When you’ve just had enough, there’s an alternative. Enough with the nachos. Enough with the chicken Caesar salads. Enough with Pasta-Too-Much-Cream-And-Cheese. Enough.
Like a favorite summer song that becomes a jarring-jingle after you’ve heard it for the 1,000th time, the tedium of metro-area menus, laden with kale chips and sweet-potato fries, becomes too much to bear sometimes, and especially at those prices.
So if you’re at the end of your quinoa or chaffing over chia chow, here are a few things out of the ordinary to spice up your food life this summer.
Tom Yum Soup: Thai Street Food
I don’t care how macho you think your mouth is when it comes to scoring Scoville units from spicy food, Thai food is the great capsicum equalizer. In the hands of Utumporn Killoran at her famous takeaway restaurant in Aurora, we are all babies. Unlike
some spicy food, which can be all fire and no flavor, Thai food is a masochistically addicting blend of solar flares, pungent basil and something almost sweet. When you have a taste for fire, head here for Utumporn’s outrageous hot and sour soup made with tomato, mushrooms, onions, lemon grass, lime leaves, galangal, Thai chilies, and lime juice. So much flavor is so small a bowl. If you get there and can’t resist the basil chicken or pad Thai noodles, take advantage of a place that lets you pick your juicy level. More is better. Honest.
11650 Montview Blvd 303-587-2293
www.ThaiStreetFoodDenver.com
El Minero Paste: Los Pastes Deli and Bakery
There’s a place in northern Chelsea brimming not with the descendants of Cornwall’s miners, but their famous lunches: Cornish pies, or pasties (sounds like fast). Buttery, crescent-shaped crusts wrapped around a comforting mix of potato, onion and ground lamb, beef or bird. The rich, famous and commoners alike scurry from shop to shop in search of these treats just out of the oven. Carried into the mines for generations, this Cambourne mainstay was carried all over the world. Back when Colorado was still Mexico, a group of Cornish miners brought their shovels and pies to the mountains north of Mexico City. To this day, the countryside there is full of road-side paste (pah-stay) stands that serve the same buttery dumpling-sized crust snuggling eggs or mole or fruit filling. Now the tradition has been carried to Parker Road. These are not the Spanish hand-me-down empanadas, too often Chipotle burrito-sized, fried and overfilled. These are the perfect ratio of baked-crust-to-filling, ideal for breakfast, lunch, a snack, or in a pile, with sopa, for dinner. Los Pastes offers a changing selection of fillings, but the real-deal is the miner’s version, “El Minero.” True to its coal-dusty, pail-toting, fearless diggers of the past, a spoonful of flavorful salsa actually improves on this perfect Cornish comfy-food.
3140 S Parker Road 720-535-8153
Cubano Sandwich: Cuba Bakery Cafe
While Aurora is chock-full of a long list of immigrants from all over the globe, surprisingly, there are few Cubans. Maybe 600 or so, according the last Census. But the flavor of this tiny island nation is so big, that Orlando Colome and his wife, Nicole, pack what looks to be most of south Florida into this cafe each weekend. The crowds of tropicales homesick for the smell of Cuban coffee or the taste of guava paste on anything line up with curious locals to see what the thing is about a pressed ham sandwich. The cubano, an iconic mainstay in Miami, has to be the right bread, the perfect ham, the correct pickles and cheese, and juicy , never dry, shredded pork — or it’s just a pressed ham sandwich. If you’re tired of what most of Aurora serves between two pieces of bread, give your taste buds a shot at this. Save room for guava treats.
15028 E. Mississippi Ave. 303-745-0418