also particularly good at taking on the flavors of marinades. So, how did everything taste? Well, the grinder was a safe choice. I love Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavors, so hummus and Greek salad in a gyro wrap was predictably tasty. Pretty good; nothing special and rather bland if it weren't for the sriracha. But the wings! They look like some type of weird chicken strips, and you can smell the heat of the buffalo sauce emanating from them. One bite into a wing, and I could tell that this was something special. The texture is crispy outside, slightly spongy on the inside, and filled with flavor. They taste like a fatty wing-the part and taste that you crave, but feel guilty about consuming in quantity. And the helping is rather large, probably about 15 "wings". Enough for four or five as an appetizer, or more than enough for one person for around $9. Now I usually prefer dipping wings in bleu cheese, but the place is vegan, so what are you going to do? I just wanted something to cool the raging inferno in my mouth. These things were hot. It probably didn't help that we were drinking wine, that our water at the table was room temperature, or that the place just happened to be a little warm that night. It was a perfect recipe for heartburn, or as one Yelp reviewer mentioned, possibly for Chrohn's. But despite the heat, I couldn't stop consuming the damn things!
Eventually, I had them boxed up and took them home. But first, we had another glass of wine, which we deserved after all the effort it took to get to dinner. Plus, it's a chill place. Again, a good bar with good drink specials and vegetarian-only cuisine? Well, that just means that you have to try something different. And I would start with the wings, but maybe with just a little less heat. I'll be back soon!
Walking back with a good view of the capitol, which apparently survived the flood....
*
Follow-up. The next day I ate the wings for lunch. I ate them cold, straight out of the fridge. Interestingly they were no where near as spicy hot as the night before. Also, I looked up a few recipes for seitan wings, and quite a few people have had considerable success preparing them at home. Personally, I love to cook, but I don't deep fry anything. It's messy and dangerous, so I'll save it for the experts. Besides, in the spirit of sustainability, the used cooking oil at City, O' City is eventually recycled into biodiesel. Plus, the turnover of oil assures you that your food is being cooked in fresh oil and the food is tasty!
