Friday, October 4, 2013

I WISH LUNCH COULD LAST FOREVER

Cholon Modern Asian Bistro vis a vis Bones

We met Franny and Willa for lunch yesterday at Cholon Modern Asian Bistro.  It sits on the corner of 16th Street and Blake with big windows lining both facades.  Kathie and I got there a little early and were having a drink when we saw Franny walking by with Willa quick striding beside her.  One of my greatest joys in life lately is the reaction on Willa's face whenever she sees us and yesterday was no disappointment.  Kathie tapped on the glass and when Willa saw us through the window, her eyes got wider--I call them Willa-wide.  Her pacifier almost dropped out of her smiling mouth and she came over to give the window a return tap.  After a start like that, how could lunch be anything but wonderful.

Lunch is my favorite meal out.  I love sitting at a table, especially if it is a beautiful day and the table is outside or at least by a window, watching people walk by, drinking a crisp wine or a beer sweaty with the cold, and going through a succession of creative small plates.  Bones is probably my favorite place for lunch, even though the ambience is hardly that of a French sidewalk cafe.  I mean the crowd ambling past to get a beef combination at Benny's is fairly pedestrian (excuse the completely unintentional pun).  But the food--if there are enough of us, we like to go through all the appetizers--is sensational, from the Shishito peppers (my favorite appetizer of all time) to the steamed buns to the escargot pot stickers.

I wanted to go to Cholon because 5280 had rated it the second best restaurant, behind Frasca, in the area, and in particular raved about the steamed buns.  Well, my loyalty to the Bonnano brand was sufficient to compel me to go out and make the inevitable comparison.

Let's start with the obvious.  It is ridiculous to compare the two.  Cholon is sleek and gleaming with roomy tables sitting on classy carpets and a long, beautifully appointed bar to greet you at the door.  If you've ever been to a restaurant by Morimoto, Cholon is in that mold, although not nearly so amazingly stark and opulent at the same time.  Bones, on the other hand, is a corner noodle bar loaded to the rafters with people sucking up noodle bowls and other people standing by the door waiting to get their chance.  It's noisy.  I'm deaf to begin with, so talking is not something I plan on whenever I go there.  I'm too busy eating.  Cholon is a beautiful room with quiet, efficient, perfect service.  Bones is a tight little joint with waiters and waitresses brushing by tables on their way up the rickety stairs to get drink orders.

But when it comes to food, the comparison becomes more interesting.  Just like at Bones, we ordered all the appetizers.  First came two orders of soup dumplings, the other reason I wanted to try the place out.  Last time we were in New York visiting Nate and Ashley we had soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai and they were a revelation, unlike anything I had ever had.  The dumplings (4 per order) at Cholon would also have been a revelation had I never been to New York; instead, they were different--filled with onion soup rather than the chickeney asian broth at Joe's.  Forget that.  I'm being a New York snob.  Those are the most irritating kind.  You know, the ones who, whenever they eat ANYTHING, will say, "this is quite good, but you can get much better ones at this little shop in the East Village."  In fact, the dumplings were to die for and I'll be sure to come back for more in the future.

Next came what I had been waiting for, the steamed buns.  They were beautifully presented.  Everything was beautifully presented.  In fact, I would have to say it was the most impressive plating I had seen in Denver.  And the flavor and texture and all of that was terrific, but the steamed buns at Bones are better.  Not prettier.  At first glance, not nearly as impressive.  But they simply taste better and the texture, the mouth feel, of the actual buns was better.  They're more addictive.  If I were only after the buns, no contest, I'm going to go to Bones.

But then the rest of the apps came out one at a time and they were down to the last detail at least as good as the rest of the fare at Bones.  There was a peppery toast thing with a cocoanut dipping sauce that we all thought Willa would love.  Alas, she is getting picky in her eating as she gets older and she turned up her nose at it.  That was okay with me as I popped the last piece of toast into my mouth.  A pretty traditional plate of delicious pot stickers showed up next.  The last app I tried was the beef skewers.  Sometimes at restaurants--it happens at Mizuna regularly--I'll take the first taste of a new dish and it will be so overwhelmingly perfect that I have to sit up, put my fork down, and fend off tears of wonderment.  Such was my reaction to the beef skewers.

We had a great afternoon.  The lunch lasted about two hours.  The perfect amount of time.  Cholon is definitely, as the saying goes, a destination restaurant, but when it comes to taste, inventiveness, and vibe, Bones remains my gold standard.  It's also A LOT cheaper.



THE MOST INSIDIOUS TECH INNOVATION IN THE HISTORY OF MAN

A Parable

I went on line the minute the new iPhone 5s were available.  At first, the site took forever to load and then I kept getting error messages.  When I finally got through and jumped through all the hoops, they told me I would get my new phone in two months.

Two months!

There were only two ways to look at this.  If the incredibly high volume glitching up the site was any indication, then it must be a great device well worth waiting for.  On the other hand, the glitches and two month wait are proof that Apple is incompetent and arrogantly overreaching.  I came to the only conclusion I could and realized that the iPhone 5 as presented by the Apple Corporation is the most insidious technological innovation in the history of man and trashed my forms and went back to my dial phone.  Ma Bell never made me wait!

But even though I was frustrated, I was kind of happy.  The whole experience confirmed my certainty that everything and everyone in the world other than me and the people I hang out with are slowly chipping away at my freedom.  By going back to my dial phone I struck a blow for the kind of liberty our founding fathers were talking about when they couldn't get enough bars to call out of Philadelphia.