afoodnut

If you're looking for the drink, it's called Izze; IzzeWebsite. It was developed in Boulder, Colorado, by two friends looking to enter the "new age beverage market." One of the two is 5th generation Stroh's beverage family. Test marketing began in Boulder/Denver in 2002. Click on "news" on their home page for some press releases and information about the company; the article "IZZE a natural choice in Boulder, Denver areas - Boulder Daily Camera 8/12/02" at the bottom tells the beginnings of the story. They're a "do good" company, working with boulder schools, and more.

In today's Post, there's a short article about Modern Mexican cuisine spicing up local scene. Do any of you have comments about any of the restaurants mentioned? In the blurb about ajuua! Kyle Wagner says: I ate at the Boulder ajuua! a couple of times when it first opened, and was not impressed. I've not tried it since it has its new, improved menu. Has anyone eaten at one of the ajuua!s since the menu was revamped?

I am now in love with their Costillas (Mexican Ribs). It's one of the few items that rated a "10" on the heat scale on their menu. (I wonder...can you ask for the green chile poured over any of the other items instead of the red sauce?) Though not as hot as Santiago's green chile, theirs was very flavorful. Tender ribs were served with "country" potatoes, beans, hot tortillas, and a huge amount of green chile. It's difficult to cut the meat off of the bone without splashing your knife into the chile pool, so don't wear anything white if you order this dish. I was intrigued by their name-sake dish, which was pronounced to be a "manly" meal where they throw a bunch of stuff into a huge tortilla and smother it with "who knows what." Anyone tried this? I love that they have Mexican Cokes made with real sugar cane. Service is extremely friendly and helpful. Prices are a bargain (my ribs were just $8.95). I never would have "just driven by" this place if I didn't know to hunt for it from this list, so thank you. Those costillas are what I was talking about in my post upstream a bit, when I said: I've not found that the 63rd street branch is better; whichever is more convenient works fine for me. So it must be eat Mexican food time. Now that the sun has finally come out again, I went out to run. Once around the lake, and I was pulled by mysterious forces to run towards downtown lafayette, and public road. La Familia was open, and I had a $10.00 dollar bill burning a hole in my pocket. I know Katzenjammy's been raving about their rellenos, so I decided to go in. I don't usually order rellenos, but I figured I should try what she calls the best ever. I've always found la familia to be just another different, not better or worse, alternative to Santiago's, Efrains, and Casa Alvarez (which has a different style of food). And because of their odd hours, I almost never eat there. [i tried to notice and remember when they're open. If I remember correctly: Saturday, all day 8:00 - 9:00; Sunday, 8:00 (or 9:00)- 3:00; Monday, 6:00 -2:00; Tuesday, closed; Wednesday and Thursday, 6:00 - 2:00; Friday, 8:00 - 2:00, and 5:00 - 9:00.] I don't usually order rellenos, they're not one of my favorites anywhere, but of course I had to try one. I got a relleno and a tamale, both smothered with green, with a side of beans. It was all good, the chile hot and flavorful, but I didn't find it *better* than the alternatives of Santiago's for takeout, Efrains for eating in, and Casa Alvarez for a slightly different, more refined style of food. They're all good. (Not being a relleno maven, I can't say it was or wasn't the best relleno ever; I'll defer to Katzenjammy for that. I can say it was darn good.) The complementary bowl of chips and salsa were good, with slightly thick crisp chips, and a fresh salsa. As I left, the old drunk sitting at the bar said "hasta la vista, pretty lady," which made my day. But the rest of my run turned into a walk after that meal. Edit to add: Grrrr. it's raining again.

Be careful. Be very careful...It was reviewed last week in the camera. Headline: Knowing what you think of many of the "award winning" restaurants, this should be interesting. (I've not tried the place.) The steel yard's one of those new housing/retail blends: give boulder more high density/affordable/too expensive places to live and work projects. edit to move some weirdly placed periods.

Where to for ribs?

Anagram for the morning-- Snooze alarms: Alas! No more Z 's

excuses, excuses. You're higher than you think. It's not the attitude, it's the altitude; or is it the other way around? Boulder's at about 5400 ft. above sea level. And everything takes longer than you think. How do you pronounce channa dal? Is the "ch" sound pronounced like in Christmas, or like in church, or like in Channukah, not that its likely it would ever be pronounced in conjunction with any of the above?

I usually go to the Boulder store, also going to the Asian market in the shopping center at the same time. The other day I tried going to the Lafayette location; it was closed, and it looked like the windows were papered over. Do you know if that location has changed? I do know that they recently opened a Broomfield location. What might a dedicated gujarati restaurant/cafe serve?

Nah. It's not an auxiliary blog; just want to let those from Mongo's other home forum (he's got two, the Indian forum and the Southwest forum) know that he's blogging. Not everyone who posts/lurks over there on the southwest board ventures out to the wider fields of egullet. It can be hard: we get no respect. So many think we're middle america, or in the sticks, the heartland, whatever. We coloradans just want to be sure to give him behind the scenes support (even if it's perfectly visible to everyone), so he can give egulleteers a view of the hidden charms of Boulder/Denver. Those of us who hang out over in the southwest forum have been priveleged to be a part of, and play a role in, mongo's adventures, explorations, discoveries, and disappointments with the food world here. (He's a newcomer, still been in Boulder less than a year.) A group of us have met. We had a boulder/denver dinner in April at Bombay Clay Oven, and are planning our next for a meal at Dalat, a Vietnamese restaurant on South Federal in Denver...

scary to think what creatures you might fish out from a dive into that particular pool...

Just so you know, Oasis is no more. (It closed down at the end of 2002) really? i had some very nice oasis scarab red with dinner last night. out of a bottle. did someone else buy their operations? or was i served 2 year old beer? That question really threw me. Oasis was located on Canyon, across the street from the library, and I know it closed, and supposedly was shutting down all operations. It was big news locally when they shut down. I don't drink beer, so I didn't know that the brand lives on. I just did some checking, and found this quoted explanation at the beerme website. Apparently, they became a beer marketing company, with the beers being brewed by Rockies Brewing. Edit to add: Rockies Brewing is having a celebration today for their 25th Anniversary, at the parking lot of the brewery...

The teahouse has its roots in the cold war in 1982. The pieces of the teahouse sat in storage in boulder for years before funding was finally scrounged to allow its construction. What Boulder has done in return...so far, I believe it's still nothing. The promise/plans were for an internet cafe, but last I heard, it's still just on the drawing board. For the complete history of the teahouse look at boulder-dushanbe.org

The Boulder Casa Alvarez is the one at 30th and Walnut. The Mexican place on N Broadway is probably the Terrace Maya. The food is usually decent enough. A couple of weeks ago I tried to go there for lunch with an artist friend who has just bought one of those new nearby condominiums for her studio; the music was blaring so loud that we couldn't talk or even sit comfortably...after mentioning it to the server, we tried moving to the outdoor patio; the puddles and general disorder were offputting; when we gave up and left without ordering, nobody working at the place seemed to care. We laughed and shrugged it off, and comforted each other with the thought that we're probably just being a couple of crotchety old ladies. As for the lafayette place robin's raving about too now, this is what I said about it on the earlier, different thread:

Robin, glad you enjoyed Santi's.... My favorite there is the Indian taco with carnitas and green chile. Casa Alvarez is reliably good, not exciting. It's not the gooey, cheesy style. I usually have the green chicken enchiladas (I don't remember what they call them). At Efrains (the Lafayette Efrains is the original location), I like the braised ribs in green chile. Efrains is often very crowded, and there can be a long wait. Rezzo is not Mexican, it's sort of Italianish. I haven't been yet. My daughter has been there for breakfast, and reported that it was "okay." Nothing to do with Mexican, but there's the new Taste of Nepal. My daughter and I went for the lunch buffet, and it was not memorably better or worse than any of the Indian lunch buffets around. Then we went for dinner with a bunch of vegetarians, and, ordering from the dinner menu, had a pretty good all vegetarian meal.

Brad- I was in Amsterdam a couple of months ago, and fell into a delightful, tiny wine shop that specialized in French wines. I don't remember the name of the shop, but it was on Kerkstraat between Amstel and Utrechtsestraat, just a stone's throw from the Magere Brug (Skinny Bridge). The owner, who was the only one working in the store, was informative, talkative, and passionate about French wine (If I remember correctly, I think he was a British expat). You might be interested in checking it out.

...And after the biscuits came the steamers, and the clam chowder, and the lobster of course, and they had amazing onion rings, and baked potatoes.... As well as: Edit to add: I guess I should comment about Peter Luger's so this isn't completely off topic; I haven't been to Peter Luger's in 35 years or so, so I'm reading this thread as an amused bystander.

There's another possibility: Wine in a can. I just received my monthly email newsletter from the Boulder Wine Merchant, and they actually have a Recommendation for:

A heart warming story. Thanks for sharing it. I have my mother's old recipe box, filled with faded, barely legible cards that she wrote when she was trying to record and save her mother's recipes, that, of course, had never been written down. I'm stealthily putting the recipes into a Word doc, but not yet telling my daughter: It's more fun and memory making when we cook together and laugh and puzzle through those evocative handwritten notes, but my daughter will eventually have the whole card collection, as well as a new-fangled, saved on the computer, printed, compilation.

Come Back Inn on Lake Street in Melrose Park, Char broiled burgers IIRC. So it is still there? It's been thirty-ish years since I lived in Chicago (I was there for law school) but some food memories persist. I wasn't even a burger fan then, (nor am I now), but the burgers at Come Back Inn were especially good. Has anyone here been there in recent years who can report on what they're like now?

Many, many years ago, I lived in Chicago. There was a restaurant out in one of the western suburbs (my memory is far too hazy to know exactly where it was), called the Come Back Inn. It was a loud, noisy, peanuts on the floor kind of place, with amazingly good burgers. Does anyone know if it's still around, and if so, if the burgers are still wonderful?

Sounds like a plan to me, as long as you still bring the egg timer.

Another vote for moving it to a date so Fred can join us too. The last gathering was so much fun. I'm looking forward to getting a chance to talk with more of you; is everybody up for musical chairs at a rectangular table? For Katzenjammy, Chezhoff, and any others who weren't at our first dinner in April: The biggest complaint any of us had was that we weren't able to socialize with people sitting at the other end of the long rectangular table, so we're just going to have to deal with changing places during the evening.

For clarification, or perhaps to muddy the waters more... Where do what I know as pot stickers, or kuo teh, or possibly guo tie, or fried dumplings, or steamed dumplings fit into this? Would they be similar to wonton or noodles (assumed to come with a broth), just without the broth? How do you differentiate between noodles or dumplings that are served in/with a broth, and those served without broth or liquid? And what about such dishes called "soup dumplings" on some Shanghai style US Chinese restaurant menus? And dim sum dishes of dumplings or noodles, where do they fit in?

Cross posting, of course:biggrin: Is the difference, then, between "soup" and "noodles or dumplings?" That is, if it includes noodles or dumplings, it's not soup? Edit to add: If so, it's probably not so complicated, not such a big deal. As the initial post said: Are there any examples of "soup" or "not soup" that are not about noodles or dumplings?

I don't know much Chinese, but I learned "tang" as a word for soup in Mandarin. As for examples, look back at the post that started this thread: Basically, I would think that most liquidy foods without noodles, dumplings, and such-like would be called "tang," e.g. Winter Melon Soup, Egg Drop Soup, Red Bean Soup. It was the chicken feet in the soup in the initial post that threw me off; I was ready to think that the definition of soup had to do with the inclusion of "stuff," but maybe it has to do with the "stuff" being noodles or dumplings. That is, if the dish, (I won't call it soup) includes noodles or dumplings it's not "soup," rather, something else. What is that something else? (My grandmother's chicken soup [Jewish style] also had the feet, so that clearly fit my definition of "soup")