things wot i made then ate: Bittersweet restaurant, Denver

This is my rack of lamb ↑ at the Bittersweet restaurant, Denver Colorado. I must say, this taught me what rack of lamb is supposed to be. I often see this at the store and think to myself, "Eh, too small. I prefer more substance for my carnivoral dollar," in thought-words that don't exist. So I dismiss lamb for weighing poorly on the imagined value-scale. But not anymore, no Sireee, for now on I'm going to go for it, and try my best to emulate what the cook has done at Bittersweet. This lamb is amazing. I know that meat cannot melt, and yet this seems to melt, and that makes me a sad for little lambs -- for about .00025 of a second, and then I quickly recover. Joe assures me they're probably not baby lambs. But if they weren't, wouldn't they be called sheep?

Bittersweet Restaurant, 500 E. Alameda Ave., Denver, Colorado 80209
303-942-0320

A friend of mine, Joe, and I returned to Bittersweet on Joe's insistence. We were both impressed on our first chance visit, we were actually looking for parking for another place and ended up there. I said, "Well, let's just try it and see." Now we're both glad that we did. Joe hasn't stopped banging on about Bittersweet since our first visit there so I acquiesced for this second visit so soon after the first thinking that would work it out of his system. Now he's on about our next visit. If you happen to be in Denver anytime soon, I urge you to try out Bittersweet before it becomes so popular you cannot get a table.

This restaurant is just starting out and Spring is just begun in Denver so the outdoor portion is still incomplete but coming along noticeably.

This is one of two outdoor fireplaces ↓ that face both outside and inside, and Boy, is it ever hot.

This chair is the first thing you see when you open their door. There are two of these chairs in the foyer.

The hostess's station is just out of the foyer inside the first dining area associated with a bar. This seems the quieter of the two dining areas with a view outward onto their entrance in one direction and their patio in another direction. Turning around the hostess station guests pass the open kitchen into a second dining area that opens to a street view of Alameda.

On the wall facing the street hangs this oversized map of nineteenth-century Paris. Apologies for the glare, it was the best I could do. It's PARIS, alright?, and it's BIG.

At the east wall stands this credenza that functions as a dining room cabinet.

The western wall of the second dining area looks out upon the entrance.

Okay, now I must say, the people at the combined table between these two last shots and situated directly in front of the oversized map of Paris, young and energetic, engaging, and excited, were nevertheless LOUD and the hard surfaces of the room offered no sound-buffering, and that caused me to be loud too in order to compensate, and as I drank first a cocktail, an excellently mixed margarita, and then wine, a bottle between us, my language editor slips and I tend to forget that I'm in public and among polite mixed company. This is a problem, but one that I must manage myself.

Joe was excited to see sweetbreads on the menu. He told me they are brains. He told me this in sign language by pointing to his head as if the words spoken in English are too damaging to speak. He was wrong. Our waitress said they are the thymus gland, I think, but I still have no idea what that is. The whole discussion put me off the idea completely. But Joe persisted in extolling the virtues of sweetbreads and then dragged another acquaintance who was not present into the discussion saying he'd flip if he knew that Bittersweet offered sweetbreads as if the fallacious rhetorical devices of argumentum ad numerum or argumentum ad populum could stand a chance of convincing me to order cooked cow glands.

Please.

Joe's sweetbread Rubens. He made me eat one. You know what? It's delicious. I have no idea what the green thing was on the end of the stem. At first I thought it was an olive but it was split in two and didn't have a pit inside it or a space where a pit used t be, but it did taste like an olive.

I had the bouillabaisse ↑. This was a bit of a disappoint for me, not because it was bad but because my expectations were so high. For one thing I could not detect the taste of saffron which I expected. Second, the crostini did not come with a touch of aioli as I visualized when I ordered it. Third it is much smaller than I expected. Fourth, it is more tomato-y than how I understand bouillabaisse to be. By my lights, it could have been tomato soup with a few seafood bits in it. I do not recommend it. But then, I'm a pisser for bouillabaisse, and now I know, there is a whole range of possibilities and I must therefore broaden my expectations and not keep comparing to some imagined ideal.

This is the hand of our waitress and the rest of her is even more attractive. She is charming, that is we were completely charmed. Their entire staff is quite impressive. I wonder how it would go if I would stop by the kitchen, since it's open, and chatted it up with the chef. You know, ask him a bunch of food-related questions and give him the opportunity to expatiate. Would he kick me out?

These are the halibut cheeks Joe ordered ↓. That's right, halibut cheeks. Now, if you're like me, an avid aquarium hobbyist, then you might tend to believe that fish do not have cheeks, that instead they have gills where cheeks would ordinarily be, and even if they did have cheeks, then why would you want to eat them? I mean, come on. First cow thymus glands that you are happy to eagerly devour even when you thought they were brains and now fish cheeks. Had I known this would be a traipse through the abattoir of the macabre I'd never have agreed to it. But again with the 'it's the most tender portion' rationalization.