For Kim’s birthday, we headed out to dinner at the Wash Park Grille. This has been on our list of places to eat since moving here, but for some reason or another we had still yet to have gone. Thought I’m not sure it was necessary, I made a reservation for 6:30, and when we arrived we were given a booth table. Surprisingly (at least for Kim) there was already a bottle of wine on the table for us, a gift from her family. So we were able to have a glass of wine while looking over the menu.

I decided to have the Italian Penne Pasta with sauted chicken breast, Italian sausage, mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and onions in a spicy tomato parmesan cream sauce, along with the French onion soup to start. Kim had the Fettuccine Aglio e Olio, pan fried fresh pasta with artichoke hearts, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, chili flakes, Italian herbs and grilled chicken, along with a salad to start. I would highly recommend the dish that I chose, the Italian Penne Pasta, which was just a bit spicy and very delicious. I don’t know that I would order the Fettuccine Aglio e Olio again, as I thought it was just average, but regardless the food was overall excellent. We will definitely be back, and I hope it’s sometime soon!

My dad has been in town (well Boulder and Broomfield actually) for the past week. Last night Kim and I took a trip to meet with him for dinner and beers at Gordon Biersch in Broomfield. We accidentally left the house without the GPS, so it took a bit of searching, but we eventually found the restaurant tucked away in the back of the shopping mall area. I swear that I’ve been to another Gordon Biersch location before, but Kim doesn’t think so. Anyway, the food and drinks were great. In a city with so many brewpubs, it’s hard to go to a national chain, but this one is an exception. Another exception to the rule would be Rock Bottom, but they are headquartered nearby, making it even more acceptable. With some good beers, it’s hard to go wrong.

As mentioned earlier, we attended the Great American Beer Festival over this past weekend. This was our third time attending the festival and once again I put together a little list of must hit breweries. When we finally made it inside the festival doors we did our best to visit all of them. In addition to my own list, I also had a list of the 10 Not-to-Miss Breweries from local magazine, 5280. The nice thing about their list is that it included two beers from each with descriptions, but we later found that some of them were missing from the festival completely.

We attended the last session of the festival on Saturday evening. The nice thing about doing it this way is that you can find out which beers won medals earlier in the day’s official competition. The bad thing is that we found some of the beers were completely gone, and some breweries had completely packed up shop already. The event is still worth going to no matter what session you attend. Maybe next year I’ll consider going to Saturday afternoon’s members only session for the AHA, especially if I start brewing my own beer next year.

My fantasy football team is almost as bad as the Bengals, almost. I blamed my 1-1 start on being out of the country on our honeymoon, but I have no excuse for an embarrassing loss this past week. I think the problem is that my team just isn’t good enough. Even if I had played all of the correct players, I still would have lost by over 40 points! Maybe this is the Bengals problem too, though honestly I didn’t have high hopes for this past week. Playing the defending champions is never a fun thing, and it was actually a better game than I expected. Still the best part of watching the game had little to do with the game itself. We finally made it back to the local Denver Bengals bar, Wyman’s #5. If I’m going to watch bad football, I might as well do it while eating delicious pizza!

While catching up on some blog reading over lunch today, I stumbled upon an article on Boing Boing discussing a recent visit to Casa Bonita. Just a little bit of background, this is a Mexican themed restaurant in Denver that features cliff divers, escaping gorillas, cowboy shootouts, lost caves and caverns, amusement arcade and more. It has always been a favorite to local children since it’s opening in early 70’s, and has established a bit of a cult following after being featured in an episode of South Park. If anyone knows where I can view this episode online, please let me know.

Anyway, I was reminded of the first time we had heard of this restaurant. Back in April of 2007 friends from KC, the Kenagy’s and the Martin’s, visited us in Denver. In an email, Kelly Martin mentioned a restaurant in Denver with cliff divers and food that was rated as marginal. Though we didn’t get around to visiting Casa Bonita during their trip, Kim never forgot about the restaurant and decided to drag Amy and I there during a visit of her own.

None of us that went to Casa Bonita that day will ever forget our first (and currently only) experience with the restaurant. The food was definitely marginal at best, bordering on inedible would also be a proper description. And the entertainment was ridiculously amusing, though I’m sure with the right amount of alcohol it could have been much funnier. As most commenter’s on the Boing Boing article mention, the sopaipillas were probably the highlight of the adventure. Any visitors to Denver, consider yourself warned.

We celebrated my birthday on Friday evening. My birthday was four months ago, but due to multiple reschedulings, we weren’t able to use my gift from Kim until then. She bought seats for both of us to attend a cooking class at the Cook Street School of Fine Cooking. Originally we were going to take a grilling class, but after missing that class we opted for an Thai cooking class.

First we were briefed on all of the different dishes we were going to prepare and enjoy over the next three hours. From there we were all actually able to get our hands dirty and involved in each phase of multiple dishes. For both Kim and I, it was great to learn some knife skills first, and then put them to use cutting and chopping all sorts of fresh ingredients. Later, we were involved in tasting and recommending additions that needed to be made to each dish. And finally, we got to sit and enjoy all of the dishes the group of around fifteen of us prepared.

Though we lost the recipe book that was provided to us for each of the dishes, I think the overall knowledge we gained will help both of us cook better than before. Now all I need is a decent chef’s knife to use as the techniques we learned are likely not going to work with what I’m using currently.

It’s nice to be back in Denver and out of the humidity of Kansas City. I can take 90+ degrees anyday, but not when it’s mixed with 100% humidity! Before leaving KC, I managed to have a nice weekend there. Kim flew in on Saturday morning, taking a quick layover on her return from Cincinnati. I picked her up at the airport and then we headed for a company picnic with many of the folks I work with in KC. We did our best to fight the humidity, but the gathering only lasted for a few hours. From there we pretty much relaxed the rest of the day, with dinner thrown in at Jose Pepper’s.

Sunday we awoke too late to get the free hotel breakfast, but it was so nice to sleep in. From there we headed down to our old stomping grounds near the Country Club Plaza. We drove past the old house, though it doesn’t look like too much has changed over in that neighborhood. From there we met up with our old friends Mike and Christie down on the Plaza at Baja 600, another Mexican place. Yeah, I had my fair share of Mexican food while in town. We then walked around the plaza for awhile before it was time for our flights back to Denver. I’m well rested now and ready for the week ahead.

I finally made it out of the Lee’s Summit area last night. After work, I headed down to the new Power and Light District with a co-worker where we met up with another fella that we used to work with. We first had dinner and a couple rounds at the Flying Saucer, which I would highly recommend. Not only do they have an incredible beer list, they also have some tasty food.

From there we wandered around the block and into a few different bars down there. First was the PBR Big Sky, which when I first heard the name thought was going to be a place where you could only get Pabst Blue Ribbon. Instead, it turned out to be a bar for the Professional Bull Riders, complete with a mechanical bull and servers wearing chaps.

Once we had our fill of country music, we headed for Angels Rock Bar, which was equally as loud and also had it’s share of scantily clad servers. Are you noticing a trend? They did have some music a little more our style though, so we hung out there for a while. Finally made it down to Tango Sed Cantina, which actually tuned out to be even more crowded than the other bars where. Downtown Kansas City has definitely changed and I’m happy to say that there now appears to be something worthwhile to go down there for.

So far I haven’t done much with my free time in Kansas City. I’ve been working until six or later each day and from there I’ve headed out for a late dinner and then retired to my hotel room in an attempt to catch up on my sleep I missed over the last week and weekend. I guess it’s working so far, but I could probably use one more night of rest and I’ll be fully recovered. However I have tried my best to go out and get some good Kansas City related food, though no BBQ has been had yet. Here’s my list so far:

• Houlihan’s - dinner night one
• Planet Sub - lunch day two
• 54th Street - dinner night two

Lunch today doesn’t really count as some guys at work convinced me to try Panda Express. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really that great either. Dinner for tonight is still up for grabs, any other places I need to hit?

Anyone thinking of hitting up the Great American Beer Festival with us this year? I believe that we’ll be heading to the evening session on Saturday October 10th 11th. Tickets went onsale today, and though I don’t think they sell out very quickly, they always do sell out before the actual weekend arrives. Even though the crowds can be pretty large, I still find the event totally worth the price and hassle associated with it. Three cheers for our third appearance at the fest!