Evenings there are still leisurely--but only because the service can't keep up with the crowds. These days the restaurant is always full on weekends, when dinner is by reservation only; the only other night it's open is Thursday. Cleary once had to offer breakfast and lunch six days a week just to pay the bills; now he's doing so well that he's dropped Monday lunch and all breakfasts except on Saturday. But the increase in business has coincided with Denver's deadly labor shortage--and the good word of mouth on Cleary's flavor-savvy fare has attracted a more, um, impatient clientele.
"Mostly what we had for the first couple of years was neighborhood customers who really did want to come in and have some coffee, read a newspaper or talk with each other before they ate," Cleary explains. "Back then I was able to come out and sit with them and chat, too, and so it really had that neighborhood cafe feel to it. Now, though, I'm way too busy to do more than walk out there once or twice a night, and I realize we have a big problem with the service."
It's not any worse at Cafe Bohemia than anywhere else--not really--but the space is so small that it heightens your sense that everything is going verrrrryyy slowly here...with the exception of the harried, wild-eyed server. The ambience, which is not so much bohemian as casually unconventional--from the Impressionist prints hanging crookedly on the walls to the Early American Thrift Store furnishings of well-worn flower-print loveseats and mismatched high-back chairs--adds to the overall sense of disorder. And the fact that the tables are rather close has a way of bringing diners together not just physically, but psychologically: You have to band together if you're going to get your silverware, get your water and, most important, get your food.
My first clue that things had changed at Cafe Bohemia came over the phone, when I called to procure a Friday-night reservation. "How about 7:30?" I asked. "Hold on," the fellow on the other end responded, and then disappeared for several minutes. "Nope," he answered when he finally returned, then suggested, "What about 6:30?" I knew that wasn't going to work. "Let's go later," I said. "Can we get in at 7:45?" Another significant gap while he wandered off who knows where, and then he popped up again with a counter-offer: "No. Can you come in at 8:15?" At this point, I was about ready to chuck the whole idea, but I said it was fine. "Hang on," he said. "Let me go double-check that."
When we appeared at our negotiated, designated time, the best tables in the house--the ones set up for four and flanked by couches that would provide cozy seating for two--were gone. So we squeezed around a table only slightly larger than a TV tray and about seven inches from the next TV tray. No matter. We would soon be on very friendly terms with every diner in the place.
We certainly had plenty of time to get acquainted before our first course arrived. Cleary offers a semi-prix-fixe menu, with each dinner including an appetizer, a salad and one of several entree choices that vary the price between $18 and $22. The appetizer and salad are the same no matter what the entree, though, and since Cleary tries to do only one or two seatings an evening, he tries to bring each course to everyone at once. So the 8:15 people--us--were left waiting for the 8:30 people to get comfortable so that we could all enjoy the same batch of appetizers. In the meantime, the one server, who was in way over her head, did not bring us so much as a crust of bread to munch on.
We'd been sitting for forty minutes--yes, I was counting--and were faint from hunger when the piping-hot potato latkes finally showed up. Unfortunately, our silverware had yet to make an appearance. After a few more minutes we snagged our server, secured some forks and dug in. One bite and all was forgiven--for the few seconds it took us to gobble down the three silver-dollar-sized potato pancakes, at least. (Since the appetizer was part of an all-inclusive meal and not a separate starter, couldn't the kitchen at least have given us a number divisible by two?) The latkes were small but delicious (see Mouthing Off for the recipe): crispy on the outside, mashed-potato soft inside, and served with a tiny blob of creme fraiche and a dollop of homemade applesauce. I could have eaten a bucket's worth of the latter.
As the minutes ticked by with no more food in sight, I could have eaten the bucket itself. After a half-hour wait, at last the salads arrived. They were well-made, tasty--and tiny. We were left wanting more, much more, of this fusion of roasted beets and baby lettuce studded with goat cheese in a sweet-tart vinaigrette. Instead, we got our bread. It came with no butter or oil, but it needed no augmentation. Cafe Bohemia's breads are made by Pascal Trompeau, Cleary's partner. The French-born Trompeau came to Colorado four years ago when his wife, a Littleton native, wanted to return home; he and Cleary met when they both worked for the short-lived Bread Garden chain. (A Johnson and Wales College of Culinary Arts graduate who worked for the Hyatt in Atlanta before moving here in 1992 to help open Baci in Genesee Park, Cleary also has a pastry background.) While Cleary keeps things cooking at Cafe Bohemia, Trompeau runs Trompeau Bakery in a space next door to the restaurant.
There's a doorway between the bakery and the eatery, and that's where our busy server kept turning on a light whose glare was so annoying that one diner or another would periodically get up to turn it off. By now we'd all also given up on our server providing any additional silverware, so we all helped ourselves from the hutch where it was kept. Between missions we chatted, getting to know each other and generally marking time until the entrees came--a half-hour after we'd licked our salad plates clean.
I'd ordered the polenta with blue cheese ($17.95), a rich and comforting dish. A crispy shell held together the soft, creamy cornmeal that had soaked up the plush blue-cheese sauce; the polenta was surrounded by sauteed baby vegetables. It was a satisfying meal--but then, I'm a chick. My dining companion had ordered the sauteed veal with roasted asparagus, arugula and portabello mushroom ($21.95), and he thought the portion--two medallions of meat--was on the meager side. But the veal was as tender as calf can get, beautifully sauced in a reduction of its own juices; it was sided by a few thin strands of asparagus, several pieces of wilted arugula and five or six slim shards of portabello.
Dessert, some kind of pastry puff topped with ice cream, looked wonderful. But after two hours and five minutes--25 minutes of actually eating food, and an hour and forty minutes of waiting for it--what wouldn't? Rather than invest any more time in the dinner, we decided to skip the final course and asked for our check. Another twenty minutes passed before we were able to pay and exit, bringing our grand total to two hours and 25 minutes. That seemed like a lot for a bistro-type meal. Especially one without dessert.
Live and learn. For my second visit, I'd allotted two hours and fifteen minutes--and wound up getting out five minutes ahead of schedule, probably because the service was sightly more efficient. And the food was even better, which goes a long way toward explaining not only why people clamor to get into the place, but why they're willing to put up with the wait.
We started with that day's appetizer, the sorrel veloute soup with fresh fiddleheads, those edible fern fronds that taste like a cross between asparagus and green beans. Sorrel is a sour, leafy plant that doesn't get much attention in this country, and Cleary obviously knew what he was doing when he enriched the soup with goat cheese. It was so good, we could have eaten another couple of bowls. The salad was more mundane, but fine: a combination of buttery baby lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and radishes, all tied together with a simple shallot-based vinaigrette.
Cleary outdid himself with the entrees, though, which were skillfully prepared and this time even more complex. The tournedos of beef with artichoke hearts, sweet corn and noisette potatoes ($21.95) was an upscale meat-and-potatoes dish that featured a striking sauce and the fluffiest, moistest, brown-butteriest whipped potatoes ever. The same spuds arrived beneath the sauteed veal with morels ($21.95). Once again, the veal was super-tender and rich in flavor, but here it was coated in a deeply earthy, nutty sauce made with the wild mushrooms. Since we were both chicks, the portions were just right. But had there been enough time, we probably could have made room for dessert--if anyone had asked us.
Cleary says he's trying to pick up the pace. "I've hired a kid to bus tables for me," he says. "That should help quite a bit. And I have someone coming in to do a front-of-the-house training seminar, but I can't really do that until I have an actual staff, you know?"
I know. So does every other restaurateur in town. They're all suffering from the staffing shortage, and it's hitting small operations like Cafe Bohemia the hardest. This is a charming eatery that serves excellent food for a fair price--but you have to be willing to invest an entire evening to eat a meal here.
And, hey--life's short. So next time, I'll eat dessert first.
Cafe Bohemia, 1729 East Evans Avenue, 303-777-7222. Hours: 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday; 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m., 5:30-9 p.m. Thursday-Friday; 8 a.m.-2 p.m., 5:30-9 p.m. Saturday.
