Colorado Springs...In The Garden of the Food Gods!

On Friday, July 29th, Mary Ann decided she needed a visit with her friend, Ann, so we headed up I-25 for a little 300 mile jaunt in Smartyn...to Colorado Springs. We last visited, or should I say..did a quick one night drive by, in 2009. Then, we vowed to come back to dig a little deeper because we could tell it was a place that had a lot of potential for us. Our hunch proved right based on this revisit. We pretty much hit the ground running Friday. Right after checking in to our hotel we were hungry, and after doing some quick online research, we found a place on Open Table that intrigued both of us, Till Kitchen http://tillkitchen.com/.

Here's what an 18,000 sq. feet, $13,000.000 restaurant looks like.

Turns out it was lucky to find it since it only opened about a month ago, and there's not much info on it yet. Judging from the crowd already there at 5:30 pm, and the fact there were no reservations available, the place doesn't need much in the way of PR help. It's an 18,000 square foot bustling market/restaurant that serves, as they call it, hyper local food, mostly sourced from within 50 miles. This is healthy food for people like us or those who could care less about eating healthy. The point is that it's all very well prepared...and delicious. A couple of examples off their menu, "Colorado Sourdough Pizza" (four to choose from), " Oak grilled trout with freshly dug potatoes, pole beans and herb butter," " Buttermilk shrimp with remoulade, cocktail sauce, potato, and cole slaw," "BLTA with our pullman bread, bacon, heirloom tomato, avocado, sharp cheddar, roasted pepper and local bibb." Many of the menu items and much more to take away are available in the adjoining Mercantile, where you also find fresh breads and bakery items, a coffee bar, a cheese counter, and gourmet items. As I mentioned, 18,000 square feet. That's a big space!

We sat at the long counter so we could have a good view of the open kitchen and all the activity. Dinner and a show for us! Our food was way above normal, service was efficient, and when we left our stools at the counter, we went over and picked out a small round piece of brown sugar pound cake to take back to the room. It was off the chart wonderful. Plain, yet very rich. I'm sure all of their other items are equally yummy. I know, Till Kitchen will be added to our must stop list of stellar places around the country!

On Saturday, after M A caught up with her friend, we went exploring around town, and we hit some of the must see places around, like The Garden of the Gods. 

 The Garden of the Gods

Well, touring around builds the appetite, right? Right! So of course we already had our dinner destination planned. A far cry from a place like Till Kitchen, the night  before, but not really any less interesting, is The Skirted Heifer http://www.skirtedheifer.com/#story in downtown. Colorado Springs has one of the more active ones we've come across lately. The streets are lined with eating places, shops, and bustling sidewalks, filled with mostly happy young, old, and in-between aged faces. Reminds me of old movies where you'd see similar scenes in downtowns  (only people were dressed very differently then). A lot of downtown Colorado Springs has very well preserved buildings, some going back 100 years or so, and just outside it, going mostly north, well preserved old, stately homes. That Turner Classic Movie vibe is definitely there. Okay, back to our food! This place might be familiar since it's been featured a lot, especially on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. We don't always agree with Guy Fieri but respect his ability to hunt down cool places in a given town and give them exposure. His assessment of this place was "rightous," and he did "knock it out of the park" this time! So a little burger joint owned by a couple who also own a well known Italian place in town. What's the big deal? What makes their burger different from any good, totally grass fed and finished burger? All you have to do is LOOK at this one. You will not be able to resist if you're a hamburger specialist, like me. From their website, When making burgers at home, they would melt a mound of cheddar cheese around the beef and grill it until it resembled a “skirt”. They always called the burger the “Skirted Heifer”!

Another way to describe it would be to marry a chewy grilled cheese with an incredible  hamburger. The cheese is grilled to form a kind of crust. It is too fun. Couple it with great skinny fries or fatter sweet potato wedges...hamburger nirvana! Mary Ann, the semi vegetarian, even broke rules and gave it an A+!! They even make all of their sauces, including Ketchup, from scratch. This place rocks hard!

We tried the frozen custard, with not quite as stellar results. The line was so long at The Skited Heifer, we went around the corner to their Bambino's Pizza http://www.bambinosurbanpizzeria.com/#!restaurant/crrl to see if they served it too. They do, so we ordered a cup of vanilla and chocolate together. The chocolate was great and rich, but the vanilla tasted flat. We're thinking it must have been an off batch, and we'll want to go back to try it again. We're betting that with the quality of everything else, it'll be better next time. By the way, at Bambino's, you go through a line and pick out your pizza toppings before they bake it. It's kind of like a pizza version of Chipotle! A clever and inventive way to do pizza!

There were several other places we wanted to try, but we chugged back to Santa Fe the next morning, our bellies very satisfied by finding not one, but two terrific eating places and catching some cool mountain sights too. Since there's nothing to eat in Santa Fe (TOTAL sarcasm!), it was a welcomed relief. Guess I'll have to do a refresher on our summer home here in Santa Fe soon...stay tuned.