A Trip to Boulder, CO

This weekend we took a quick road trip out to Boulder, CO.  This small city is about an hour away from our apartment, and the primary attraction for us is the Pearl Street Mall.  This pedestrian street is home to a variety of interesting shops and restaurants, and offers a pleasant place to wander and explore.

We started off with a quick lunch at Centro Latin Kitchen and tried the Pork Belly Avocado Salsa and the Shrimp Tacos.  Both were quite tasty, although I found the salsa was quite chunky and therefore somewhat hard to eat on the smallish chips.  The rice served with Shrimp Tacos was lightly seasoned, but lacked flavor when eaten in conjunction with the rest of the meal.

Pork belly avocado salsa with charred Anaheim chiles

Griddled shrimp, garlic mojo, and jalapeño aioli taco

After lunch, we continued on to check out some of the boutiques along the street.  We spent most of our time at the kitchen store Peppercorn and the historic Boulder Book Store, but there were a number of very interesting shops along the way.

Hanging plants at the West End Gardener

Antique typewriter at 8th and Pearl Antiques

One of the many street entertainers along Pearl Street

Finally, we had dinner at The Kitchen, which was recently nominated as number 14 on 5280's 25 Best Restaurants of 2011.  Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera in to take pictures of the meal, and it was a little too dim for the iPhone to take anything reasonable.  That being said, the food was fantastic, and my wife has named it as the best food that she has had in Denver so far.  Most of the appeal comes from the fact that their ingredients are sourced from local farmers, and their menu appears to change every day based on those ingredients.  The only real complaint was that there was a 45 minute wait to get into the restaurant and once inside the food came out quite slowly, but I can honestly say that the food was worth the wait.  We started with the mussels, which were extremely tender and came in a delicious broth.  It was hard to decide if my wife's Lamb or my Porkchop was better, but both were extremely well prepared with excellent flavor.

Hopefully on our next trip we can try out Frasca, which was rated number 1 on the list, as well as check out the Boulder Farmer's Market.