Blue Island Oyster Bar & Seafood
2625 East Second Avenue
303-333-2462
Oysters? Absolutely, at least when you've secured a bar stool at Blue Island, which flies in fresh bivalves so frequently you might get hit with a blast of sand on your way in the door. The restaurant does a good job with other seafood, too, including Maine lobster. For a surf-and-turf special with a working-class bent, the Wednesday Lobster Riot offers a grilled half-lobster and a cheeseburger for $20, along with fries and a small salad. Or get a whole, one-pound lobster for the same price. If those are too messy, let the kitchen do the work for you with a meaty lobster roll, also twenty bucks — perfect for date night, if you're in a pinch.
[email protected] coaxes magic out of the humble carrot.
Danielle Lirette
1160 Madison Street
720-216-0190
The overworked carrot: diced into soups and stews, steamed to the point of no return or whittled into flavorless nubs and sold as "baby carrots." But at [email protected], our Best New Restaurant of 2016, chef/owner Jeff Osaka's Congress Park culinary chapel, every ingredient is treated with love and kindness. In her review of 12, restaurant critic Gretchen Kurtz writes that the restaurant "does for rainbow carrots what the fryer did for Brussels sprouts, turning this oft-overlooked vegetable into a star." Egyptian spices combine with pistachios, almonds and tangy labneh cheese on a dish that celebrates a rainbow array of roasted carrot spears.
Beast + Bottle
719 East 17th Avenue
303-623-3223
Until recently, the beast at Beast + Bottle has seldom been cow. Chef Paul Reilly's kitchen focuses on whole animal butchery, and the quarters are just a little too tight to bring in sides of steer. But Reilly recently partnered with Carter Country, a ranch in Ten Sleep, Wyoming (population 304, not including cattle), to bring in beef that meets the restaurant's standards of excellence. "We can be proud of who they are and pass on that knowledge to our guests," Reilly says. "We found it hard in the past to find this kind of relationship with local beef.
"With Carter Country, we are promoting a practice that I have termed 'whole farmer' as opposed to whole product or whole animal," he adds. "When a rancher brings in an animal to process, they have no problem selling the sexy cuts (rib eye, NY strip, tenderloin, etc.). By purchasing and serving off-cuts, we are contributing to the purchase of this animal as a community. The rancher needs to sell these to remain sustainable — essentially giving the rancher a chance to not turn everything into burger meat. Some of these cuts include San Antonio, Tucson, chuck eye roll and Delmonico."
Beast + Bottle now offers a steak frites night every Sunday, where you can tuck into some of this exceptional beef with a side of fries for $23. There are a limited number of steaks available each Sunday, so the kitchen may run out during the course of dinner service. Fortunately, the rest of the menu is just as good — and just as dedicated to transparent, sustainable ingredients — as the beef itself.
Cherry Cricket
2641 East Second Avenue
303-322-7666
There are plenty of good burgers in town, but not many as pined-for as the Cricket burger, especially during the four-month absence after the Cherry Creek burger bar closed because of a November fire. But the venerable joint reopened on Tuesday, and Denverites lined up like they'd never eaten a burger before. If you couldn't stop thinking about the comforting combination of green chiles, flame-broiled beef and pepper Jack cheese, the Cricket is the hot ticket right now.
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