Years from now, we'll look back at the turn of the century and remember a time when you could have cybersex with a perfect stranger who remained a perfect stranger, buy a car from someone whose hand you never shook and have your precious retirement money moved around by someone who might have possessed the professional business presence of a crack dealer -- who knew? But by then, state-of-the-art photo imaging will make it possible to see the people you're dealing with on the Internet, and service will become a little more personal again.
The Big Easy does it: Petra Barnes and Michael Walker at Petra's.
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7520 East Progress Place, Greenwood Village
303-740-9449
Hours: 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-11 p.m. Monday-Friday; 5-11 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday.
Closed Location
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Right now, it doesn't get more personal than at Petra's. Owner Petra Barnes is easy to identify: Her face is on the menu, and there's no mistaking her leggy frame as she races around, trying to make sure that everyone's needs are met. And more often that not, she succeeds. But how could she miss? This New Orleans-themed eatery serves up down-home standards and quirky, contemporary twists on Southern classics, all in a Mardi Gras atmosphere -- complete with fiberglass cutouts of saxophone players, vibrant wall murals depicting scenes straight from Bourbon Street, and a patio that's as inviting as a cool breeze in the French Quarter. Let the good times roll!
Barnes and her fiancé, Michael Walker, opened the restaurant last December, after running a Denver catering company called Classic Gourmet for six years. Finally, the engaging Barnes explains, she decided it was time to have a place of their own. "I never wanted to be one of those 'what if?' types of people," she says. "I said, 'Are we going to get to the end of our lives and say we wish we'd done it?' No, thanks."
And so she and Walker -- whom she'd met in a fairy-tale sort of way, just like his parents and grandparents had, at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff -- dug around in their basements and files to find all the favorite family recipes from their childhoods. Most of Barnes's was spent in Illinois, but her grandmother had lived in Mississippi; although Walker moved to Denver when he was ten, his family had roots in New Orleans. So both had a lot of Southern cooking in their background. "Almost all of the food we do here at Petra's comes from our grandparents' recipes," Barnes says. "David does the cream sauces and the specials, but the things like gumbo and catfish are right from Michael's and my heritage."
"David" is David Dreps, Petra's chef, whose dishes have been improving steadily since the restaurant opened. But the intimate touches provided by Walker and Barnes, along with their constant presence at the restaurant, are what make Petra's special.
On my first visit, I happened to mention to Petra that I was out for a relaxing solo evening, without children and with a pile of magazines that had been stacking up for months. Quick as a wink, she handed me a complimentary Blue Hawaii -- a potent blend of rum, Cointreau and blue Curaçao. "You just settle in there," she said. "I'll bet you've earned it." She was right, and I deserved not just pampering, but the fabulous food that followed, starting with the crunchy-shelled crawfish cakes ($7.95) filled with sweet, cayenne-fired crawfish meat that got an extra boost from a rich, spicy aioli.
From there, it was just a hop, skip and jump across the Bayou to some gumbo. Although the dish's name is an African Bantu word that refers to okra, that item is often missing from gumbo, since many palates find the vegetable slimy. Petra's skips the okra, too, instead using filé powder (the dried, ground leaves of sassafras) as the thickener; more of the powder is offered at the table, in case you like your gumbo even gummier. (Since the kitchen usually waits until the end of the cooking process to add the powder, it doesn't hurt the gumbo's taste to add still more later on.) Dreps cooked up a traditional, if okra-less, Louisiana-style gumbo ($6.95) that featured a sharp, peppery bite and tons of shrimp and crab floating in a beautifully thickened roux; he proved equally adept at a funky update, the spice-mild but earthy and pungent smoked-duck-and-wild-mushroom gumbo ($5.75). Another quintessential Creole dish, jambalaya ($6.25), is offered only as an appetizer at Petra's. While this dish's name is thought to come from the French jambon, or ham, even in N'awlins, some chefs skip the ham and rely solely on spicy sausages such as andouille to impart the smokiness so characteristic of jambalaya. Petra's sliced the sausage to make it even more a part of the stew, with bits of okra added to the thick, tomato-rich base.
Petra's entrees fall into two primary categories: fried items and not-fried items. Among the former, you can't go wrong with the catfish, oyster and shrimp platter ($17.95), which brought a hefty piece of cat and reasonably sized piles of oysters and shrimp, all lightly coated in a crumbly batter that wasn't too greasy and tasted of the seafood inside rather than the fryer. The soft-shell crab platter ($19.95) was another marvel, offering three juice-oozing specimens covered with seasoned cornbread crumbs. A lightly creamy coleslaw and choice of sides -- the sugary-sweet sweet-potato French fries were to die for, and the cheese-packed grits so hearty you could swear off starch for a month -- finished off those platters. From the non-fried side, the innovative andouille-crusted snapper ($17.95) was a moist-inside, sausage-spicy-outside piece of fish; an order of blackened chicken ($14.95) brought half a bird whose nicely coated, fiery exterior was well-balanced by a super-rich cream sauce strewn with fresh basil.
