rants, raves, & reviews

We took a little in town mini-vaca this weekend & stayed at the luna hotel. Shitsngrins would love the decor. DenverHotPants would love the No Children rule. Infochef would rate it too hip. We got a free room upgrade with a california king. If our 1908 house had a room large enough to hold a california king, we could probably sleep with all the dogs in the bed at once. Our downtown mini-vacation included a fabulous dinner at denver chop house. Yeah, I know, it's a chain but it represents what chains should be- a consistent, positive experience for their customers. Final stop on our mini-vaca: If you enjoy an early morning weekend breakfast, you probably know mona's. It has been on our list to try the lunch menu there and we finally made it on Monday. Highly recommended- but not such a secret. We went shortly after 11 am (hey, it was a vacation day) and there was a wait by 11:45 am on a Monday.

As I have mentioned in several previous post, I have grown to appreciate the Belmar Whole Foods and even prefer it to the Cherry Creek location. This weekend we confirmed the missing element of Belmar: decent dining establishments. After a service-less visit to pf changs several weeks ago, JB & I decided to try the elephant bar. As we stepped onto the leopard skin patterned carpet, JB says "The worst it can be is mediocre". And the dining gods laughed. Our host handed us 4 menus to start plus there was a menu on the table and then our server gave us another page of new additions. The side salad was called an adventure side salad and the decor had a pier1 african closeout theme but the menu was all over the place. Even the mixed veggies that came on JB's plate couldn't pick a theme. We love fusion. This was chaos. All those menus & nothing good to eat. We drank rum- a perfect drink for a bad chain experience- which left me with the giggles. The cheesecake, however, upgraded elephant bar from "don't buy" to "risky". The reason we were in Belmar was to catch an Oscar Flick. We (& the 3 other people in the theatre) enjoyed transamerica. I really liked the hopeful but not sugary ending. Felicity Huffman was, of course, fab.