Woody's Wings & (Asian) Things

Can't decide between Asian or American for dinner? The answer is Woody's Wings & Things—a smallish chain of Denver-area restaurants specializing in hot wings and other fried items, but with one exception. Walk into the Westminster location, and along with the standard wing menu you'll be greeted with a thick hardbound volume filled with pictures of Cambodian, Thai, Chinese, and Vietnamese specialties.

ES and I had dinner there after returning from Black Hawk and Central City, and started with this dish of mussels and assorted vegetables in a green curry. I loved the tender mussels, and the thick, slightly spicy curry, rich with coconut milk and ground peanuts, was delicious over rice.

Delicious, too, was a creamy and soothing chicken-rice soup, as well as a Thai beef salad. We had originally intended to order the Cambodian beef salad, but the waiter insisted that the Cambodian version was bitter and that the Thai one was the best on the menu.

There was also a dish of pad see ew, with that wonderful slightly charred and smoky quality that I'm always looking for in this dish. It also struck the perfect balance between not-sweet-enough and too-sweet, and was less oily than usual; though I might have quibbled with the usage of what seemed like dried rice noodles instead of fresh ones, the flavor was so good that I didn't quibble for long.

From what I observed, neither menu at Woody's Wings & Things goes ignored; in the restaurant that night there were an equal number of tables ordering from the American menu and from the Asian menu. Some tables even boasted platters of hot wings alongside noodle soups and rice plates: those who couldn't decide which way their tastes were leaning, or those who decided that heck—they just want a little bit of both.