Ask the Critic: Can’t always get what you want

I did a reading last week at the Tattered Cover and it was nice — drew a good crowd, met some nice people, signed a lot of copies of Cooking Dirty.  During the event, I paused briefly in my witty, stream-of-consciousness banter about kitchens and cooks and all the dirty words I know to take some questions from the audience. Surprisingly, not all of them were about Anthony Bourdain (though some were) or where my favorite place is to get sushi (though, again, some were). One woman even had a query that I thought appropriate for this week’s installment of Ask the Critic:

What do I wish that Denver’s restaurant scene had more of, or what don’t we have here in the Mile High that I wish we did?  In a perfect world, what would I be able to find every time I went looking for it, and what does Denver need to keep moving forward on the path to becoming the great food city it wants to become?

I had a couple of knee-jerk answers (more Indonesian restaurants, more Cuban food, more houses where service is taken as seriously as the food and more joints that are open past ten o’clock at night), but I felt that this was a question deserving of more thoughtful, spirited debate. So I’m opening it up to you, the readers: If you could have one culinary wish for Denver granted right now, what would it be?