Audio By Carbonatix
If I’d had a video camera, I could have filmed The Kitchen Bitch Project, and believe me, it would have been much scarier than that other movie.
But there’s no footage to document the horror of my three meals at Lamonica’s Steak and Chop House. No, just several friends who are still alive — and very irritated with me for taking them into yet another forest of bad food.
Hey, it goes with the territory.
Not that there aren’t some redeeming qualities to this ten-month-old eatery that sits where Grisanti’s terrorized palates for almost a decade. On the plus side, Lamonica’s has a pleasantly casual atmosphere that’s much more relaxed than that at the big-boy steakhouses; it looks livelier, too, with lots of blond wood and bright lighting. There’s a tasting bar where you can sample the wines you might want to order with dinner. And Lamonica’s is also a rare homegrown venture sitting in a sea of chain restaurants along East Arapahoe Road. John Poats, Lamonica’s general manager, is a part-owner, so he has a vested interest in making sure the waitstaff stays in line, which it does; those staffers are so friendly that you can forgive the service snafus created by busboys who speak little English. The other partner is Norm Lies, who lives in Omaha and owns other ventures — restaurants, car dealerships — across the country. But this is his first Denver business and his first Lamonica’s.
Whether it will be his last depends on if the partners can get the kitchen to put out food worth eating. Besides the complimentary breadstuffs, that is: When I bit into my first warm, freshly baked roll oozing herbed cheese and butter, I thought I’d stumbled onto something fabulous.
But as soon as our appetizers arrived, it was clear that the kitchen was doing most of the stumbling. Our order of oysters Rockefeller ($8.50) consisted of six large oysters on the half-shell, those shells overflowing with curly strips of fatty bacon that had been mixed with spinach and topped with hollandaise. These monstrosities had then been put under the broiler until the hollandaise essentially turned into buttery omelettes. To get to the oyster, you had to pry it out from beneath the oily crust, a feat we could stomach only twice, since the things were too greasy to eat. Rockefeller should sue.
The fondue ($5.95 per person) also veered — and not successfully — from the standard recipe. The iron fondue pot sat upon a Sterno setup that kept the Swiss-cheese-sprinkled-with-nutmeg goo right at lukewarm. The fondue came with an assortment of odd dipping items: baby carrots that were unsettlingly soft on the outside and hard as a rock inside; overly ripe tomato slices that were no match for cheese that had the consistency of nearly dry rubber cement; and refrigerator-cold artichoke hearts, poached potatoes and broccoli flowerettes that finished the job of turning the cheese into spackle. There’s a reason the Swiss believe you shouldn’t chase fondue with a cold drink, and that’s because it has a way of curdling everything in your stomach.
The fact that we’d quickly given up on both starters didn’t seem to cause our cheerful server a moment of distress. She whisked them away and brought our salads — two of the three possible choices included with the entrees. The house proved to be a slew of mixed greens and roma slices (romas, by the way, are not salad tomatoes) tossed with nicely buttery garlic croutons and a vinaigrette so tart it made my spleen pucker. In bizarre contrast, the dressing on the Caesar was so bland it could have been milk; beneath it was romaine so wilted it looked as though it had been sautéed.
By now, those good rolls were a hazy memory, but we plodded on. Since Lamonica’s bills itself as a place for steaks, we ordered what should have been the flavor cut: the rib-eye ($22.95). I’d asked for medium-rare and got it, but what I didn’t get was any flavor; I couldn’t even discern the garlic butter allegedly thrown over the beef. The steak itself was too chewy and completely lacking the juicy fat that normally makes the rib-eye such a good bet. And all bets were off with the sides: The combination of steamed vegetables mixed fresh, bright-green broccoli pieces with older, slightly brown broccoli pieces and more of those unsettling carrots; the mashed potatoes (one of five ways you can get your spuds) were so dry that eating them was like drinking cheap champagne. I could actually feel the potatoes sucking the moisture from my mouth.
But at least they were authentically mashed. My companion’s Lyonnaise potatoes bore about as much resemblance to real Lyonnaise potatoes — usually spud slices fried with onions until everything melds together — as Lyons, Colorado, does to Lyons, France. No, these were roasted potatoes, and not the baby spuds the menu had promised, but big halves of even larger ones, tossed with nearly raw onions. That problem paled, however, when we contemplated the allegedly steamed lobster tail ($42.50) on the same plate. The lobster’s exterior was so crusty, it was hard to tell where the flesh left off and the shell began. This was a crustacean catcher’s mitt. It was so tough that our server dispensed with the usual courtesy of pulling the meat out of the tail: Not only was it clear that the meat wasn’t going to come out easily, but if our server had kept trying, there might have been the serious and potentially litigious chance of her stabbing my friend with the knife.
The lobster is the one that should sue. As we gazed at this sorry mess, we had a serious discussion of the ethics of taking an animal’s life and then disrespecting it so much that it’s not even fit for consumption. We didn’t know whether to take the lobster home for the dog or tear it into chunks to use as packing peanuts. Adding insult to injury, the butter tasted off — way off — so we couldn’t even drown the lobster’s sorrows.
We hoped to drown ours with dessert. But the white and dark chocolate mousse ($4.50) boasted some lumpy, dark bites that tasted like uncooked, unsweetened cocoa powder; the white bites were all oily cocoa butter. And the bananas Foster ($4.75) would have been delicious if there had been more fruit — I counted about half a banana’s worth of slices — and less cinnamon ice cream.
Still, we got out alive. And when I returned to Lamonica’s, there were more promising signs. We got those rolls again and were assigned the efficient waiter I’d watched fawn all over the couple at the next table on my first visit. Although he didn’t quite fawn over my party, he was very good, even comping my Coke when he failed to bring it right away. And while our starter of smoked salmon ($8.25) wasn’t the highest-grade fish in the sea, it tasted fine on the buttery crostini. But the salmon’s accessories were disappointing: The herbed cream cheese was just plain, and no one with any sense would want to eat raw chopped onions the size of Cracker Jacks on such delicate fish.
At least the onions in the onion soup ($3.50 for a bowl) were cooked, although the soup had so little cheese that I started thinking fondly of the fondue. And the broth was so salty and dark, it could only have started as a commercial base. More huge onion hunks appeared in the spinach salad. This time the greens were fresh and the dressing balanced, but the kitchen could have skipped the three bits of canned mushrooms it tossed in as a surprise and instead added more than four bits of the chopped, hard-boiled egg the menu had actually mentioned.
Considering the general stinginess of the kitchen, it was a surprise to find two whole crab claws next to the salmon Seattle ($22.95). The fish itself was somewhat overcooked, though, and topped by a mound of crabmeat still in the shape of the can. And the side of bearnaise sauce tasted like coconut oil, which meant either that it came from a packet or contained some peculiar ingredient that would make Escoffier wince. This time the mélange of broccoli and carrots was fresh and evenly cooked, but the other side, pasta and cheese, contained enough butter and cheap cheese to choke a horse — not to mention more onion shards. There must be a garbage can full of raw onion chunks sitting in the middle of Lamonica’s kitchen so that whoever’s walking by can grab a handful and toss them into whatever he’s making at the moment.
Miraculously, there were no onions adorning the Colorado lamb chops ($26.95). But the five skinny chops had been cooked way past our “medium-rare-but-heavy-on-the-rare” request, and the sauce, which was supposed to be Pommery mustard and portabello mushroom, tasted of nothing but lamb juice and butter. At least it was a sauce: The gummy paste on the generous kid’s portion of chicken Alfredo ($5.95) would have been at home in a squeeze bottle of Elmer’s. And the tough, chewy texture of the chicken told me it had been grilled ahead of time and reheated.
But ice cream came with that kiddie meal, and it perked up the chocolate chocolate torte ($4.75). Although the cake itself was rich and dense, the topping wasn’t quite rich enough to qualify as the bona fide ganache — a glaze-like icing made from melted chocolate and whipping cream — listed in the dessert’s description.
I somehow found my way back to Lamonica’s for lunch: meatloaf ($8.95) that was dry, reheated and wearing a mushroom sauce made from canned fungi; and center-cut pork chops ($9.95) that had been grilled to death, then embalmed in a “garlic onion” jus that was nothing but jus. The herbed mashed potatoes siding the chops were more herb than potato; perhaps someone had accidentally dropped a salad in the spuds. And the vegetables were so shriveled they could have been left over from the previous day.
When so many things go wrong at a restaurant, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Lamonica’s would do well to scale back its extensive menu, up the budget for ingredients, and concentrate on doing fewer things well — or at least doing them acceptably. The executive chef, Marc Leslie, is a 29-year restaurant veteran (most recently at McCormick’s and Cucina! Cucina!); he seems capable of better things. And the competent servers would certainly appreciate being able to serve better things.
Lamonica’s isn’t out of the woods yet.
