Fuel for the City

Led by a quirky taxi-themed café, a fleet of new eateries takes diners on a culinary ride.

Fuel Café 

3455 Ringsby Court, Denver

303-296-4642; fuelcafedenver.com 

Consummate co-owner, restaurateur and kitchen maverick Bob Blair has taken an off-the-beaten-path concrete building that formerly housed the headquarters of Yellow Cab Co., given it a minimalist, albeit funky, overhaul, and named it Fuel Café—suggestive of the fact that we can’t get through the day without sustenance. 

Blair’s kitchen cohort is Josh Forcum, a 29-year-old young gun who sharpened his knives at Duo after ditching law school. Blair insists he and Forcum are not chefs, even though the indelible sandwiches (love the Italian grinder!) and fabulous cakes, cupcakes, cookies, brownies and whoopee pies that the two concoct in the small kitchen are some of the best in Denver. “We wanted to take the ego out of the place and make it all about the food,” says Blair. “We’re just cooks who took our combined travels from around the world and devised a menu that would reflect that.” 

Blair can call himself whatever he’d like, but the fact of the matter is that he and Forcum brine and roast the turkey in-house, bake their focaccia and flatbreads on-site (the other breads come from Udi’s Bakery), procure their produce from Colorado farms and even own 10 shares of Cresset Community Farm, a local, biodynamic farmstead located in Loveland.  

The “strange, hard to find” location, says Blair, isn’t quite the obstacle he may have envisioned. “We consistently have the same people returning,” he says, which really comes as no surprise, considering the stellar foodstuffs and groovy space, with its lively counter, open garage doors, cosmopolitan patio fenced with recycled grocery conveyor belts and salvaged water pipes doubling as flower pots. 

And just in case you’re nostalgic for Denver’s bygone taxis, there’s still one sitting in the parking lot. 

Local city slickers … who frequented LoDo’s City Spirit Café back in the ’80s and ’90s will get a major dose of memory lane since the space in which Fuel resides (the “Taxi” development project) houses the fantastically whimsical tables that bedecked City Spirit until it was sold in 1996. As an aside, developer Mickey Zeppelin, who opened City Spirit Café, also spearheaded the Taxi project here. 

For the liveliest conversation … snatch a seat at the counter, where the eccentric Zeppelin himself wheels and deals. As an added benefit, you’re mere inches away from the snickerdoodles and whoopee pies that grace the glass bar top.  

Gotta love … the sweet-potato chips and crisp-crusted, fried green tomatoes, both of which are stand-out snacks in between bites of your grinder, stacked a mile high with salami, ham, mortadella sausage, onions, yellow peppers and hot giardiniera relish. 

It should be mandatory … to order the smoky corn chowder bobbing with spicy poblano peppers, fresh-shucked corn, bacon, cubed potatoes and yellow ribbons of corn tortillas. It’s available by the cup or bowl, but if you arrive on the late side of lunch, just before the joint closes, you may be able to get a quart to go. 

Resistance is equally futile … when it comes to the strawberry pistachio cake, snickerdoodles, diabolically rich chocolate brownies and ever-changing cupcakes frosted with icing that’s just sweet enough to share—or not—with your ogling companion.

Ask your server … to give you a tour of the building where Fuel has taken up residence. It’s chock-a-block with retro trappings and furnishings, a lemon-yellow upright piano and groovy art.

Plans are in the works … for a dinner menu, occasional live music on the flagship-stoned patio and a liquor license, the last of which should be in place by the time you read this. 

 

Restaurants Pushing Our Hot Buttons in August

Sputnik 

Though it’s a bona fide bar swelling with tattooed hipsters knocking back cans of PBR and shots of whiskey, this edgy South Broadway dive just happens to turn out a formidable globetrotting menu that will surprise even the harshest skeptics. True, the tattered and torn booths, the color of Navel oranges, coupled with the retro salon vinyl chairs, complete with hair driers, are certifiably gritty, but what other bar parades a food roster that includes the best sweet-potato fries in the city, plus Ecuadorian corn cakes stuffed with queso blanco and an excellent Japanese ramen, stocked with kimchee, seaweed, hardboiled eggs, shrimp, pork or tofu? Exactly. 3 S. Broadway, Denver; sputnikdenver.com or 720-570-4503. 

 

Marco’s Coal-Fired Pizzeria 

While the pizzas here are wood-, rather than coal-fired, Marco’s is nonetheless a no-holes-barred piehole that, given time, may shred its competition to ribbons. Thin-crusted, bubbling hot and oven crisp, the terrific pizzas take about 90 seconds to bake and are crowned with everything from sweet Italian sausage and soppresatta to roasted eggplant, broccoli rabbe and San Marzano tomatoes. The chicken wings, which are coal-fired, are the cream of the coop, their crackly, blackened skins misted with lemon and pelted with salt and pepper. Finally, a chicken wing that flies right. 2129 Larimer St., Denver; marcoscoalfiredpizza.com or 303-296-7000.

 

The Q Worldly Barbeque

Part barbecue bunker and part rollicking blues bar, The Q Worldly Barbeque, a subterranean joint in Cherry Creek North, attracts a steady stream of personalities, most of whom are intrigued by the “worldly” sauces, a dozen or so house-made concoctions that dip into the Carolinas, Tennessee, Texas, Kansas City and even Asia. Tables cram into the tiny quarters, and it’s counter service only, but the shady patio makes for a fine pit stop, the pulled pork is requisitely rosy and smoky, and the grilled corn on the cob comes with the husks intact. The blues bands don’t take the stage until late in the evening, but even then, the kitchen plies its customers with chubby pork sliders. 2817 E. Third Ave., Denver; theqbarbeque.com or 303-399-7227. 

 

Tavern Tech Center

Adding to its burgeoning empire of welcoming watering holes, the Tavern Hospitality Group (Tavern Uptown, Tavern Downtown, Tavern Lowry and Tavern Wash Park) has just upped the eat-ertainment quotient in the Mile High City with this sprawling, two-tiered gathering place for south suburbanites. Complete with two bars, two patios, a sprawling rooftop terrace, countless TVs, a pool and shuffleboard table, foosball and a mini bowling alley, it’s a wonder anyone has time to eat. And yet the something-for-everyone menu delivers an abundance of notable noshes, including Kobe beef sliders, the Philly cheese steak sandwich and cowboy chili stocked with tender bites of prime rib. 5336 DTC Blvd., Greenwood Village; tavernhg.com or 303-221-4660.

 

Masterpiece Delicatessen 

The designer sandwiches at this classy and sassy new deli in the Lower Highland ’hood, aren’t quite the masterpieces the restaurant’s name would have you believe, but the black truffled egg salad is a clever twist on a nostalgic favorite, and the Cubano—slow-roasted Mojo brined pork, dill pickles, mustard, Black Forest ham, mustard and garlic aioli—would likely make Castro do summersaults. As an added bonus, the deli doubles as a mini market, which means you can pick up oranges, mixed olives, grapes and fatter-than-a-football-sized Thumann’s pickles to eat on the go. Better bonus: The patio offers sweeping, unparalleled views of Denver’s city skyline. 1575 Central St., Denver; 303-561-3354.

 

Open Tables in the Springs

If you plan to bunker down in Colorado Springs during the U.S. Senior Open at The Broadmoor, we want to ensure that you eat well. For those of you lucky enough to land a room at The Broadmoor itself, swing by Summit (19 Lake Circle; broadmoor.com/summit.php), a stunningly designed American brasserie that turns out hanger steak, fresh oysters, herb-roasted chicken and pan-roasted halibut. Be sure to poke your head in the bar, if for no other reason than to behold the spectacular, 14-foot, cylindrical wine turret. At Nosh (121 S. Tejon St.; nosh121.com), a relatively new restaurant in the Plaza of the Rockies, diners are singing the praises of executive chef Seth Elwonger, whose roster of globalized small plates (hence “Nosh”) include cumin-rubbed lamb sliders, shrimp tacos, tempura-fried scallops, white gazpacho, crab cakes haloed with a roasted poblano hollandaise and latkes with white truffle apple salad. The citified space, with its exposed red brick walls, arched windows and high ceilings, is the perfect backdrop for Elwonger’s urban menu. Over at Plate World Cuisine (9420 Briar Village Point; platecolorado.com), top toque Ryan Blanchard peddles five separate menus that literally span the world, zigzagging from Italy and Latin America to Cajun country and Asia. Here’s what’s cool: You can choose from a single menu or work your way around the map by mixing and matching from all five menus. While the Margarita at Pine Creek (7350 Pine Creek Road; coloradoeats.com/margarita) might invoke tipsy images of tequila shots, in truth, its name reflects the hacienda-inspired architecture. Helmed by Executive Chef Eric Viedt, this lovely Colorado Springs stalwart offers nightly changing, seasonally inspired prix-fixe menus, including a vegetarian roster, that make the most of fresh, mostly organic ingredients culled from local farmers. It’s unlikely that you’ll spot a crop of vegetarians at The Famous (31 N. Tejon St.; restauranteur.com/famous), however, since this requisitely clubby, but entirely comfortable, locals’ favorite attracts the city’s carnivorous bigwigs. The hefty steaks take center stage, but the live piano music is reason to linger at the bar over a stiff martini.