Heartland finds home on the front range

John Lehndorff, News Dining Critic

Published November 8, 2002 at midnight

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Sometimes you have to leave town to find a real taste of home. We recently discovered real American heartland cuisine in Edgewater and in a new Longmont neighborhood that feels like it's old. Both the Okoboji Inn and Chef Extraordinaire are relatively new restaurants, but the food they serve is as familiar as an old teddy bear.

The Okoboji Inn is named after Lake Okoboji, in Iowa, and the eatery celebrates the hearty cuisine of Iowa, whose hallmarks are meat, fish and potatoes cooked primarily in hot oil.

Set in a renovated 1920s-era market complete with antiques, bare wood floors, pressed tin ceiling and a friendly waitress from Nebraska, the restaurant's oilcloth-covered tables are properly topped by a roll of paper towels.

The centerpiece of the menu is Broasted chicken ($3.95 12 pieces). The deep-fried fowl comes in all-white, all-dark and mixed-color meals with two sides ($4.99 to $6.99), or you can order by the piece - breast ($1.89), thigh ($1.39), leg (99 cents), wing (59 cents) - or in combo plates with ribs or catfish.

The crisply coated chicken was quite juicy and meaty - really decent fried chicken - but I thought it had a slightly commercial taste, like KFC. Later, I learned that ''Broasted'' is a trade name licensed from the Broaster Co. in Beloit, Wis., and involves a special marinade, seasoned flour and pressure-frying equipment.

The big, meaty St. Louis-style pork ribs ($7.49 large, $6.49 small), slathered with smoky sweet sauce, were well-cooked and the meat fell off the bone. They were enjoyable but not award-winning.

We loved Okoboji's seasoned cornmeal-coated catfish ($5.29 three-piece, $5.99 five-piece). From under the crunchy crust emerged tender, fresh-tasting fish fillets. It's the epitome of properly cooked Midwestern catfish. Another winner is the classic Iowa pork tenderloin ($7.49 meal, $4.99 sandwich). Thick slices of lean pork are breaded and fried until good and juicy.

Most entrees include one or two side dishes (99 cents small, $1.99 large, $3.25 pint, $6.50 quart). We recommend the hush puppies: little balls of savory cornbread hot from the oil. The lovely Iowa fries are wedges of seasoned potato fried until dark brown and crispy outside and hot and creamy inside.

We know instant mashers and bland chicken gravy are a signature of Midwestern fare, but we would have preferred real potatoes.

As for the starters, we're not sure what it has to do with Iowa, but Okoboji's clam chowder ($1.79 cup, $3.29 bowl) is a good, thick warmer chock-full of chunks of clam and potato. We didn't appreciate the seafood appetizer platter ($9.99), featuring rubbery deep-fried clams, calamari and fish.

We concluded our meal with the memorably fudgy Okoboji brownie ($2.99) a la mode with Blue Bunny ice cream. Prodded by our no-nonsense waitress, we polished it off and left full and happy.

Initially, I had a hard time taking a barbecue place named Chef Extraordinare seriously. Then I tasted the eatery's Kansas City-style ribs ($19.95 slab, $12.95 half-slab, $9.95 1/3-slab rib basket). The first words to escape my lips were ''Wow!''

Real hickory smoke permeates every shred of these tasty bones that are coated in a tasty spice rub and smoked for 12 hours. The meat is a perfect pink inside. It doesn't fall off the bones, because it isn't steamed, boiled or overcooked. Rather, it pulls easily from the bone. They're among the best I've sampled.

Chef Extraordinaire opened a year ago in New Town Prospect, a neo-traditional development with narrow streets and homes that have front porches.

The neo-traditional menu is composed of various combination meals such as Danny's Smaller Sampler ($12.95), including two meats, two side dishes and two buns, and Matt's Combo Meal ($7.95): a meat sandwich, two sides and a soda. Besides ribs, Webb hickory smokes ham, turkey breast, beef brisket, pork loin, chicken breast, turkey legs and hot links. They didn't need to be smothered in sauce to taste good.

A surprise was the stellar sliced turkey breast. It was unusually juicy and beautifully smoky.

We all liked the shredded beef brisket and shredded pork well enough, but they didn't have quite the smoke and juice of the turkey. The beef could have used a little more fat. However, both were nearly perfect when mixed with sauce and eaten on a bun. The house-made vinegar-based sauces had enough sugar to balance the tartness and bite while avoiding the gloppy sweetness of Texas-style sauces.

Some of the the eatery's side dishes are exceptional, including the cheesy corn baked with smooth Cheddar sauce.

Dessert started with brownies ($1.29) that were chewy, fudgy and had a thick fudge frosting.

A few quibbles: It would be nice if the four barbecue-sauce squirt bottles on the table were labeled. Also, Jessica's Fire Sauce isn't all that hot, the spicy chipotle potato salad wasn't spicy, and the ham looked and tasted too much like regular deli slices.

We'll be back for more ribs and cheesy corn in Longmont and catfish and hush puppies in Edgewater the next time our tummies need comforting and our waistlines will allow. Sometimes, there's no taste like home.

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