I Went to Mecha Noodle Bar for Denver Restaurant Week and It Was Perfect

Over twenty years ago, Denver Restaurant Week was launched to boost the reputation of the city's dining scene. Since then, it's become an annual tradition and a way to celebrate the scene and try new places at a slightly discounted price.

Though I'm not always a Restaurant Week person because of how crowded restaurants get and how bad the crowds make me feel for the servers, this year I tried something on a whim that turned out to be amazing: Mecha Noodle Bar, which opened in RiNo last year.

During Denver Restaurant Week, over 250 restaurants offer multi-course menus for fixed prices of $25, $35, $45 or $55 per person. Mecha's menu is one of those available $25.

Mecha hails from Connecticut and is a project from lifelong friends Tony Pham and Rich Reyes. The name translates to "mom and pop" in Vietnamese and the restaurant definitely has a homey feel. Our waiter even shared that Pham's generations-old family recipe is used for its pho.

On Sunday, March 9, my husband and I decided we didn't want to cook dinner and wanted to get out of the house since the weather was lovely. Among the spots at the lowest $25 price tier, Mecha stood out as we hadn't tried it before. The options sounded tasty and provided good value for money (I'm a bit of a cheapskate so I did the math and found we'd save at least $7 and up to $11 per person depending what items we chose).

We rode our bikes the two miles to Mecha and were seated immediately. We were a tad early for our usual dinner time, arriving around 6 p.m.; Mecha was busy but it wasn't crowded and didn't feel overrun. A group of about eight people came around halfway through our meal and had to wait on the patio for fifteen minutes or so but smaller groups were seated without a wait.
The garage doors to the patio were open due to the weather and the interior of the space immediately drew us in with cool wood features on the ceiling and a record collection that included Rhianna and Kendrick Lamar albums.

The waitstaff was attentive and helpful. Even better, the food was more delicious than we hoped. Mecha's Restaurant Week menu includes poutine, edamame or one of two types of bao buns for the first course; a second course of pho, fried rice, spicy tan tan or one of two types of ramen; and mochi ice cream for dessert.

Though Mecha's Restaurant Week deal doesn't include alcohol (some menus do), my husband opted to try one of its signature boozy boba drinks to start. He got the Strawberry Matcha version which really lived up to the hype both with the amount of boba and booze, which blended well with the matcha flavor. I joked that our savings from Restaurant Week more than made up for the price of the drink, so the drink was basically free.

From there, we selected the edamame and poutine as our appetizers. The poutine tasted like a perfect combination of dishes I've had before, with fries drenched in curry, nori dust sprinkled on top and a generous ratio of cheese curd to fry. The edamame, loaded with cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary, was far from basic.

The appetizers were also generous in portion — so much so that we had to stop eating them because we were worried we wouldn't have room for our entrees. My husband ordered pho ga, chicken pho, for his second course and I went for the kimchi fried rice.

Both came in giant serving dishes. We agreed that if we came at a time other than Restaurant Week, we could have easily been full just splitting one or the other.

My husband texted me the next day, "I can't believe that was all $25 last night."

The large portion size was matched by the flavor, with both of us enjoying our respective choices. My one wish was that the fried rice would have had a larger ratio of rice to other ingredients, which is usually the opposite at most restaurants where I feel like they put way too much rice compared to other elements to make it seem like they're giving you more than they really are.

Mecha packaged our leftovers up for us and we'll probably get another two meals out of what we didn't eat. I'm certain we will end up enjoying every bite of what we took home, unlike some leftovers, which end up in the trash.

And I'm sure we will go back to Mecha, especially for happy hour, which is available from 3 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and includes both of the appetizers we tried and loved at 50 percent off along with other munchies and the restaurant's sake list.

Restaurant Week mission: accomplished.

Denver Restaurant Week runs through March 16. To peruse all the available menus, visit denverrestaurantweek.com.