Rod "rodhilton" H.'s Profile

A neat little place.  They aren't Mexican, they aren't Cuban, they're a little of everything.  Their menu lists a variety of Latin American dishes, each one with the region that inspired the dish, which is a neat touch.  

The food's a tad on the pricey side, but it definitely has a touch of fine-dining flair to it.  If you're in the mood for Latin American food but don't exactly know if you're feeling like Mexican or Cuban or Brazilian or Columbian, Limon is a great place to go.

Protip: they have an entree-size sampler which has 4 different small plate dishes in it, each from a different country.  It's a great way to try different things out, but it's not officially on the menu, so you have to ask for it.

The projectors were incredibly dim, making game-watching virtually impossible.  The only projector worth a damn was the one not broadcasting any TV.  I feel like I should mention it for the benefit of people who care about such things, though I really came for the food.

Oh, the food?  It sucked.  Yeah.  Uninspired, traditional fare, like you might expect.  My ribs were relatively decent but my wife's prime rib was disgusting.  She ate one bite and left it alone.  The waitress looked embarrassed when she asked us if we needed a box when we left and we said no.

The pulled pork sliders were watery and gross as well.  Most of the food tasted like it was a few days old and microwaved.  Even my diet coke tasted weird, like the wrong ratio of syrup to soda water was used.

The weirdest thing I got, which was so weird that it's worth mentioning, was the pecan-crusted sweet potatoes.  It was like a square brownie-size lump of what was claimed to be sweet potatoes.  However, there was no orange to be seen - this lump was dark, dark brown.  There had to have been a pound of brown sugar in mine.  I couldn't taste anything but sugar.  I've never seen anything quite like it.  Even the waitress warned me it was "like a dessert."  No shit.

Frankly, the place is too pricey for the quality of food.  It's not expensive, but it's too expensive for what you get.  The food ranges between awful and mediocre, and the environment is crap.  The wife and I had driven by so many times, we decided to finally go in and check it out on a Friday evening at dinner time, and it was nearly empty.  On a Friday night.

Go anywhere else.

Back when I lived in Broomfield, there was an 8 Rivers near me.  I'm not a very adventurous eater, and I had never had Caribbean before, but my coworkers and I took a lunch there and I loved it.  I'm a big fan of spicy food, and it was my first exposure to jerk sauce.  I don't remember what I had, but I remember loving it.

Unfortunately, within a few weeks it closed down, replaced by another restaurant (which closed down about 2 months later, that spot was tough for restaurants).  About 5 years later I got a job in downtown Denver and discovered there was another 8 Rivers there.  I was excited and decided that the wife and I should visit.

Honestly, I don't know if it was just 5 years of buildup or what, but I left a little disappointed.  The food was quite good, but it wasn't amazing.  I ordered the house specialty, the jerk chicken, which had a 2-pepper spice rating out of 3.  I remember the jerk I had before set my mouth on fire, but this was beyond tame.  I asked for extra sauce to see if I could heat things up, but even it was weak.  Maybe I should have tried the 3-pepper entree.  The rice side dish was extremely bland and unseasoned, so I dumped some of the jerk sauce into it to give it some flavor, which made it passable.

The decor was nice, lots of reggae music, interesting wall decorations, but still classy-looking and good for a date night.  Overall it was a pretty good dining experience, but my foggy memories of the 8 Rivers of the past will remain my best 8 Rivers experience.

I normally don't do updates after posting initial reviews, but my latest experience at Quaker Steak and Lube was absolutely abysmal, I felt I had to share it.

This used to be one of my favorite places to eat, I probably went here two to three times a month.  My wife and I invited her parents to partake in the gloriousness of Quaker, and we wound up being completely embarrassed.  I had talked the place up so much, and it was terrible.

The food took over an hour to arrive.  Considering that the place was no more than 25% full, this was stunning to me.  What the hell took so long?  During the extremely long wait, I decided to have a sip of my wife's Diet Coke (I had a water) and the waiter decided to give me shit about it.  "Sharing drinks, eh?  Tsk tsk.  Normally we don't let people do that but I'll let it slide."  Wow, you're a real saint.  How about you spend your time asking the kitchen why it's taking them over an hour to cook a burger, an order of wings, and some chicken tenders instead of keeping an eye on if I take a sip of a soft drink that's marked up 600%?

My mother in law ordered a burger, cooked medium-well.  When it arrived, it was somewhere between rare and medium.  Look people, a burger is not a steak.  Burger meat gets mixed around, so the outer surface of the meat winds up ground up into the inside.  When someone orders a hamburger medium well, it's probably not because they like their stuff burned, it's because they have health concerns about undercooked ground beef.  So when you bring the burger out completely undercooked, you're not just slightly off the mark of someone's personal taste, you are presenting them with what they see as a health risk.  The manager of the restaurant came by and asked how everything was, so we told her the burger was undercooked.  She responded, nearly bored: "Oh.  Is it okay, though?"  My father-in-law was livid.  No it's not okay, it's undercooked ground beef.  The manager could barely muster a hint of concern, saying she'd let the kitchen know.  Didn't even offer to have it recooked.

But that wasn't the worst part.  The worst part was after swallowing a piece of my chicken, I looked at it and noticed it was pink inside.  Completely raw.   Sending raw chicken out of a kitchen is completely unacceptable.  How is it even possible not to have cooked my chicken all the way with over an hour of kitchen time to do so?  My broccoli was also undercooked, nearly raw.

When we spoke to the manager about this, she offered to make my meal free.  Just mine?  My in-laws just watch me swallow half a piece of raw chicken and you're going to make them pay for their meals?  You should be bending over backwards to make this right.  This wasn't a slightly undercooked steak or a slightly overcooked piece of fish.  This was raw chicken and raw ground beef.

My father-in-law, a very health-conscious doctor, started telling our waiter that this is the kind of thing that gets restaurants in a lot of trouble.  The waiter (not the manager) eventually comped the entire meal, so to his credit he made this situation right.  At the same time, I'll never be able to convince my in-laws to eat here again, and I'm not entirely sure I'll want to go back any time soon either.

This is a pretty unique little dining experience.  The specialty of the place is lots of different gourmet sauces, so all of the menu items come paired with 3 each (though you can substitute).

My wife and I kept the suggested sauces for our items, I went with the beef while she went with the fish, so we got very different sauces that we could try.

The food is delicious, though a bit pricey.  For $25-$30 per plate, I was expecting a bit nicer on the decor, something more romantic, but they blare random rock and pop music, greatly clashing with the ambiance.

Here's a good first-timer's tip.  If you come with another person, order two radically different entrees, then order the 5-sauce sampler appetizer, which comes with 5 sauces of your choice and a TON of pita bread for dipping.  It's only $7, so for dinner my wife and I were able to try 11 of their sauces (12 actually since they brought the wrong one with one of our meals at first).  It's a great way to try all that the place has to offer.

Just not that good, honestly.  If you've never been to a Brazilian Steakhouse before, I can imagine this place comes off as pretty good.  But I've been to one before, and this place sucked pretty bad in comparison.

No matter how done you ask for your cut of meat to be, it comes off the outer edge.  Most of the meat was under-seasoned and bland (or, in the case of the lamb, way too salty).  There was also a serious lack of variety in the meat, with little to distinguish the different cuts of beef.

A few items (the chicken legs) were downright disgusting, and the chef used the age old "wrap it in bacon if it has no flavor" with not one, but two different items.  The mashed potato side dish tasted fake, from a box.

The filet was excellent, but the rest of the items I'd group somewhere between bad and alright at best.

The service was weak.  I sat with my card facing green side up for the entire meal and was barely approached enough at all, far from the usual "overwhelming swarm" I should have gotten.  I eventually placed my card on top of my water glass to draw as much attention to it as possible, but even that was no help.

I went during restaurant week where the meal was about half-off.  If you go here during a normal week and pay over $40 per person, you're a sucker.  Brazilian steakhouses can be delicious, but this one is a poor entry.

Great food, weird service.

When the wife and I tried this place for the first time, we ordered an appetizer to share and 2 meals.  She had the trout and I had the dry-rub ribs.  Both of these were absolutely excellent - my rib meat fell straight off the bone.  The butternut squash bisque was also fantastic - we both loved the food.

Our server, however, was kind of strange.  My wife and I waited a bit for our food, so we wanted to ask her if there was any bread.  When our server came by, she brought the bisque, which had two half-dollar-sized pieces of bread.  We asked if there was any bread and she looked at us like we were idiots, then pointed at the microscopic bread she brought.  "Could we have some more?" we asked.  She responded, astonished, "more than this?" like we were some kind of fat pigs.  Yes, more than that, screw you.

Overall, a great place for great food.  They offer a pretty eclectic menu, our sampling of which was excellent.  Service is a little weird, but not bad.

Disgusting.

I ordered the small meat sampler to get a feel for the different meats available.  Ordering took forever, as did getting our food.  When it finally arrived, half of my food was cold.  Not that being hot would have really helped the situation.  

Look, I don't expect my barbecue to be health food or anything, but this was the greasiest, fattiest barbecue I've ever had.  The sausage and hot links were covered in a layer of slimy fat.  The bottom of my plate was a pool of semi-transparent yellow liquid before I even started eating.  I didn't finish either of those.

The pulled pork tasted fine, but I pulled a huge hunk of inedible fat and a large sliver of skin out of my pile.  The chicken wasn't barbecued at all, it was just grilled chicken slices with some sauce on it.  I watched the guy prepare it, he just dumped some sliced chicken onto a grill surface, spritzed a little water on the surface, and covered it to heat it up.

My wife got their barbecue chicken plate, which she reported was better, but was only thigh and leg meat.  Why no breast?  According to the menu, "we no longer serve chicken breast as it dries out too easily."  You're cooking it wrong, guys.

There is one good thing to say, however.  Backdraft offers a variety of sauces, most of them pretty tasty.  They have a normal sauce, a spicy normal, a normal honey, and a spicy honey, as well as a "Carolina" sauce.  These are all pretty good, though nothing outstanding.  They also, however, have an "Inferno" sauce in the back.  Let me tell you, the Inferno sauce is not fucking around.  I haven't had BBQ sauce kick my ass anywhere in Colorado, but Backdraft's Inferno sauce took me down a peg for sure.  That was good, but it's unfortunate I had nothing edible to put the sauce on.

I got a punch card when I ordered.  On the way out, I threw it in the garbage.  I'm never coming back. Show owner comment »

The Empire is a solid example of New American cuisine.  It had a good atmosphere and very good service (though the hostess seemed stressed out).

The food was excellent.  I ordered the grilled pork tenderloin, which was marinated over night and had a great flavor, not to mention that it was cooked perfectly.

My wife ordered the salmon.  It was undercooked (raw in the very very center), but the kitchen happily corrected this.  Unfortunately, they went a tad overboard, overcooking it just slightly.  It was complemented by it's pistachio sauce topping, which had a bit too much olive oil, making the dish too oily, but the taste was still quite good.

There were a number of other dishes I wanted to try, and I had a hard time choosing my selection, which is a good sign at a restaurant with such a small menu.  I definitely plan on going back.

I went to the theater before checking the Yelp ratings, and I was surprised at the number of negative ratings for this theater when I checked it out on Yelp.

Lots of people are complaining about the popcorn, the starbucks, and other stuff.  Jesus, who the hell buys food and drinks at movie theaters anymore?

I never eat at the movies, it's way too damn expensive.  I judge a theater based on the quality of the theater itself (seat comfort, number of chairs, etc) and, more importantly, picture and sound quality.

And the picture and sound quality at this theater is absolutely stunning.  No, seriously, stunning.  The quality of the image at Century Boulder is so much better than the other theaters I visit (AMC Promenade and AMC Westminster) that I'm not sure I can watch a movie at my old theaters any more.  The picture is brighter and crisper than any theater I've visited in years.  It's breathtaking if you're into picture quality.

The sound is perfect.  Adequate speakers, turned to an appropriate volume so that there is no clipping.  As far as the movie watching experience goes, Century Boulder cannot be topped by any other theater in the area.

The seating blows though.  Way too little room between your seat and the seat in front of you.  The chairs aren't comfortable, and they rock in a stupid way.  It's a shame.  

But seriously, the picture is amazing.