Mayo and sriracha overload at Roll Cafe

I was having sushi cravings, but I had no idea where to go. People had mentioned a few good Japanese restaurants to me, but I didn't feel like going to a sit-down place and having a meal for one. So when I came across a review of Roll Cafe in The Coloradoan, I decided to hop on my bike to check it out. About five miles later, I pedaled into a huge strip mall/plaza, chained up in front, and after looking over the menu for a while, ordered two rolls and a drink. I meant to eat in the cafe, but it was empty and a little bit depressing so back I went on my bike to eat in my apartment instead.


Though I was trying to go for variety, I made the mistake of ordering both a spicy tuna roll and a spicy California roll. They turned out to be exactly the same. Both were thick with spicy mayo—mixed in with the tuna/krab and squirted again all over the outside—and they were both spicier than I expected. After a while, all I could taste was sriracha and mayonnaise, and I felt kind of sick. Two rolls is really too much for me anyway.

If this place were closer to me, I might go back to try something in the non-spicy-mayo category. For now, unless I'm in the area, I'd rather check out some other places first.

Curry me up

Japanese curry, which I made with chicken breast and diced carrot, potato, and onion, and served over a combination of brown and white jasmine rice. I know it's better to make the curry base from scratch, as those spice blocks are full of palm oil and who knows what else, but having a box of the stuff in the pantry makes cooking up a potful of curry on the spot so much easier (I picked up the packets at Mitsuwa before I left NYC). Using the blocks makes me an "irresponsible cook" according to Hiroko Shimbo in this article, but also a much happier one.

I could have tried to top the curry with pork katsu, but I chose the healthful option and went with a spoonful of watermelon pickle (which was not a fail this time) instead. I was thinking of fukujinzuke, the sweet radish pickles that sometimes accompany curry when the dish is served in restaurants; this was definitely not the same, but strangely enough, the combination still worked.

A salad doppelgänger at Avogadro's Number

That's a suitably mystical depiction of that chem whiz Avogadro, don't you think? More frequently called just "Avo's", Avogadro's Number is a combination cafe/bar/entertainment venue that's popular with a number of my classmates, especially for their Tuesday open mic and two-for-one tempeh burger deal. Having heard about it several times already since arrival, MC and I ventured there for dinner before catching a Galactic concert at The Aggie.

The salad I ordered kind of reminded me of the salad MH and I shared at Coop's Place in New Orleans. Though this features chicken and the other one had shrimp, both included flavorful, seasoned protein and melted bits of shredded cheese, both had a long list of canned and fresh ingredients (fresh: lettuce, mushrooms, onions, red peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, sprouts; canned: black olives, banana peppers), and both were served with the hot, cooked chicken/shrimp layered on top of the cool elements with even the layout of the veg similar. The only major difference, I think, was that the salad here came with half a bagel (more "round bread" than anything nearly like "bagel") and the one at Coop's Place had hard-boiled eggs. Not too shabby.

The other thing I should say is that the place has an amusing atmosphere. Just look at this interior:

What's going on here?

After Avo's we had a pint at Coopersmith's before the concert—I was in the mood for another taste of green chili beer.

Had to pave the way for this fine beverage, after all.

Galactic!

Dumpling rescue

I wanted—needed—good dumplings. The several different brands I had purchased from Viet Hoa were either too mushy or a bit off in flavor, and while they were still semi-satisfying, I couldn't even obtain those regularly since the supermarket was in Denver. And I hadn't discovered the Asian markets in Fort Collins yet.

Enter Ling Ling Potstickers. I spotted the bright yellow bag in the freezer of King Soopers, where the cheery cartoon panda on the front told me two things: 1) This was an American brand, and 2) I was totally going to give them a try. Even though I'm usually a pork-and-leek girl, I tossed the giant bag of chicken-and-vegetable dumplings (the only kind they carried) into my cart and went to the registers, eager to pedal home and plop a handful into boiling water.

So that's what I did. After dousing the cooked dumplings in chili-garlic sauce, I took my first bite.

Verdict? Not bad, which in these circumstances means good. The flavoring wasn't quite Chinese, as it was sweeter and had an odd gingery taste, but the skins were resilient and the filling was nice and bouncy, no mushy meat here. I don't have any idea what the "vegetable" was, but there were bits of green…nonetheless the dumplings succeeded in hitting the spot. Huzzah!

A real lulu at Lulu's Asian Bistro

Vicky Cristina Barcelona was playing at the Lyric Cinema Cafe, and I biked over one afternoon to meet up with two friends to take it in. After our hour and a half of drooling over Javier Bardem, KS went home but MC and I walked over to Old Town to have dinner.

Spanish food would have been appropriate, but there were no tapas joints in sight. In the end, we decided on Lulu's Asian Bistro, a place I felt both curious about and leery of when I entered. It was friendly and clean—definitely no Chinatown hole-in-the-wall—but for me, the menu wasn't very promising. Like many of the Asian restaurants around here, it offered a mish-mash of greatest hits from the Asian food trifecta: Thai, Chinese, and Japanese. I guess I should have known better than to go for sushi and pad thai in a place like this, but hey, we were both having cravings.

Well—the sushi wasn't bad, exactly. It just wasn't great. And the pad thai tasted nothing like what I expected, veering away from authenticity even more than this (b)ad thai. If at Bennie's the dish was too gloppy and sugary, here the entire flavoring was wrong, as if ol' Lulu was cooking up another noodle dish altogether. It tasted okay, but as pad thai…no, no, and no.

I've mentioned before how I feel about places that try to cover a variety of different cuisines under one roof. Let's just say that Lulu's Asian Bistro didn't do anything to change my mind.

When you need to bring beer to a party…

It's good to have a basket on your bike.

Above, Flying Dog mixed pack: Classic Pale Ale; In-Heat Wheat Hefeweizen; Old Scratch Amber Lager; Road Dog Porter; Tire Bite Golden Ale; Snake Dog India Pale Ale; and seasonal Woody Creek White Belgian Wit. I didn't try all of these, but I imagine I will at some point. After all, the brewery is based in Denver, and I'm among folks who love beer.

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad bao

I was so excited when I saw these in the case. CH and I had been in Denver several weeks earlier, loading up on groceries at Viet Hoa Supermarket, when I saw a sign for an Asian bakery just before we pulled out of the lot. It was dingy inside and the cases were empty—it looked more like a wholesale place than a retail bakery—but in a glass-walled refrigerator on the side I spotted two baskets of large, saran-wrapped steamed buns. Even though they were hard and cold, and looked dried-out on the outside, I bought three and crossed my fingers that they would be delicious. After all, even a bad bao is still pretty good…right?

The answer is no. When I steamed one later on (I had promptly stowed them in the freezer), I discovered how wrong I was. The dough was crumbly and dry, the meat tasted and felt like cardboard, the pieces of Chinese sausages were without flavor, and the tiny hard-boiled quail egg was rubbery. These were bao that tasted of sadness.

I suppose I should have guessed. I mean, look at the wretched thing, with its dry, cracked skin.

When I go home for winter break, I'm bringing back a load of my dad's baozi, damnit.

A night in Sri Lanka

I was seriously starting to miss variety in my meals. In Manhattan, I could walk down practically any street and bump into places to get food from at least two or three completely different countries. Here, the better restaurants seem to be predominently American and Southwestern. While I can make a decent variety of Asian food—well enough to satisfy myself, at least—I am much less versed in Indian cuisine or Middle Eastern cuisine or Peruvian cuisine or many of the other things I used to crave. So when I got an email that Apartment Life was hosting a "Sri Lankan Night," with dinner included (free, no less!) I and my friend NH got right on it.

Dinner was served buffet style. Above is my first plate, which was small because I think the servers weren't sure how much food they had for the attendees. Clockwise from top: rice; a coconut milk–kissed lentil stew; salty chopped mystery veg; fish fritter (like the one I had at Choice Eats, but perfectly seasoned this time); tomatoes and beets; curried potatoes; and curried chicken. I loved the lentil stew, the potatoes, and the fish fritters, and later, when they figured out that there was a ton of food left, I went back for seconds and completely loaded up my plate.

There was also dessert, which consisted of a dense, chewy cake that tasted of dark molasses; a hard, sugary chunk that reminded me of maple candies; and a non-sweet, fried cracker that snapped pleasantly between my teeth. I don't know the names of any of these, but aside from the sugar chunk which was much too sweet, I thought they were great.

The meal was followed by a presentation on Sri Lankan culture and history, given by a Sri Lankan student, one of three total on campus. He explained that when he had first arrived to this school, he was actually the only student from Sri Lanka, and was joined later on by the other two. I may feel like a fish out of water sometimes, but I ain't got nothin' on him.