After nibbling on two appetizers, eating a salad, having a tiny pumpkin muffin, and sampling elk, bison, and quail, I still had some room – or so I told myself. Look, it was time for dessert, and that’s my favorite part of any meal. Because I knew I would be taking pictures, I even went ahead and ordered two. Yes, I was one woman, of a normal weight, ordering two desserts, because I felt like it. It was awesome.

Getting two desserts solved the dilemma I’ve mentioned many times on this blog: I love cake, and I want to order cake, but I don’t always like the cake. So, what did I do? I ordered the cake, and I ordered the panna cotta, which sounded really weird and therefore extremely exciting.

Mexican chocolate cake

The Fort’s chocolate cake is a Mexican cake with a little chile spice in the mix. I’ve had chocolate with cayenne and chipotle before, and I quite liked it. This particular cake also had bourbon somewhere in it, but I am not sure where. I could definitely taste the tingle of the chile as I ate it, though. Boy, this was a generous serving – I think those two pieces were a quarter of an 8 inch cake.I managed a few bites and that was it – I was pretty full, and there wasn’t enough vavavoom to this dessert to inspire me.

Rosemary-infused panna cotta

I mentioned a panna cotta, which is basically cream and sugar that is set with gelatin. This variation was rosemary infused with huckleberries on top. I’ve never had panna cotta or huckleberries before. I’ve been missing out my entire life. I love smooth, creamy flavors, and panna cotta is so, so silkily textured. It was heaven in my mouth. The rosemary gave it a bright, lemony, herbal note in the background that was just wonderful. Of course, the berries were very welcome as well – tart and brightly colored, mixing with the mildly-flavored cream in lovely streaks.

Empty panna cotta glass

I found room for the panna cotta and in fact ate the whole thing. Do you see the patterns on the side? That’s where I was desperately scraping with my spoon.

Coffee with Frangelico

I mentioned in a previous post that I had an ulterior motive regarding the sunset. Well, it was about 8:30 and the sun’s official setting time was 8:52 on this glorious July day, so I decided to order a coffee to extend my stay a little. I am a sucker for coffees with liqueur because they somehow transform normal coffee into something magical topped with whipped cream. This one had Frangelico and maybe Kahlua in it. It was actually very good; I could taste the alcohol but in a very pleasant way. It definitely added to the flavor of the coffee itself, which wasn’t too robust.

The whipped cream was fantastic, of course. I wanted to take that axe stirrer with me, but it said The Fort on it like it was custom-made for them, so I thought it’d be wrong to take it. The coffee was a nice end to a very nice meal. Afterwards, I went to the patio to watch the moon rise and caught the sunset behind me, as documented in the last post. Success!

Continuing my posts about the Fort, a historic restaurant in the hills outside of Denver, we arrive at my entree, the Game Plate. It was a bison filet, an elk steak, and a teriyaki quail. I was on a quest to eat things that I would not be able to easily find in New Jersey or New York, you see. I also love good steak but never order it out for dieting reasons. Since I was on vacation, I was splurging all over the place.

Please forgive the slightly lower quality; I was seated a few feet from a window in a dark building, and the sun was going down. Out of courtesy, I never use flash in a restaurant. These low-light photos were taken with my wonderful Mark II 50mm Canon lens that is amazingly only $90.

The elk chop is the larger cut on top. It was great! This was the most meat I’ve eaten in one sitting in literally years, period, because even when we eat it at home, I limit myself to 5 oz. The flavor and texture were wonderful. Sometimes gamey meat has a bad connotation to it but there was nothing ‘off’ or ‘rancid’ or ‘vegetal’ about the flavor that I recall.

Steaks at the Fort

That bird sticking out is a quail in teriyaki sauce. It’s a wee bird for sure. I never eat non-breast chicken so this, too, was an unusual feat for me, and I wasn’t quite sure how to eat it, so I tore it apart with my fork. I think that’s a good sign, as it was very tender, but this property might have do with how small a quail is. There was never more than an inch thickness of meat at any given point. The teriyaki sauce was good but I imagined it overshadowed any unique flavors of the quail. However, I thought this was tasty, and I’d eat it again.

The photo makes me laugh because it’s like the quail is the wicked witch in the wizard of oz. An elk steak fell on it instead of a house.

Quail and Elk steak in the Fort's Game Plate

I love rare meat, as it has more flavor and juiciness to me. I prefer the meltingly soft texture of a rare cut to the stringy texture of something well-done. The bison was, as you can see, quite rare, and I was pretty pleased. It’s also a lean meat – bison is low fat and in fact does not have the same ‘marbled’ property as beef at all.

Piece of bison steak

So there I was, a young woman in a dress, sitting alone, eating two appetizers, a salad, and a plate of game, to be followed by two desserts, most of which I didn’t eat. This young woman also had a camera and a bag of lenses.

Now, it’s not unusual, in the Tristate area (NJ, PA, NY), to have a manager come over to your table once in awhile and ask how you are. I have been asked that many times when I did not have a camera on me. When my waiter and then a manager asked me how my meal was, I thought that was normal.

Then the owner came over.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I was researching restaurants with a view for my Denver trip, I read about The Fort in Morrison, Colorado. I was lucky to have stumbled upon this list because I hadn’t been looking at places in Boulder, Morrison, Aurora, and other surrounding towns. The Fort is in the foothills of the Rockies, a few miles from Red Rock Amphitheatre. It has its own slab of red rock, and it’s built entirely out of adobe mud to look like a trading post that stood on the same site in 1846.

The Fort has decided to live up to its rich history by serving game that is local to Colorado. As soon as I saw elk, rattlesnake, quail, buffalo, and other meats on the menu, I was sold. I got there at 6:00 and hoped to park at a Denver-facing window until sunset.

To start, I had a mint julep in a mason jar. I’ve never had one, but the Great Gatsby made them sound awesome, so I gave it a try. It had French brandy, peach brandy, and some mint. I’m not much of a drinker so it was a little strong for me, but I felt pretty cool drinking from a jar, having never done that before.

Old-fashioned mint julep in a mason jar

They didn’t have rattlesnake on the menu that day, which I found deeply disappointing. I replaced it with beef tongue, which sounded strange and therefore interesting. It was extremely soft and tender; it literally melted in your mouth. When you took a bite out of it on the toast, it just pulled apart. However, it was all texture; because it was sliced so thin, it didn’t have a lot of beefy flavor. I don’t know what I expected. All I know about beef tongue is a scene in a Ramona/Judy Bloom book.

I am pleased with this picture because I was seated a few feet from the window and already starting to have lighting problems because of the setting sun. A good sharpening in my graphics program helped out a lot.

Beef tongue from The Fort

The other appetizer I had planned for was indeed available that evening: Rocky Mountain Oysters. For those unacquainted, they are beef testicles. This preparation breaded and fried them, which I am told is common. I actually never eat fried things if I can help it, both for health reasons and a deep loathing for getting grease on my hands or face. This means no fried chicken, chicken nuggets, deep fried turkey/poptarts/twinkies, etc. I do eat French fries and the occasional mozzarella stick, though, so I gave these a try.

Fried Rocky Mountain Oysters

This is the inside of one. It’s pale, right? Like dark meat chicken? That’s what it tasted like. (Ironic, right?) It didn’t taste like beef — just meat and iron. I ate a few with the provided salsa but I didn’t care for them. It was like eating chicken nuggets. I hoped for something more revolutionary. I mean, it’s a testicle!  I should note, too, that both of these appetizers were half portions because I was eating by myself.

Rocky Mountain Oysters

I followed that with a jicama and pumpkin seed salad with a damiana vinaigrette. Damiana is an herb native to Mexico, and it smelled extremely familiar when I was eating it. I later found out it is used in teas and some people liken it to chamomile which might explain it. It was a nice dressing — the herbal notes really upped the vegetation factor of the salad. I want to eat a salad to eat plants, not chicken, cheese, tortilla strips, or wontons, and the damiana vinaigrette really cements that experience.

This is my favorite salad photo ever. I like the white light in the background, the shape of the bowl, the luminescence of the leaves, and the overall framing of the shot. I can see why a lot of food photographers style with light behind the subject, though I think it gets boring after awhile.

Salad