Country Road Café – Kittredge, CO

So this small building on Highway 74 on the west side of town has been a breakfast café for a really, really long time (I used to go there when I was in high school) but the ownership has changed a lot and this my first visit with the current owners. They are only open for breakfast and lunch and are closed on Mondays.

First thing you should know - it’s really busy on Saturdays. And the reason why is because the food is excellent and the portions are huge! I had the ham and brie French toast. Very good. One friend had the biggest pancakes I’ve ever seen. Not only did they fill the entire plate, they were so fluffy (at least an inch high) and tasted so buttery. Another friend has an Avocado Bacon Wrap with egg, avocado, bacon, cream cheese and topped with hollandaise sauce.

Definitely going back because they have a whole bunch of entrees that are on top of red skin mashed potatoes (they call them Our Famous Smashed Masheds). They also make their own homemade chips (see my blog at http://notebyheather.blogspot.com/ for a story about those).

Prices are reasonable, nothing over $10, just be prepared to wait if you go on a Saturday morning. But it is definitely it.

Buffalo Doughboy Bakery - Denver, CO

This tiny little baker has the BEST croissants in Denver (I can say this because I have had croissants in Paris – the home of the best croissants in the world!). It’s located on the corner of Lincoln and Dakota, just a couple blocks south of Alameda. They sell their croissants to other restaurants and that’s how my Mother and I first tasted them. We had two croissant sandwiches (one with turkey and one with spinach and feta cheese) and both were delicious. They have a wide variety of pastries and sandwiches and everything looked great. There is seating inside and outside but if it’s busy you might not get a chair.

They are closed on Monday and don’t stay open late (until 4:30 Tuesday through Friday and 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays) but definitely worth a visit.

Lollicup, Denver, CO

Sometimes you just never know that certain places even exist. Lollicup (http://www.lollicupdenver.com/Place.aspx) is on of those places. It’s kind of hard to find. It’s in a strip mall on the west side of Colorado Blvd., two blocks north of I-25 behind a Village Inn.

The best way to describe Lollicup is that it is a Taiwan slushy/tea café. In addition to teas and juices it also Snow Bubble beverages which are creamy and Slush beverages which are ice-blended. You can get then in a variety of fruit flavors like blueberry, raspberry, passion fruit, peach, mango, etc. or more exotic flavors like sour plum, ginger, jasmine, lychee or red bean.

We got two Snow Bubbles, one was cranberry and one was lavender. With each drink you have the option of adding BoBa balls (made from a mixture of tapioca and carrageenan powder), aka Bubbles, which have the consistence of gummy candies, don’t have much taste, are black, and sink to the bottom of the drink. We go Boba balls (Bubbles) in the cranberry drink. While each drink tasted good, I didn’t understand the point of the Boba balls. They were just chewy bits and came in your drink.

If you want something cool to drink on a hot day, it’s definitely a different cultural experience.

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, CO

Did you know that Denver has a contemporary art museum? Not many people do. The city has an art museum, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) with has contemporary art displayed but Denver also has a contemporary art museum called MCA Denver (www.mcadenver.org) It’s located at the corner of 15th Street and Delgany in LoDo.

MCA Denver was founded in 1996 and has a really great three floor building with lots of class and white walls. There are five galleries and they perform in a “rotation sequence” which means every couple of months the old exhibits go out and a new one come in.

My mother is an artist and has wanted to go to the MCA Denver for awhile so my sister and I took her there for Mother’s Day. Two things really stuck out on this visit. First of all, there was hardly anyone there! I think I saw six other people in the entire museum (not including the two staff at the front desk and two volunteer/staff roaming exhibits. The second thing I notice (which may have contributed to the firs thing) is that the majority of the exhibits were small (as in five pieces of works). A lot of the walls were bare. There is so much room for so much more work!

Contemporary art might not be everyone’s cup of tea. One display was a dark room with a small television screen showing the mouth of talking woman reciting the late Irish dramatist and writer, Samuel Becket’s Not I, which is the consists of a woman trying to recount the memory of a tragic breath.

The MCA Denver may not have the money to do any PR or advertising but unless I knew of a specific exhibit I’d want to see, I probably wouldn’t return. This is kind of sad because a city like of Denver should have this type of culture. It seems like there are local contemporary artist that could fill the space, and it’s really beautiful space. Too bad.