Audio By Carbonatix
When a trio of restaurant veterans bought the venerable Mary & Lou’s Cafe, the surrounding neighborhood cheered. Sure, they’d miss the 99-cent breakfasts and the all-night hours, but that part of Broadway was experiencing a rebirth, and the area could use a restaurant that reflected the changing times.
From the moment the Hornet opened late last year, it was a veritable beehive of activity. Folks from all over Denver–not just Broadway Terrace–swarmed to this new joint venture by Dave French (Spanky’s Roadhouse), Brewster Hanson (Bistro Adde Brewster) and Paul Greaves. The buzz was that the food was mediocre but the space was great.
That space is almost unrecognizable from Mary and Lou’s old place, but in some ways it’s just as welcoming. The cavernous room–which includes an area set aside for pool players and beer drinkers–is wide open and stylish, with rust-painted walls and plenty of light coming in the ceiling-high windows from the sun during the day and from the headlights that streak down Broadway at night. This is a neighborhood diner updated for the Nineties, full of hip hustle and bustle. The fast-paced feel is accentuated by the constant hum of people talking and laughing loudly, and it’s echoed in the frenetic movements of the waitstaff, whose members seem to have one too many tables for comfort.
With a dining room this chaotic, it’s easy to imagine that conditions are much the same in the kitchen. During our three meals at the Hornet, waitstaff, hosts and line cooks hurried in and out of the kitchen like worker bees buzzing around a hive that’s just been shaken by a big hairy bear paw. We noticed lots of puzzled looks, harried questioning and accidental collisions. If such confusion also reigns behind the scenes, it goes a long way toward explaining why the food at the Hornet remains mediocre.
At least the owners recognize the problem–but so far, none of their improvements have taken off. In March they brought in chef Chris Rogers, familiar to LoDo for her Blue Point at the Icehouse, a venture she closed at the end of last year when the building started turning into lofts. Rogers quickly opened a Blue Point duplicate, the Articulate Cafe, farther south on Broadway in the Design Center; her Blue Point crew runs that small bistro with the same precision they always displayed at the Icehouse. But at the Hornet, Rogers seems to be getting lost in the shuffle. Her much-awaited new menu took two months to implement, then turned out to be not that new after all. Instead, they kept items that have been selling well, dropped six others and added half a dozen entrees and a salad that all fit into a vaguely Southwestern theme. The fix looks fine in print, but the kitchen still has some difficulty making these dishes a reality.
We first visited the Hornet right before the menu rewrite but after Rogers had been on board for a while. The absence of flavor in most of the items we tried led us to believe that Rogers was merely directing operations rather than actually cooking. The seared shrimp cocktail appetizer ($5.95) brought a handful of nicely grilled shrimp, but it came with a chunky New Mexico chile sauce that had no sting and the wrong consistency for dipping–it never stayed on the shrimp. The sauce was so tasteless, however, we didn’t miss it. We never did figure out if the promised balsamic vinaigrette made it to the house salad ($2.95); the greens didn’t look like they had any dressing, and they certainly didn’t taste like they did. The chile aioli that was supposed to come with the turkey burger ($5.95) was also missing in action, but at least the burger had a good flavor and a soft, fresh bun. (Strangely, something that looked and tasted like chile aioli appeared at the bottom of the small bowl of coleslaw that came with the burger.) The roasted half chicken with adobe seasoning ($8.95) was dry and lacked any seasoning, adobe or otherwise; fortunately, it came with some excellent beer-batter onion rings–one of the Hornet’s true specialties.
Most of our meal was boring–but at least it wasn’t blackened. Two friends sitting at a nearby table that same night happened to order the same entrees we’d tried. While his turkey burger did come with chile aioli, her chicken should have come with a fire extinguisher: It had been burnt to a crisp. “It’s a little done,” the waitress pronounced as she set it down and then quickly walked away. Our friend grabbed the waitress on her return trip and sent the fowl thing back. Fifteen minutes later, when we left the Hornet, she was still waiting for her redone chicken; her companion’s plate was empty. “We live right down the street and want to support the place,” our friend said, “but it looks like nothing’s changed.”
In the two months since then, a few things have changed, including the number of entree choices. On our second visit we started with a very good three-cheese quesadilla ($3.95) appetizer oozing cheddar, mozzarella and feta. A snappy, chunky ranchero salsa added zing to the three tortilla triangles (we couldn’t help wondering who’d gotten the fourth). But blandness was back–in a big way–with the zucchini sticks au gratin with bacon and gorgonzola ($4.95): About three medium-sized zucchini had been cut into strips and baked with what looked like nothing but a few sprinkles of bacon and a lot of cheddar. Under the yellow cheese, we did unearth a white substance that may have been gorgonzola; if so, it was a cheap, lackluster version that was overpowered by the cheddar, anyway.
A citrus-marinated chicken breast ($8.95) was so slathered with a fiery roasted-tomato salsa that we couldn’t taste any of the advertised citrus. The chicken had been properly grilled, though, and we’d chosen a side of corn and green-chile polenta that was another Hornet highlight, with enough chile zip and the proper polenta texture (soft inside, with a thin shell of crust outside). We found more of that good grilled chicken in the jambalaya with andouille sausage, grilled chicken and shrimp ($10.95). But the sausage hadn’t leached any of its flavors into the dish, so the rice mixture would have had no taste at all if not for a generous dash of chile seasoning. Our last entree, an order of soft fish tacos ($5.95), brought four big chunks of grilled tuna that had been marinated in something citrusy, as well as more of the fiery sauce that had smothered the chicken (it worked much better here). The dish also came with large pieces of raw green pepper and onion, which presumably we were supposed to tuck alongside the fish in the four warm tortillas. Yum–just what I want in my soft tacos: cold, crunchy veggies rather than warm grilled onions and peppers. But as it turned out, we couldn’t stuff anything into those tortillas; as they cooled, they became so brittle that they broke into pieces when we tried to unfold them.
The third time, we hoped, would be a charm. And in fact, we found two sweet surprises: heavenly bread pudding ($4.50) choking with toothsomely sweet raisins, and apple pie ($4.50) overflowing with apples cooked al dente and plenty of cinnamony crumbles.
Before we could enjoy them, though, we had to work our way through slimy mashed potatoes (too much liquid) and bacon cooked into rigor mortis over an otherwise wonderful slip of sauteed calf’s liver with caramelized onions ($7.95). The side of Cuban black beans ($2.50) was also good–cooked to a perfect softness and lightly spiced.
To bee or not to bee? For the Hornet, that’s still a question. With so much talent, it bugs me that the place isn’t better.
The Hornet, 76 Broadway, 777-7676. Hours: 11 a.m.-midnight Monday-Thursday and Sunday; 11-1 a.m. Friday-Saturday.
