Old Tucson & New

Over the July 4rth holiday weekend, I took my family to visit the town where I grew up - Tucson, Arizona. We stayed at my sister's hacienda and my mom's casita, both being far out east in the Old Pueblo. It was about 100 degrees each day which was perfect for swimming and drinking beer.

We ate out a few times, and I am so happy to have done so becuase there is some food in Tucson you can't get ANYWHERE else. For example, Prickly Pear Margaritas and Carne Seca, Tortillas so thin you can see through them, and Tamales so fresh, they taste like sweet corn and green chiles are being born inside your mouth. (That is a weird thing to say, but I said it! Becasue it is true.) The place to get those items is El Charro Cafe, the original spot downtown near the Courthouse. (Please go to the original, not one of the branch locations around town where the food is less cared for.) This spot was once a little family casita and you will feel right at home there as if it was still 1922 when the matroness dropped a burrito into a frying pan and accidently invented the Chimichanga.  The food here is so good at El Charro Cafe my husband asks to eat here whener we are in Arizona.

The next day we needed sandwiches - Baggin's sandwiches to be exact. Please do not ask me why this Tucson-only chain is named after Hobbits; I have no clue why and I don't care. The sandwiches at Baggin's are amazing because they are just sandwiches that are made totally perfectly. I cannot give justice in words because it is too stupid to even talk about sandwiches. So just go and get one. They always come with a chewy handmade chocolate-chip cookie, and they deliver! (It sounds ridiculous, but my friends and I would get Baggin's delivered to us at lunch-time in highschool.) Their signature spiced ice-tea is great too. But there was no getting iced-tea at Baggin's this day....

Because we were getting our drinks at eegees of course! It is imperative to drink an eegees at least once a week in Tucson, AZ. It is too hot to drive around with anything less frozen. An eegees can stay cold for maybe up to two whole hours in your car when it is 110 out. And you can put in it in the fridge at home if you don't finish it right away. The Lemon is best and you can get it with iced-tea or Sprite as a extra liquidy treat. (These are then called an Iced-Teegee and an eegee-Fizz respectively.) The drive-through at an eegees is always packed with at least four carloads of people needing just drinks. But while you are there, get the super-yummy crinkle-cut fries or a Preztel-with-Cheese. The cheese is provalone, and the fries are soft and salty. (Like boys on the South Side. What?! Who said that?) mmmmmmmm

For dinner on our last night we went a'wanderin' down to Old Trail Dust Town to eat at the famous touristy, family-friendly steak-house know as Pinnacle Peak. This restaurant is a place every Arizonie knows and loves. It is silly and kitch, but it may just have been the very first of its kind. The kind being one of those joints where if you wear a tie they cut it off and hang it from the ceiling, where actors do a shoot-out show twice a night complete with loud gun-powder explosions and bad-guys rolling off the rooftops. The steaks are huge and the beans are addicting, and the pork ribs and filet mignon are are also quite good but don't expect too much else on the menu. Whether you're a Cowgirl or a Cowboy you just eat meat and maybe a little salad, white bread and potatos if you can fit them into your belly with all that meat in there. All the meat btw seems to be encrusted in an inch of salt before it hits the wrought-iron grill laying over the wide lake of flames in the kitchen. Salty, bloody steaks make you feel like going over to the and getting a nice portrait taken of your pioneering Old Mexico familia like this one here... Adios Amigos!

Ondo's Spanish Tapas

15 years ago I did a college semester in Spain. I lived with a nice little old lady named Mercedes who knew literally two words in English, hamburger and water. This is what she thought all American kids wanted to eat, but she did not approve of that kind of diet. Que barbarbidad! She cooked for me three meals a day for six months. Que rica todo la comida! I mean, she could cook! She once made a Paella the size of a poker table and I was too hungover to eat any of it. Poor Mercedes. And another time, I came home from school and she was not home; but I found a raw lamb's brain in the kitchen sink and I ran off to call her from a pay-phone to leave a message that I was not gonna be home for dinner. My tastes are still not quite that adventurous, but I'm sure it would have been amazing because she was the best Andalucian Viuda Cocinera del Mundo! For 15 years I have been looking for a restaurant in the States that served Gazpacho like she made me when the weather got hot. NOT SALSA! GAZPACHO - served blended into a thin watery pink veggie juice, perhaps with little bits of ice floating around in it, garlic-spicy and yet cucumbery cool. Guess what? ONDO'S HAS IT! And they have a lot more too that I need to rave about. The Happy Hour Menu is cheap and the Tapas fill you up as if you had a Sunday lunch at a Spanish family villa. The Tortilla Espanola ($3) was pretty good, a hefty amount, a bit bland, but that's why you can eat something like that every day which is what everyone is Spain does. It is the staple food besides red wine. WINE IS FOOD, RIGHT?! I tried Ondo's Red & White Sangrias. They were tasty and made me drunk even though they seemed so lite. If you go, GET THE CROQUETAS DE JAMON. OMG, so many hot, deep-fried, gooey in-the-center delights, my husband and I could not finish them all. $4! They even have a tapa-sized Paella del Dia ($4), which had beef, chicken and monk-fish in it yetserday.

This is my new favorite Happy Hour joint. Nice patio with a waterfountain in Cherry Creek North. Ondo's is everything I need after a long day's work in a cubicle. 5 SUPERNOVAS!!!!!

Japanese a Mile High

There is a little-spoke-of Japanese restaurant in East Washington Park, Denver called Japon. I'd say the sushi is almost on par with the famous Dens of Denver! (Izakaya Den, Sushi Den, and Den Deli) Almost. Which is pretty good for being land-locked in the center of North-America. The New-Style Salmon Sashimi is the best of all Japon's sushi it and goes perfectly with a nice, cold, sweet-but-dry Junmai Daiginjo sake. The Japon Roll was my next favorite - a spicy tempura shrimp and avacado roll, which sounds generic and lame, but for some reason tastes amazing compared to anything else like it I've had anywhere else! Of course I can't eat Sushi anywhere without ordering my favorite Ikura with a Quail Egg ontop. It was ok here, but go to Izakaya Den for a better raw egg experience. Japon gets 3.5 SUPERNOVAS from me. The Dens all get 4.5!

While, I'm on the subject of Japonese food, here is a photo of the House Ramen at Deli Den. It is super rich and full of pork belly swimming its own greasey broth. I've been waiting for years to find a good Ramen place in Denver. And still I'm not quite satisfied.
Of course, now I have to mention Domo. mmmmmmmm. but also.... hhhmmmmmm. I think I like the idea of Domo more than I like the food there. It has "country-style", not modern "Tokyo-style" Japanese food. Please God, don't ever let me try fermented soy beans over rice again. It tastes so bad! But I know this is a comfort food for many people. I'm sorry! There is also lots of Sukiyaki (huge bowls of soup and noodles with everything you can think of inside) at Domo. I've had some great broth there and the gourmet Japanese teas are authentic and served hot in large ceramic cups. I like sitting on petrified tree stumps around  big rockslab tables too. So Domo gets 4 SUPERNOVAS for atmosphere and authenticity!
Long story, short: THERE IS GOOD JAPANESE FOOD AND EXCELLENT SUSHI in the Mile High City. Don't worry, the fish is all flown in from the markets of Japan and is served within 24 hours of being caught. At least that is what the Dens claim; the owner of all three Dens has a brother who works in Japan exclusively buying the fish for these Denver restaurants. Domo Arigato!

Fruition

A beautiful, delicious dinner at Fruition in Denver. A horrible night of vomiting to follow. A New Zealand Pinot Noir called Yealands was amazingly drinkable and full of light spiciness, but tasted acrid when coming back out. It still had a gorgeous blackberry color though, even as it splashed violently into the white porcelin bowl. Whatever went wrong with this dinner is still a mystery. I had the two-course Vegetarian Grazing Dinner. The ricotta croquettes, forest mushrooms, and shaved fennel app was the best of the night and the more bland pastry with green legumes was pretty good too. I only had a couple bites from Brett's proscuto, asparagas, and garlic flan app (too garlicy, overwhelming); then a tiny bit of his duck entree. Overall the meal was great tasting! So, what brought on two late-night jaunts to the bathroom between breast-feeding my baby girl and lying in bed with a feverish stomache-ache? Could I be pregnant again?! Nope, we checked the next day with a pee-test. Could it have been a short-lived GI bug? I guess we'll never know. In any case, I will eat at Fruition again. 3.75 STARS (SUPERNOVAS)!