Post Thanksgiving Day Eats

The first step in designing the perfect day after Thanksgiving is to make sure there are no leftovers, or to come as close to that goal as possible. With all the television news magazine shows and feature sections of newspapers and even THE DAILY BEAST offering tips on what to do with leftover turkey and stuffing for the weeks after the big day, it seems almost sacreligious not to do something clever with the remains. One year we were really into cracking eggs into little pockets of dressing and baking them. The first few bites are terrific and you feel proud of yourself for being so clever, but the dressing inevitably gets too dry and you end up just scooping egg out of pockets of day old stuffing when what you really want is a breakfast burrito at Snooze. The whole point is that if your turkey is so good and moist that it flies off the carcus and onto guests' plates, you won't have to feel guilty about spending the next day hanging out at your favorite restaurants.

Thanks to my wife's "We-don't-need-no-stinking-brine" turkey mastery, at most we have enough white meat for a couple of sandwiches, a few dollops of dressing, a handful of asparagus spears and a tub of gravy.

After some preliminary cleaning late Thanksgiving night after the guests have left, my perfect follow-up day starts in the kitchen at about 6 in the morning before anyone else has gotten out of bed. The kitchen, mess and all, is all mine and I can sneak bites of left over pecan pie as I winnow out the detritus. By the time the rest of the house is up, the kitchen looks like new, the table has been rearranged for normal non-Thanksgiving day life, and I am at the table drinking coffee and working the crosswords.

On this latest post-Thanksgiving lark, we all pile into the car and drive down to Snooze for pineapple upside down pancakes, monstrous breakfast burritoes, and eggs benedicts to die for.

To our way of thinking, Snooze is the Mizuna of breakfast joints (more on Mizuna later). When we told the owner that a few visits ago he almost got on his knees to give obeisance to our praise. But it is true.

Let's face it, breakfast is pretty much the same wherever you end up. Two eggs over easy with two strips of bacon and hashbrowns at Denny's isn't all that different than the same at the Brown Palace. The difference is in the details and that's why people are lined up all morning long outside Snooze's door at Park Avenue and Larimer. There is a newer Snooze on Colorado Boulevard somewhere around
8th Avenue. I'm sure the food is equally wonderful, but from the outside the place looks too much like a Denny's for hipsters. The place downtown looks like what it is, a converted whore house with great food and service.

We don't get our names on the list until 11:30 and we finally sit at a quarter past noon. I like the fact that Snooze steadfastly refuses to play favorites when it comes to seating. They don't take reservations and they aren't even interested in you calling in your name from the car on the way down. On the other hand 45 minutes does push my patience a little even though the food is worth it.

After they call our name, we work our way through the awkward corner-front door with a post placed in such a way as to make a quick entry or exit impossible. I always like being led through the mobs of hopeful diners and to a table. The four of us (daughter and son-in-law were with us) score a circular vinyl upholstered booth, one of a string of booths lined up and down the middle of the room. A few former waiters stop by to say hi as we wait for bloody marys and coffee. Both are wonderful, especially the coffee. One of the main draws of Snooze for me is that I like to bring home bags of coarsely ground Snooze coffee (They come in colorful cloth bags that make great gift bags for the holiday season.).

It takes a while to order at Snooze. I, for one, carry on a running debate with myself on the way downtown. Will it be the Spuds Deluxe this time, or Pork Benny? Why not just get a flight of pancakes? The burrito was amazing last time, maybe I should order it again? It is a tough decision but someone has to make it.

The four of us end up ordering one breakfast burrito, two benedicts and one Spuds Deluxe. Mine comes with pulled pork and great green chili with two eggs over easy. And then the same thing happens that always happens during great meals. The conversation slows down and turns to the food and when we take bites we all variously look up and glance heavenward with a knowing look that says this is the best thing I've ever tasted. And then you keep saying that with the next bite and the next.

The meal over and as much as we want to camp out we don't. That would be tacky. So we get up and out of the way so the next happy foursome can rotate in. That's the way it goes at Snooze.

But the day has just begun. On the way home we stop at St. Nicks on South Santa Fe and spend two hours looking at every kind of Christmas ornamentation possible. As a added bonus, we spot a group of three coyotes standing out by the Platte looking for some lap dog to munch on. I can't guarantee the coyotes at every visit, but you might get lucky and have a lap dog nearby as well. I keep leading my wife and daughter down to see the artificial trees every time we go to the joint. My subtle hints have not panned out so far, but I'm still hoping.

Since this perfect day is going to end with dinner at Mizuna, the rest of the afternoon has to be devoted to hanging out. Watching football. Catching up on Facebook. Reading. But under no circumstances should there be any eating or drinking. You can only consume so much in a day.

Walking into Mizuna is always like going to a family reunion only without any irritating cousins. Everyone just seems happy to see us. Even the car valet seems pleased, like he's been looking forward to our arrival. We get one of our two most cherished tables over in the corner by the entrance to the back dining room and almost simultaneously Chris, Ryan, Greg and Steve come by to welcome us back and ask our daughter how life is in the White House and congratulate her husband on his new job. These people are good!

I love seeing the food I order at Mizuna being brought to the table. The servers act like they are excited to see your reaction to the presentation and when they walk away from the table they sneak glances over their shoulders to catch, for instance, my look of sheer bliss when I took my first bite of the sweet and sour pork, or Franny's amazed reaction to the fois gras.

I also love, after I get settled and have a sip of wine, to just look around the room at Mizuna. Every table is full. The sandstone colored walls (maybe they are yellower than sandstone) punctuated with Quang Ho's wonderful oils wrap around Denver's classiest and cosiest dining room. The most important thing is that you almost never see any sad faces at Mizuna. Just lots of toasts and smiles.

This time the four of us order salmon, a veal porterhouse and two tenderloin preparations. I figure this combination will give Ryan a nice wine challenge and he comes back with a ruby red syrah from California that is so good we order a second bottle.

Every main course was exceptional, but I have to pay special attention to the perogis that accompany the tenderloin. I make perogis at home as a kind of new Christmas day tradition and they are quite good. In fact they are made from the Mizuna cookbook, but eating the real thing helps show me the difference between a restaurant cook and a home cook. Mine are delicious and the family keeps coming back for more, but Mizuna's are more carmelized than mine (easily fixed) and I think the olive oil they use and finish with is infinitely better. Mostly, I fear, it is all in the touch, the technique.

We have some coffee and dessert, pay the check (GASP) and drive the long way back up Santa Fe to our home in Littleton. Whenever I make that drive (which is quite often) I always kinda wish that Mizuna would open up a Mizuna II in downtown Littleton, or some such place. When I come to my senses, I realize that if that actually happened I would gain 50 pounds and be bankrupt in six months. Be careful what you wish for. . .