Stop going to the Cheesecake Factory. I mean it. The food's fine, but it's not worth an hour-long wait at lunch. And if you keep going there, the few locally owned restaurants left in LoDo--the ones whose owners have been lamenting the long lines at the chain Cheesecake Factory when their own places go half-empty--won't stick around. Then LoDo will look like Wadsworth Boulevard, and you'll be sorry.
So do hurry over to Dixons Downtown Grill, which is almost everything you could want in a downtown restaurant. It offers good people-watching, a varied menu available from early in the morning to late at night, snappy service and a welcoming, open atmosphere in a renovated 1890s warehouse that accommodates everything from power breakfasts to post-theater desserts. (Don't be confused by the word "Solitaire" chipping off several windows; it's from the old Solitaire Coffee Company, and a historical review committee made Dixons leave the signs there.)
Yes, the three-month-old Dixons is almost, but not quite, everything you could want. The basics are there--the space is great and the Southwestern/ Tex-Mex menu appears solid, with plenty of variety and verve --but production problems keep cropping up like so much bruised cilantro. On each of my three visits, a dish was so screwed up that the restaurant wound up giving me a complimentary item as a consolation prize. To the restaurant's credit, staffers recognized the flaws promptly and apologized prettily.
When I later gave co-owner Lee Goodfriend an earful, she said she was aware of the problems. "Up until about two weeks ago, I did have one cook who was overcooking everything," she explained. "So we got rid of him. But we still have to get these people on the ball, get the kitchen to watch more closely and the waitstaff to check things out before the customers see it. We did get rid of a third of the kitchen staff, but that's still no excuse. I can only say we're working on it."
And at least they try. Dixons is the third eatery in a homegrown series created by Goodfriend, Dixon Staples and David Racine. (It's a good thing none of them has a name like "Woczyskowinski.") Goodfriend and Racine met at the old Zach's, where they were waitress and bartender, respectively, in the early Seventies; they hooked up with Staples to open Goodfriends in 1979 and then Racine's, which remains wildly popular today, in 1983. So they have had years of practice making diners feel like they've gotten a good deal--or at least gotten a good hearing when something goes wrong.
Like the disappointing sirloin-and-black-bean chile ($3.95 for a bowl), for example. Three of us sharing the chile searched deep in the bowl and managed to fish out enough black beans that each of us could have exactly one. The meat was tender and flavorful, but the broth was so bland, it was like bean water. And while the mango chicken quesadilla ($7.95), an updated version of the grilled-and-stuffed tortilla standard, came close to being flawless, it ended up on the dry side. The combination of tender chicken, barbecued onions and mango was tasty and imaginative, but either the kitchen needs to find moister fruit or back off a bit on the grilling. Not even a liberal application of chipotle salsa could soften the tortilla, although the salsa did liven up the flavors. (The kitchen should have strained out the slips of tomato skin in the salsa; they were like eating little bits of paper.)
An even better salsa, a tomato-fennel-avocado mix, adorned our third starter. The shrimp and avocado cocktail ($8.95) brought five toothsome shrimp draped in a honey-chile-lime vinaigrette with a perfect balance of sweet and sour. But the best part was the salsa, sort of a chunky guacamole, with big, soft scraps of avocado gently tossed with a small amount of nearly minced fennel, some diced tomatoes and just enough cilantro to light up the flavors.
The soft-shell crab sandwich ($8.95) was another impressive preparation. The crab had been lightly camouflaged in cornmeal, then deep-fried and tucked into a crusty bun slathered with cayenne-spiked mayo. A crunchy, colorful slaw that featured red pepper, carrots and a spirited shower of black pepper was the ideal side: healthy and fresh, with a delicate vinegar bite that offset the crab's richness.
There was nothing delicate about the chicken on the East-West chicken salad ($7.95), though. It had been cooked to the texture of a baseball mitt and was so dry that all conversation was put on hold while we chewed our way through a bite of bird. Finally, we ignored the chicken and concentrated on the salad's good points: fresh field greens, slices of cucumber, slivers of carrots and roasted red peppers nicely set off by strips of fried wonton wrappers and toasted almonds. None of those ingredients, however, benefited from a dousing of "tango mango" dressing, which, according to Goodfriend, is made from mangoes, cantaloupe, corn and sesame oils and ancho chiles. Ours tasted like pureed mangoes mixed with Miracle Whip; its consistency--like over-emulsified mayonnaise--was disconcerting, and the chiles, which would have balanced the disturbing sweetness, seemed to be missing in action.
