Audio By Carbonatix
Meet the king of the middle road. Plunked down next to I-25 in an asphalt jungle of hotels and motels that have no restaurants, much less room service, Vasil’s EuroGrille enjoys a captive audience.
Too bad those captives won’t find anything particularly enjoyable at Vasil’s. If this is a EuroGrille, then I’m a EuroBabe.
Although owner Vasil “Bill” Allabashi is a businessman and veteran restaurateur, his three Harvests (the original in Boulder, one not far from Vasil’s in Greenwood Village, and one on Colorado Boulevard that’s still open) were far from exotic. Maybe that’s why he decided to go Euro for Vasil’s, his namesake and reportedly last restaurant. “Bill says he wanted to try one more thing before he retired from restaurants,” says Carolyn Montanez, special-functions manager for Vasil’s.
But nothing about Vasil’s hints at its owner’s experience — or noble intentions. While Allabashi brought in executive chef Jeremy Silverman from New York (and, more recently, Arizona), he seems to have hired the same ubiquitous, anonymous designer who’s done dozens of other area restaurants. Vasil’s dining rooms are agreeable, sort of hotel-ish, with stone floors crafted to look slightly “rustic,” tasteful paintings, carefully arranged Pottery Barn knickknacks and, of course, the now-de rigueur baskets full of loaves of bread and carefully placed wine bottles that substitute for real atmosphere.
It’s all very…nice.
As is the staff, although it would also be nice if the servers relaxed a bit. But they, like the food they deliver, are all on the self-conscious side. During one dinner, the servers were so stiff they actually twisted the plates back and forth several times after they’d set them on the table, trying to attain that perfect angle. The only thing relaxed at that meal was the butter, one of those delectably fancy French versions that had been allowed to come to room temperature. It was just the thing to slather on Vasil’s beautifully made breads, delivered already sliced and carefully arranged in a basket.
The starters were even fussier. The chèvre fritters ($7.95), crumb-coated, gently fried patties of goat cheese, were paired with little rectangles of puff pastry that had been drizzled with a roasted red-pepper purée. We didn’t understand the puff pastry — with the bread, who needed it? — but the fritters were tasty, what my companion called a Tech Center version of pepper poppers. The beef carpaccio ($8.95) had been sliced much thicker than the norm, which made it a little more like steak tartare than not; still, plenty of mustard, capers and diced red onions kept it from being totally inauthentic, and three long, fat, housemade breadsticks added texture.
We had wanted to follow the appetizers with a couple of cups of soup, but our server told us that the chef had tried the Tuscan bean version and decided the beans weren’t tender enough. That chef deserves extra credit for actually tasting the food instead of just sending it out and hoping it’s edible. If he tasted the tomato bisque ($3.25 for a cup), then he must like it with too much cream, too much basil and oregano and not enough tomato flavor. And someone should have realized that the Caesar salad ($6.95) carried not even a hint of saltiness — an odd omission for a dish that’s supposed to contain anchovies in some form, even if it’s just in the Worcestershire sauce. We supplied our own from the table, but the dressing still lacked depth (not to mention width and breadth). But again, the kitchen scored bonus points by thoughtfully splitting the portion in two rather than making us eat off each other’s plates.
Vasil’s continued to deliver a mixed message through the entrée course. The Chilean sea bass ($22.95) had none of the rich, oily taste that makes this such a stellar fish; it was also a bit overcooked — not quite dry, but still slightly stringy and chewy. And while the fillet had been sautéed with fresh tomatoes, capers and wine, the sauce was so reduced that it was more like a thin gravy, and its flavor completely swamped the already floundering sea bass. The diced vegetables on the side — smooshy tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, onions and red bell peppers — not only were obliterated by the sprinkling of fresh herbs that covered every plate, but they had also been cooked with them, which made the veggies bitter. We had substituted horseradish mashed potatoes for the rice pilaf, but the spuds were so dry we asked our server for more of that yummy butter to moisten them up. More dry spuds and pseudo-ratatouille arrived with my otherwise marvelous fourteen-ounce New York strip ($25.95), a delicious prime cut that had been grilled to just a hair over my specification of medium-rare. The beef came with a gravy boat of béarnaise — when I get to heaven, all boats will be filled with béarnaise — that was a little too thick but had a good tarragon taste and a tart edge to balance the richness.
Chocolate cake ($4.50) can never be too rich, though, and Vasil’s proved it with a dense, dense brownie-like wedge topped with a thick, wavy layer of ganache. The apple streudel ($4.50) was a fun alternative (if not exactly Euro), but it was so doughy and heavy that it seemed more like a breakfast item than the finish to an evening meal.
In fact, Vasil’s does serve breakfast — a recent concession for hungry travelers staying in nearby hotels. “One of the managers here popped into IHOP up the road one day to grab a bite before work, and he couldn’t believe that there were people waiting an hour, an hour and a half to get in,” Montanez says. “So we thought we’d give it a try.”
So far, that try is paying off with much more successful dishes than those on the evening roster. The fluffy, raisin-filled bread pudding ($5.95), for example, sported a mascarpone glaze and was served warm. The classically prepared wild mushroom omelette ($9.95) warmed the heart with a sharp cheese flavor that offset the heady mushrooms. The eggs Benedict, too, were top-notch, covered with a well-made hollandaise and sided by crispy-edged potatoes. The only disappointment this round was the eggs Housard ($12.95) — either a made-up creation or a confused variation on eggs Hussarde, usually an English muffin topped with ham, poached eggs and a red wine sauce — that featured a piece of filet mignon cooked into dry shoe leather, whose condition was not helped by the too-tart bordelaise sauce.
Although breakfast was good, lunch may be Vasil’s best meal. The lighting was better mid-day (at night, the setting sun accentuates the shadows of the cars going by the blinds; in the morning, the place is dim) and so was the staff. Compared to their dinner-time behavior, at noon the servers seemed positively laissez-faire — and this despite the fact that, as my server pointed out, the owner himself was eating lunch a few tables away. While I couldn’t get the lump crabmeat cocktail (“Out of season,” the server explained), the Tuscan bean soup ($2.95 a cup) was finally ready. It was worth the wait, full of melt-in-your-mouth beans that had soaked up the pancetta and the intense tomato broth. And although the mussels, too, were unavailable (this time I didn’t buy the out-of-season excuse), the citrusy, house-cured gravlax ($7.95) was more than adequate consolation.
More fish — this time salmon ($11.95) — had suffered from too much time on the Euro grill; although the overdone salmon lacked the promised fennel and orange chutney, it did come with a wonderful pecan-studded wild-rice pilaf. Although the penne ($8.95) was a boring assemblage of smoked chicken, basil, roasted garlic and goat cheese, the margherita pizza ($8.95) was simple and delicious, with a thick crust, big, crunchy/chewy handles and plenty of cheese and basil. The spinach torta ($8.95) was simply baffling. The huge hunk of what was supposed to be sautéed spinach layered with bacon, sun-dried tomatoes and ricotta cheese showed no signs of ever having been layered; while a few leaves of spinach and big, sun-dried tomato halves still stuck to the roof of the pastry shell, a frightening amount of ricotta had exploded all over the plate. The whole mess confused me.
As did much of what I found at Vasil’s. Even though it gives the impression that it wants to be, this isn’t the place to go if you’re expecting to be served from the left, or if you want to discover new, exciting wines. The two largeish televisions in the bar don’t match with Euro ambitions, nor do the many misspellings on the menu — Savignon, marscapone, riccotta, bernaise, gravlox.
Maybe Vasil’s captive audience won’t quibble. But Denver diners don’t have to settle for middle of the road.
