Posting to follow up: Tavernetta was very tempting, but we have some nice Italian food in NM restaurants and we make pretty fantastic fresh pasta at home, so we ended up choosing sắp sửa, one of the spots mentioned in Mr_Happy’s 2024 Denver trip report.
It’s a popular restaurant run by Anna and Ni Nguyen, two young chefs with strong classical European restaurant backgrounds, including time in a couple of Michelin-starred kitchens. They make their own style of very modern Vietnamese food that is still full of deep and lively traditional Vietnamese flavors.
Mr_Happy had mentioned how great the cabbage and egg small plates were, so we ordered those and were delighted. The cabbage was a big tender wedge of well-cooked green cabbage seared dark on one side, served on top of a mayo-like dressing, and topped with anchovy croutons. Sort of a riff on Caesar salad. I loved it. My sister, who hates mayo of any kind, thought it was just good, but said we have to copy that searing technique for cabbage back at home.
The egg dish was a soft-cooked, savory egg custard set around a scoop of jasmine rice and topped with trout roe. The description doesn’t do it justice at all. It was kind of miraculous, and we both decided it would definitely be on our death row menus. If you like chawanmushi and all kinds of complex, salty, umami flavors, this dish alone is worth going to sắp sửa for.
We also ordered their grilled pork shoulder, sauteed kale, and hamachi collar. The grilled pork was delicious and very well-prepared, but the broth it was served in was oversweet and over-limed for our tastebuds. Sắp sửa definitely pushes the limits with flavor and doesn’t shy away from all the fishy, funky, tart, salty, and herby flavors that make us love Vietnamese food, but adding strong sweetness and a one-note sourness on top of that didn’t work for us. I can see a different palate just falling head over heels in love with that dish though, and when I heated up the leftovers we brought back with us with a teaspoon of peanut butter, the whole thing became sublime.
The hamachi collar was the only dud of the evening, and was downright unpleasant to eat. I’m used to hamachi collar being fall-off-bone tender and pretty meaty. This one barely had any meat and what was there was raw at the bone, so fairly impossible to get off. It was all covered in a thick sweet brown glaze too. To get anything but sauce out of that dish, you’d have to really gnaw at the whole thing like a dog and get covered in gloop (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I would have thought it was an off batch, but many other tables had ordered the same dish and they were all struggling. We ended up not saying anything (although we probably should have) because everything else was so great, all the staff
members were so sweet, the place was just crushed with people, and we preferred to have a calm happy time.
The kale was a wonderful surprise. It was absolutely delicious and we still can’t figure out what made it so good because, at a glance, it was just sautéed kale tossed in a little soy and topped with crunchy shallots. But something else was going on there and it was really delicious. The plain rice they serve is especially good too. I suspect ghee.
The waitress had suggested 5-6 dishes for two people and we ordered 5. Way too much. Next time, we’d each get our own order of the soft egg. We’d get the kale, and then maybe the fried chicken or braised beef. Oh, and my sister had a signature cocktail with kombu, spirulina, and tequila that sounded awful to me but tasted great. Very tequila-forward. She said she’d definitely order it again.
Overall we felt sắp sửa was a special restaurant. It’s a simple, bright, and smallish space. The staff is young, friendly, efficient, and energetic. Ni Nguyen somehow found time to visit our table twice. And the food was really great despite the hamachi collar. We’ll definitely return next time we’re in Denver, and when we’re there longer, we’ll definitely try Tavernetta and make it a point to have brunch at Safta.
Thanks, HO’s!
