Discovering Denver's Different Cuisine's

Little Tibet

-4479 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80304

For this weeks Cuisine of the week we actually successfully picked this weeks cuisine out of our blind drawing container and landed on Tibet Cuisine.

Lets talk about what Tibetan food entails, because before experiencing it, I had no idea. Tibet inspired cuisine is a small collection mixed between Indian cuisine and Nepali cuisine as most Tibetan culture neighbors those two places.

Tibetan Cuisine is inspired by its landscape and mountains. They rely on what is able to grow on their land and their biggest source of crop is barley. " Flour milled from roasted barley, called tsampa, is the staple food of Tibet".

Now for our adventure getting Tibet Cuisine. Since Tibetan food is a blend of Indian and Nepali food, it was hard to find one that was true to its culture. We had to jump outside our street of Colfax and wonder over to boulder where were originally were going to go to a restaurant called the Tibet Kitchen. However, although the website said they closed at 10 pm daily, we showed up to a sign that said closed for the day. With having drove about an hour to boulder for this occasion, we were not going home empty handed. Luckily we landed on Little Tibet. Was it true Tibet food, unsure, it was listed as Indian food but it had Tibet in the name so we went with it!

Their menu is quite extensive. From Soup to Momo to Phowa (Noodle Bowls, Jhasha, Lhangsha, Phaksha and more. All foreign food to me, but all very good.

As we do, we ordered a few things from each and split them between us! We ordered a Samosa which is a crispy triangular savory pastry stuffed with peas and potatoes, which I had to try because I love potato's. We also ordered the Sampler Mo-mo which you got to choose any combo of up to 10 dumplings. Your choice of vegetable, chicken and beef. This was probably my favorite they were like post stickers, but better. I surprisingly enjoyed the vegetable one the most out of the three we tried. We also order Vegetable Curry which had veggies cooked in rich Indian curry made with ground spices, onions, garlic, ginger and tomatoes. I was not a fan of that, as I expected, but I did in fact still try it. Then we ordered a side of Nan which is bread to dip into our dishes.

I truly enjoyed my evening, between the food and the good company. I believe I will have to find a place with some dumplings a little closer because they were very good. The Samosa was good, a little dry for my taste, but maybe that is because I couldn't handle the spice of the dipping sauces. Nonetheless I truly enjoyed Tibetan food and probably would have never experienced it if I didn't do this Denver Cuisine Exploration thing.

Nola Voodoo Tavern

2231 Bruce Randolph Ave, Denver, CO 80205

I am going to start off with a preface. I was really excited to draw Cajun food this week for a few reasons. The first reason was I worked a wedding a few months ago that had Cajun food buffet including crawfish, gumbo, alfredo the whole shebang. Although I didn't have time to fully explore the buffet, I was intrigued by the Cajun food presented that day. The other reason is my boyfriend lived really close to New Orleans growing up and this diet for him is sort of a comfort food stop, so I had high expectations on what we were going to experience.

My experience here was underwhelming. I wouldn't say bad because I would hate to drag any business down because of my personal view, but everything about it was underwhelming. Maybe a built up a small image in my head of what New Orleans would be like, or maybe it was just that, okay, but nothing special. Going to these restaurants I always come in with a $50 budget for the two of us, to me that seems fair to experience an array of food. This place the prices weren't to high and the portions weren't to small, the platter was simply underwhelming.

The interior was a bar with brick interior and wooden tables. Typically I love a good whole in the wall restaurant, but this one felt crowded and congested with TVs and sporting events. Once again, that's just my opinion and my personal taste. The Mardi Gras decoration was on the tackier side, as most of it was what you would find in a party city store around Mardi Gras time of the year.

We first ordered the Cajun Cheese Fries with Crawfish Etouffee, which I attempted to pronounce several times and was corrected each time for saying it incorrectly, by my boyfriend at least. Which is essentially catfish stew on top of French fries. I can not confirm nor deny if I liked it or not because I was so hungry at that point, anything would had tasted good.

The second and third dish we got was Gumbo and Jambalaya. This Jambalaya had Smoked Sausage, Chicken, Tomatoes mixed with rice. I kind of knew Jambalaya to be basically anything plus the kitchen sink gets thrown in there, but I felt like it was mostly just spicy rice. All of this food was on par for a different a new cuisine as I have never tasted or heard of any of it before. I just thought it would be something with blues and jazz playing in the back ground and it just fell somewhere underwhelming. Maybe I am just craving adventure more than I want to let myself admit yet. But I wont be going back to this restaurant, but am in fact glad I tried it.

No drawing for this next week as I am going to a wedding and he is starting a new job. But I am looking forward to our next cuisine adventure.

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