"Would it be all right with you if I killed you and ate you?"
Had this been the first line of the letter, I might have been alarmed. But since it was the closing line, a rhetorical question that ended a diatribe documenting my obvious disdain for animal life, written by a fanatical vegan vegetarian who referred to anyone who eats meat as "a mentally diseased savage," I wasn't too concerned.
Lately, though, I've become weary of a common correspondence theme. Most of these tiresome missives come from Boulder, and they always start off with a question such as: "Have you ever spent time with a duck and gotten to know it?"
The thing is, I love animals. I also love their meat. So I never take creatures for granted, and unlike many people who can only stand to buy their flesh pre-slaughtered and wrapped in cellophane, I'm willing to deal with it from the last squeal to the cooked meal. What I'm not willing to do, however, is listen to more obsessive whining from people who feel it's their life's work to convert everyone they meet to a lifestyle that, frankly, seems unnatural. And I'll continue to feel that way until canine teeth--which clearly weren't made for ripping the flowerets off a head of broccoli--evolve out of humans.
That said, let me also mention that I rarely eat meat. Since I consume it in the line of duty, I try to avoid it the rest of the time, which means my non-work diet is made up primarily of fruits and vegetables, with a few carbohydrates such as pasta and bread thrown in for fun. Luckily, while I love meat, I really love vegetables.
Which is why I was delighted by the news that Sabhna Gupta had opened a second Creative Cafe, a Denver sister to her popular no-meat-no-eggs-no-animal-fats-and-very-little-dairy eatery in Boulder. I had eaten at the original Creative Cafe a few years back and was impressed by the kitchen's flavorful and, yes, creative vegetarian fare.
But after three visits to Gupta's several-month-old outpost, I'm still disappointed. Where I had remembered savvy execution, judicious seasoning, innovative ingredients and lively presentations from my Boulder experience, here I found sloppy production, thrown-on herbs, an excess of zucchini and the same garnishes on every plate.
With the notable exception of the excellent lunch buffet ($5.95), that is. Gupta is originally from India, but her extensive knowledge of all vegetarian-heavy cuisines was well-displayed in such tempting buffet offerings as crunchy onions stir-fried with bright green beans and sprinkled with sesame seeds; soft, slippery rice noodles mixed with zucchini, carrots and red peppers and coated with a sweet-and-sour vinaigrette; jalapeno-hot, soy-cheese-filled quesadillas; a chunky potato curry augmented with a block of eggplant; and expertly steamed mounds of basmati and brown rices. The most interesting items, though, were the salty miso soup and an addictive lemon-tahini dressing for the otherwise boring salad of lettuce, red cabbage and carrots.
Red cabbage and carrots, along with zucchini and broccoli, show up all too frequently at Creative Cafe. By the time I had finished my third meal at this sparsely decorated but cheery restaurant, I was thoroughly bored by the lack of vegetal variety. A lunch-time entree of organic udon noodles with grilled vegetables ($7), for instance, brought a huge pile of Japanese buckwheat noodles in a smashing peanut sauce, slightly tart and spicy with a smooth, sleek texture. Unfortunately, there wasn't quite enough to moisten all the thick, doughy noodles (there's a reason the Japanese normally reserve udon for soups or long-simmered sauces). The noodle pile was generously topped by well-grilled zucchini, carrots and broccoli, all of which had been coated with so much thyme and oregano that it was like eating vegetables that had fallen in mulch--an impression heightened by an extravagant final sprinkle of finely grated red cabbage and carrots.
The same vegetable slivers were showered on just about everything we tried at Creative Cafe, whether they matched the dish or not. The garnish looked good on the stuffed mushrooms ($3.50) but tasted bad; the red cabbage was a bitter and jarring addition. And the appetizer of large and small mushrooms stuffed with chopped white onions, garlic and ginger already suffered from uneven mixing, a flaw that made for some big bites of nothing but mushroom and ginger or mushroom and garlic, but rarely all three.
The kitchen was apparently out of red cabbage and carrots when it prepared our B.B.Q. tofu ($5.75), riblet-like rectangles of soybean curd heavily slathered with a dense, chile-infused barbecue sauce. Although the tofu wouldn't fool anyone who's had Sam Taylor's finger-licking--and real--ribs, it was an acceptable substitute. But the side of nicely stir-fried carrots, broccoli and zucchini had been showered with so much thyme, oregano and maybe parsley that it looked like a patch of weeds.
Our dessert, on the other hand, looked like cobblestones. The blueberry cobbler ($3.50) was filled with good intentions and plenty of berries, but they'd been clobbered with a dry, crumby crumble. The concoctions we ordered at dinner were worse: The chocolate mousse ($3.75) was chocolate-tinged tofu pudding; the tofu cheesecake ($3.75) had an even more unsettling consistency and tasted like paste.
