Part 3 means we, my wife, Julie, and I, went to our third restaurant. Tonight's winner was Elway's in Cherry Creek. This place has consistently been fairly top-rated on many of the review sites, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to see if I'm missing anything. I kind of expected this place to be too snotty for my taste, but I was surprised to see a friendly hostess and to be promptly seated at 8:00. We only received one 5280 menu, and as we looked around, we realized that was the norm. I don't understand why each person would not have their own menu. I perused their wine list and was impressed to see approximately 50 selections for wines by the glass, which was split about 50/50 between reds and whites. I like it when restaurants don't immediately assume you will be drinking a bottle. Perhaps the table has different tastes in wine. They started off good here. We received bread not too long after we had been seated, which was nice; however, the bread was really boring. Julie made a good point of saying if you're paying a lot for the dinner the bread should be better than plain rustic slices. Since she's pregnant, she obviously can't drink alcohol but wanted a drink that was fun. We told the waiter the situation, and he was very nice about it. She asked for a strawberry daiquiri, but they don't have blenders. Really? That's rather odd to me. Anyway, he said he would have the bartender make her something fruity, which was nice.
She started with the Caesar salad, and I had the charred red pepper soup. Mine was presented nicely in a very small iron pot. It came with a random piece of toasted bread with something drizzled on it. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to eat it or put in my soup. I opted to do both. My problem with the menu was that they lacked descriptions of what anything was. For example, I ordered the soup, but I didn't know what was drizzled on top of it or what other flavors were in the soup. That's information I like to have. For dinner, Julie had the salmon and I went with 10-ounce sirloin (medium rare). She said her salmon was the driest she had ever had. My sirloin was more on the rare side, but it was a thick cut, so that made sense. The cut of meat was a lot better than what I expected. It was seasoned very well, not overpowering. For sides, she got the mashed potatoes, and I had the creamed corn. I didn't try the potatoes, but she said they were good. The creamed corn was great. It wasn't too soggy or overwhelmingly creamy. The corn had just enough pop to it and just the right amount of sweetness. For dessert, we had no choice. They came out with their cheesecake/brownie lollipops. Now I was under the impression that they were a combined cheesecake/brownie experience not two different lollipops, but no, that's not the case. Anyways, they were blah. Considering this appears to be the signature dessert, it stunk. The only positive thing was how I thought the outside chocolate was a wrapper because it had Elways written on it, but other than that. . . The brownie piece was way too cakey and "out-of-the-box" tasting. The cheesecake piece was too sour and creamy.
The service was very good. They were fairly absent for most of the meal, but my water glass never went empty. In the end, Elway's was decent, however I think the restaurant thinks it is better than it actually is. Examining their non-5280 menu, I felt they had too many items on the menu. I think they'd do a lot better by focusing on fewer items and making those stronger.
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