Food, Glorious Food

And some glorious libations, too!

My main reason for heading to Colorado is always to visit Ryan, but another big reason is the incredible variety of food and drink that is available in Fort Collins. Our little town in NJ has a population of 4,000 while Fort Collins is a college town that is home to 144,000 people, so comparisons aren't really fair, but I make them anyway. Most of our restaurants here are boring national chains, with only three or four independent places to eat, and to be honest, they are not great. On the other hand, Fort Collins has an incredible variety and availability of food, and very few chain restaurants. I don't think that Chili's and Chipotle can compete with all the other delicious offerings!

We have a tradition of having a reuben almost as soon as Ryan picks me up from the airport shuttle; this time we chose Choice City. After many reubens over the past five years, theirs is the best, but there are also at least three other places that serve delicious sandwiches. We waited outside for our reubens, but they were so good (along with garlic mashed potatoes) that I didn't take time for any photos.

A new place that we tried was PizzaRev. I think it is a national chain but there aren't many locations so far. You choose your dough, add whatever toppings you desire, they bake it, and you have a tasty, custom pizza ready in just a few minutes. 

The pizza was good, but the real genius is the beer tap system.

I think there are at least 28 taps, each with a digital display of what it's dispensing. You give them your license and they give you a wrist band. You grab a glass, hold the wristband fob up to the PizzaRev logo and dispense whatever volume of whatever beer you want. I think it's brilliant for tasting, and after trying small samples of five or six different beers, I settled on a raspberry basil saison. It sounded a little strange, but through the magic of tasting, I found out that it is absolutely delicious.

When you're done, you return the wristband, get your license back, and pay only for the beer you dispensed. It's probably a good thing I don't live there because I would be tempted to taste and try too many beers on too many evenings.

We had breakfast at Lucile's with fresh beignets, trout, and poached eggs. (I think there is one in Boulder if you happen to visit this summer, Kym!)

There was iced dirty chai and chess at Alleycat Coffee House, 

and beer at The Mayor, a place with 100 beers on tap. Ryan doesn't go there very often because it's a bit over budget for grad student beer drinking, but not when Mom is visiting. They have almost too many choices.

We also ate at some of our all-time favorite places, Taqueria Los Camales (mmm ... tacos al pastor),

the good Thai place (Cafe de Bangkok),

and The Welsh Rabbit.

Ryan insisted that we go to a place that was new to me, and it turned out to be one of the best evenings (ever!). We headed for the gyro cart located in Old Town around 9 pm, but the gyro guy was just getting started and told us to come back in about 45 minutes. We wandered around for a bit, and ended up at Ace Gillett's, a bar with live jazz. Ryan and I both ordered caipirinhas, a Brazilian cocktail made with cachaça. I've never been able to find real cachaça, and lots of places substitute rum when making a caipirinha, but these were made with the real thing and were amazingly delicious.

After deciding that we really shouldn't each have a second caipirinha since one of us was driving home, we made our way back to the gyro cart, and I enjoyed the best gyro I've had in 30 years. We ate and talked while walking back to the car, and it was just a night of perfect enjoyment with Ryan.

Justin and I recently had a conversation about what would be the best superpower to have (so we are prepared and ready when they are handing out superpowers), and we decided it would be the ability to teleport. I wholeheartedly agree, and I would teleport back to Fort Collins for time with Ryan, a gyro, and a caipirinha (maybe even two this time)!