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Indoor Sports: Restaurant Reviews

by Gabe Gelman

Venue
3609 W. 32nd Ave.
Denver, CO 80211

Rating:   Single       Double       Triple       Homerun      Grandslam
Price: Expensive

Venue is a great example of the old saying, “good things come in small packages,” except in this case, the saying should be, “great food comes in small restaurants.”

When you walk into Venue, the first thing you’ll notice is that it is very small. The entire restaurant is one big room, and there are only about 19 two-person tables in the entire restaurant (which can be pushed together if you come with a party of more than two people). Due to the size of the restaurant, I recommend making reservations, even if you come with a small party. There is barely enough space between the tables for the servers to get by. Also, make sure that you are having an interesting conversation, because the people at the tables next to you are definitely sitting close enough for them to hear what you are saying. Because of the layout of the restaurant, when all of the tables are full, it can be fairly loud. However, the atmosphere is laid back, the servers are friendly, and if anything, the small space gives the restaurant a cozy and comfortable feeling.

In addition to the interesting atmosphere, the food at Venue is absolutely delicious. As with other restaurants that use seasonal ingredients, the menu changes every few weeks. Make sure to start off with the house bread and butter. The butter is whipped and has lemon and herbs in it, but as the server explained, because they make it at the restaurant, it always tastes a little bit different each time. There are many different appetizers to choose from, ranging from soup and salad, to mussels and pork belly. Although the spinach salad was good, the meal really took off with the entrées.

Two entrées that I recommend are the House Tagliatelle and the Braised Beef Short Ribs. The short ribs were especially good; they were very tender and flavorful, and served on top of barley risotto. The House Tagliatelle was served with mushrooms, arugula, manchego, garlic and butter. This dish was great because the sauce was rich, but unlike a lot of restaurants that serve noodles with mounds of sauce, the sauce did not completely overpower everything else that was served with the noodles.

The flourless chocolate cake caught my eye for dessert, and after such a filling meal, it was a perfect size to split.

Not only was the food exceptional, but my favorite part of dinner was the fact that our server paired wine for us with our meal. When we sat down to dinner, I ordered a glass of white wine. Even though I had not finished my glass of wine by the time the entrées were served, because I had ordered the short ribs, the server poured me a separate glass of red wine which paired perfectly with the short ribs. Additionally, when the flourless chocolate cake was set down at the table for dessert, the server poured glasses of a sweet port dessert wine that paired really nicely with the cake. I do not know whether this is standard practice at Venue or not, but it was a really nice touch and added a lot of depth and quality to the meal.

By the time we had finished up with the meal, the restaurant was beginning to clear out and it was less noisy. All in all, with how great the food is, the fact that there are not a lot of tables just means that people will be fighting to get in the door to get a table. 

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Coral Room
3489 W. 32nd Avenue
Denver, CO 80211

Rating:   Single       Double       Triple       Homerun      Grandslam
Price: Expensive

Coral Room has been a proud member of the Denver community since 2002. One of Coral Room’s greatest attributes has nothing to do with the food that it serves. Coral Room prides itself on being an active part of its community. The chefs put together a menu that uses both seasonal and local ingredients. Coral Room also frequently donates its resources to local causes. Coral Room’s website lists over 40 local and national causes that it has helped sponsor, including the Tennyson Center for Children, Livestrong, and the Denver Children’s Museum. The take away from all of this is that when you go to Coral Room for dinner, or brunch, or happy hour, you are comforted knowing that not only are you eating great food, but you are also surrounded by kind, good-hearted people.

Because the menu can change based on available seasonal foods, you may receive a slightly different menu than the one I was provided when I went there for dinner. In fact, the night I recently ate at Coral Room, our server told us that the chefs were just trying out some brand new dishes that evening!

There are a lot of wonderful choices on the Coral Room menu. Between the organic mixed greens salad, the marinated mushrooms, the smoked beet salad, and the spring rolls, I could have easily just filled up on the appetizers. Out of all of the appetizers, the spring rolls were especially good, and the fresh looking and tasting vegetables in the spring rolls really brought the dish together with great taste and great presentation.

It was good that I did not fill up on appetizers, because there were many delicious entrees to pick from, including the grilled blue marlin and the roasted beef coulette. As with the appetizers, the presentation of all of the entrees was immaculate. The colors were vibrant and the food looked and tasted very fresh.

Although I found the portions to be a little small, the appetizer and entrée was enough to fill me up – which made me a little sad because there were many more entrées on the menu I wanted to try (and if you know me, nothing prevents me from ordering more food if I am not full the first go-round). I am definitely interested in returning soon to try the sesame salmon and the Colorado natural filet mignon.

It is so refreshing to find a restaurant that cares this much about giving back to its community, and at the same time, makes such delicious food. It is for both of these reasons that I will be returning to Coral Room very soon!

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The Corner Office
1401 Curtis Street
Denver, CO 80202

Rating:   Single       Double      Triple      Homerun      Grandslam
Price: Expensive

It is always 5:00 p.m. at The Corner Office! Many of the clocks on the wall are always set to 5:00 p.m., and the fun and upbeat atmosphere at The Corner Office beckons you to come in, take a load off, and have a drink. The bartenders serve over 20 different types of martinis and cocktails. The drink that caught my eye was the “cherry-poppin daddy,” which was well-flavored with luxardo cherries. For those of you who are interested in trying something completely different (and trying to pull an all-nighter), the “beatnik’s buzz” is a house espresso with Madagascar vanilla infused vodka and khalua.

I was not as impressed with the menu as I was with the martinis and cocktails. The best part of dinner was the baja fish tacos, which were actually quite good. The citrus cabbage mixed with lime and guacamole gave the tacos a unique and fresh taste. An order of the baja fish tacos comes with two tacos, so it is a perfect appetizer to split with someone (or eat by yourself if you have come with a big appetite).

There are a lot of trendy options on the menu, such as the southern fried chicken and waffles, and the baked lobster mac and cheese. I ended up ordering the ramen, which consisted of noodles in chicken and pork broth with pork meat. The dish was well-presented, but it was seriously salty! (It was a good thing I had ordered that cherry-poppin daddy!) The other dish that we ordered, the nicoise salad, tasted good, but did not have anything that really set it apart from other nicoise salads.

The one thing to note about The Corner Office is that the vegetarian selection for dinner is limited. There are very few vegetarian options on the menu, most all of which are salads, soups, or under the “share-ables” section of the menu, edamame, the Mediterranean hummus platter, and the cheese board.

When it comes to dessert, I will pretty much order anything that even remotely resembles chocolate cake or chocolate mousse. However, the closest thing that there was on the dessert menu was the “six dollar shake,” so I passed on dessert, which for me, is rare. If you do want to order a dessert though, I would suggest ordering a dessert that you probably will not find anywhere else unless you happen to be eating dessert at the county fair or at a
Rockies game – the cotton candy.

Because it is right across the street from the Denver Center for Performing Arts, this is definitely a restaurant that is worth stopping by before or after you catch a show. The atmosphere here is great, the drinks are unique, and it would be a great way to start or end any evening downtown!

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Banzai Sushi
6655 Leetsdale Drive
Denver, CO 80224

Rating:   Single      Double       Triple       Homerun      Grandslam
Price: Moderately Expensive

In order to most accurately describe Banzai Sushi, you need to read this review in two parts – Part I: Food; and Part II: Service.

Part I: Food. If you are a sushi-lover, or even a sushi-liker, Banzai is a must! The restaurant’s website is www.100rolls.com, and although I have never actually counted on the menu, Banzai has a huge selection of sushi rolls that you have probably never had before, and probably will not find at any other sushi restaurant. A few of my favorites are the Hula (roll #83), which has salmon and tempura on the outside, and salmon, green onion, pineapple, and cucumber inside; the 3M (roll #40), which has tempura, nitro sauce and teriyaki sauce on the outside, and white tuna, mango and avocado on the inside. One of the most unique rolls that I have tried is the John San & John San (roll #60), which is a sushi roll that is deep-fried tempura style, and has tuna, avocado and yellowtail tuna inside with sauce on top. As you can gather from my description of these rolls, the rolls are big and they are filling! There are so many unique and delicious different rolls to try, so make sure you come hungry and ready to try as many different types of rolls as you can.

Part II: Service. Although the sushi is spectacular, the service is not. Every time that I have been to Banzai, I have had to wait to be seated. It does not help that the restaurant is small and does not have very many tables, and that two of the tables are tables for six, and that parties of smaller than 6 people are not usually seated at these tables. When I was last at Banzai, there was a four-person booth that had a “reserved” sign on it. Even though there was a consistent stream of groups of two, three, or four people coming in for dinner, no one was seated at this reserved table. Instead, each group of people had to wait for a different table to open up, and it took each group approximately 25 minutes to be seated. We showed up for dinner at around 6:00 p.m., and no one was seated at the reserved table until about 7:30 p.m. It was crazy that at least three groups of people had to wait for people to finish eating and be seated, when there was a table that remained open for a full hour and a half before the party that reserved it showed up. Also, the way that the restaurant is set up does not make waiting for a table easy. There is a very small waiting area with bench space for only a few people, and because every time I have been in, people are waiting on the bench to be seated, other patrons who are waiting to be seated are forced to stand right inside the front door, and are often blocking access to the door.

If you do want to eat at Banzai, you should make sure to go with a group of at least 4 people and call ahead, because I think that they take reservations for parties of 4 or more.

As I said before, Banzai is really a tale of two restaurants. The food is delicious, which makes this restaurant an absolute must-try. However, the service is not great, and you should go expecting to wait for a table.
 

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