Ship Tavern

I love the Brown Palace. I've never spent a night there, never seen the inside of one of the rooms, never even gotten off the ground floor, but something about the place just moves me. Which is odd, because normally I don't care a whit for architecture, have no particular love for any history that doesn't involve me personally, and have never cared much about any surroundings that weren't restaurant surroundings. I've lived in my car for long stretches, rented the kinds of apartments that hookers would pass on as too depressing, and slept on the beach (not a good beach, either). I've often told Laura that if it weren't for her, I would be perfectly content living in one of those eighty-dollar-a-month storage lockers out by the interstate — and I know that, because I have. I didn't think it was weird at all, just dirt cheap and convenient as all get-out until I got caught.

The Brown Palace, though, comes close to what I've occasionally imagined heaven might look like: big and wide open, with a huge stained-glass skylight capping some distant ceiling, a well-connected concierge standing by, several restaurants to choose from and a nearby bar that not only stocks a fine collection of bottled Irish brain lubricant, but lets me smoke. I've been to the Brown maybe a dozen times since coming to Denver five years ago, and I never get tired of walking into that lobby. Nor do I get tired of the booze, of the sound of hard-soled shoes echoing on the tiled floors, of watching the door around back where all the help — potato-shaped housekeepers, slumping cooks, young runners, whippet-thin dishwashers and off-duty valets — stands clustered, smoking, making fun of the guests, talking shit to each other in languages where I can only pick out the curse words.

One recent weekend, I arranged to meet relatives at the Brown. They were from the full-Mick side of the family, in town on a stopover to play some golf before moving on to greener pastures, interested in hanging out because — being the half-estranged little cur that I am - I hadn't seen a lot of them for about ten or fifteen years. So we made plans to gather for a downscale, casual Friday dinner at the Ship Tavern, then to convene again on Saturday at the Palace Arms, the fancy-pants room where I had one of my best meals of 2006 ("Fantasy Land," December 21, 2006). My darling wife, Laura, absolutely refuses to eat at the Palace Arms — something about the fucking yuppies, foie gras and never getting dressed up unless someone is getting hitched or going in the dirt — but I cajoled her into trying the Ship.

"Cinch," I told her. "Cheeseburgers and beer. It's nothing."

"I'm not getting dressed up."

"No one's asking you to."

"And no one's making me eat sea bugs or French food, either."

"I promise."

The Ship has been open seventy-odd years. It was a celebratory addition to the Brown, marking the end of Prohibition in 1934, and modeled after the East Coast fish restaurants that had become insanely popular among the slumming riche hankering for the old-timey charm of the wharf restaurants that had once serviced the passengers of the clippers docked in New York harbor. As a matter of fact, the place still looks that way — remaining doggedly true to a kind of Crow's Nest/Rusty Scupper endotype with its wooden ships, blue-and-white-checked tablecloths, nautically themed booths and unbelievably uncomfortable bar stools with anchors and whatnot picked out in upholstery tacks. Although there's a plonky piano at one end of the bar, as well as a couple of TVs, the dust hanging from the rigging of the model clippers in the windows is probably a few decades older than I am. And a strange sense of creeping decrepitude keeps trying to sneak in over the transom, thwarted only by the throbbing energy of a dining room that is, on occasion, inexplicably full.

Okay, not entirely inexplicably. One of the great advantages of working a hotel restaurant is the sure knowledge that no matter how badly you fuck something up, the people will just keep coming. New people every night, every week, on and on. And they're going to keep coming, even if you embarrass yourself by putting jalapeño poppers on the menu (as the Ship does), even if you serve the single-worst fish fry I've ever had outside of a chain restaurant, even if you're trying to pass off the totally done-and-dead trend of Asian-fusion ahi appetizers and just praying to God no one notices.