Restaurants

Taste of Denver

You have to crack a few eggs to make a Denver omelet.

By Jason Sheehan 

I am sick of the Denver omelet.

My folks were in town recently, and my dad — a willing gastronaut, but never the most adventurous eater when left to his own devices — ate a couple of these atrocities for breakfast at a couple of different places. "Well," he said, by way of explanation. "I'm in Denver. I guess I ought to have one..."

He said this as if the Denver omelet was somehow actually connected to this city. He said it the way someone visiting Cincinnati says he ought to try some chili, the way a person passing through San Francisco asks for Rice-a-Roni — as if it were a civic duty, a required activity so that he could experience this place his son has decided to call home. Or maybe he was just hungry. Either way, he made a bad choice. Because a Denver omelet is just gross.

For those of you who've never tried one (though I can't imagine who you might be...), a proper Denver omelet is made with green peppers, onions, ham and cheese. The ingredients sometimes vary — no cheese, bacon instead of ham, whatever — but the basic construction is the same. East of the Mississippi, this hodgepodge is generally called a Western, and often, it is made into a sandwich (the omelet squashed between two slices of toast or set on a hard roll).

Theories abound as to how this mess got started. One theory holds that wild onions and Spanish peppers were used to mask the taste of eggs gone bad on the trail during wagon-train times. But to my mind, that's not likely. To begin with, eggs were an extraordinary luxury anywhere that wasn't a chicken ranch, and I just can't see a smart trail boss giving up space for a perishable extravagance that would most likely break and go to waste as soon as the wagons began to move. Also, if you've ever cracked an egg that's gone bad, you know that there ain't no amount of onions and peppers going to disguise that smell and taste.

A good case can be made (and has been made in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America) for the Denver omelet as an offshoot of the Basque piperade — a mess of stewed tomatoes and peppers folded into scrambled eggs. There were French Basques living in the Nevada territory who'd come to work as miners and sheepherders and, as we all know, whenever people move from one part of the world to another, they always seem to bring their food with them. And though the first published mentions of the "Denver omelet" or the "Denver sandwich" didn't appear until the early 1900s, I think the best explanation is probably some cross-cultural fusion between the Basque miners and the Chinese immigrants employed as cooks in the railroad camps. Because what is a Denver omelet if not a knock-off version of egg foo yung (the Chinese version of an omelet and a classic comfort food from the mysterious East) made with whatever local ingredients were close at hand?

History aside, I remain convinced that today the Denver omelet is a stain on our culinary heritage: a cheap-jack, nasty and hopelessly muddled distaff cousin to those original convenience breakfasts. So here's what I'm thinking. What we need is a real omelet to call our own — something that actually has some link to Denver, that's got some Colorado soul. Personally, I believe we also need our own sandwich, our own cheeseburger, maybe an eponymous pastry — but that can wait. This omelet thing is an emergency. And, of course, I have a few suggestions.

1) The Mile High omelet: a savory, crepe-thin fold of eggs, Colorado-native matsutake mushrooms (a killer-expensive Japanese delicacy that expert fungologists can find growing here among the sun-dappled red pines) and good weed. Not a lot of weed, mind you. Just a little. Like maybe just enough to make a place like Snooze (where this omelet would ideally be served) tolerable in the morning.

2) The LoDo: Take one pint glass of a local microbrew (preferably the Wynkoop's chile beer), add one raw egg, one shake of hot sauce, hang one onion ring off the edge of the glass and serve alongside a bacon steak, à la Oceanaire. Call it a deconstructed Denver omelet and just wait for the photographers from Gourmet magazine to descend.

3) The Desayuno: eggs, green chile rajas, carnitas and queso fresco, baby. A breakfast burrito sans burrito. Add a few fried potatoes to this sucker in honor of our Michoacán brothers and sisters and this plate would just fly out of the kitchen.

4) The Sakura Square: Denver has long had a highly personal connection with Japan. We have some of the oldest (and some of the best) sushi restaurants in the country and a long tradition of embracing Asian cuisines of all descriptions. Therefore, what could be better than a tamago handroll (sweetened egg omelet, folded and tied to a rice ball with a ribbon of nori) with a paper-thin slice of cold, poached Colorado river trout inside and a single slip of jalapeño on top?

5) The Real Denver omelet: In order to give a true sense of the city from which it takes its name, I'm thinking nothing more complicated than sliced steak (a flatiron cut would be most appropriate) and a smear of Haystack Mountain goat cheese rolled inside an omelet, topped with a splash of Colorado-style green chile. Serve this with a side of lardon-studded black beans cooked in bacon grease and some whole-grain toast, and you have a breakfast truly worthy of this fine city.

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