Chef shows supernatural talent

By Lori Midson, Special to the Rocky

Friday, February 29, 2008

Imagine a restaurant whose chef can pinpoint your food preferences with precision, sense exactly what you want to eat just by the swing of your mood and predict your guilty pleasures without your having offered a hint of a clue.

There is, of course, no such thing as a telepathic chef (except in my dreams), but during my three visits to the Wine Experience Cafe & World Cellar, executive chef Matthew Franklin somehow managed to home in on my yearnings, offering a litany of dishes that had been benchmarked in my mind for days.

Even our server seemed to anticipate my partialities: hamachi, duck confit, beef carpaccio, coq au vin. He stood patiently by the table draped in white linens, describing in detail dish after dish, presumably wondering when I'd finally shut my menu - and my gaping mouth.

Finally, the words came: "I'll have everything we just talked about, plus the sizzling shrimp, pizzettes and the two salads." He didn't flinch.

It all could have misfired. I've been let down before, fooled by characterizations from exuberant servers and summaries on paper that read like prose but taste like bad poetry.

But the hamachi ($12) was even better than I had imagined it. Seared and fanned across the stark white plate, its nearly translucent interior the texture of chenille, the hamachi arrived rainbowed with the green of seaweed, pickled kumquats the shade of sunflowers and swipes of miso ponzu. The mustard-glossed beef carpaccio ($11) mounted with sharp-tasting arugula leaves, capers and shavings of Argentinian Reggianito, a robust cheese similar to Italy's Parmigiano Reggiano, was another yearning fulfilled.

A Belgian endive salad ($8) studded with Stilton and dried cherries and forested with watercress arrived with a perfumed walnut vinaigrette, while another salad of bitter greens ($8) was laden with pistachios, pomegranate seeds, ribbons of radicchio, blood red oranges and the crowning jewels: two fleshy dates, beautifully sweet and blimped with goat cheese.

I suppose many people would also wax poetic about the sizzling shrimp ($10) bathing in butter pungent with garlic in a cast-iron skillet. While it's not a poor performer, it's been done before - and better - elsewhere.

Speaking of elsewhere, Franklin spearheaded the burners at 240 Union for more than a decade before heading to the hinterlands of Southlands Shopping Center, an outdoor mall that's a maze of restaurants - most of them chains - and familiar retailers. It was a bold move, but judging from the packed-to-the- rafters dining room on a recent Friday night, a smart one.

Part restaurant, part bar and lounge and part boutique wine shop, the Wine Experience Cafe is a gastronomic godsend in a culinarily repressed suburb. Franklin is quickly becoming the neighborhood's go-to guy for citified foodstuffs.

Sliding into the chocolate-brown banquette, its back striped with muted earth tones illuminated by lights in all guises - wooden chandeliers shaped like doughnuts, wooden cylinders ornate with cut-outs, suspended silver lights dangling from the floating ceiling - I'm struck by how cosmopolitan, yet utterly comfortable, the room is.

I love the fireplace shooting off embers, the effortlessly simple wooden wine wall and the fact that I can walk through the scrolled wrought-iron gate and grab a bottle of vino from the adjacent room. I love the fantastically food-friendly wine list that is neither pretentious nor overpriced.

But most of all, I love the coq au zin ($11), a playful name change on coq au vin that puddles buttered pappardelle noodles with pearl onions, black trumpet mushrooms and feather-tender chicken, its crisp- crusted, crackling skin roaring with flavor, in a rich, long-simmered reduction spiked with red zinfandel. It's extraordinarily good. So, too, is the duck confit ($10) sided with a perfect potato and cauliflower au gratin laced with cream and Gruyere.

And while the sliced hanger steak ($15), perched on a raft of baby spinach, suffered from an overkill of salt, the accompanying polenta cakes pelted with Gorgonzola were utterly grab-worthy.

The kitchen also does wonders with pizzettes ($11), blistered, thin-crusted, misshapen ovals tarped with Serrano ham, arugula, Manchego and roasted red and yellow peppers, in one case, and caramelized onions, wild mushrooms and goat cheese in another.

Both were terrific - and just what I wanted.

Franklin has long been one of Denver's best chefs. He's apparently clairvoyant, too.

lmidson@gmail.com

Wine Experience Cafe & World Cellar

* Grade: A-

* Address: 6240 S. Main St., Suites 114-115, Aurora (Southlands Shopping Center)

* Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sun.-Thurs.; 11 a.m.- midnight. Fri.-Sat.

* Food: Global

* How much: $4-$12 small plates; $6-$14 medium plates; $20-$28 large plates

* Reservations: Highly recommended

* Noise: The decibel level is high, especially on weekends.

* Information: 303-690-1025 or wine experiencecafe.com

* Parking: Free lot adjacent to the restaurant.

The grape divide

Despite the fact that Colorado liquor laws prohibit oenophiles from bringing outside bottles of wine into restaurants (can someone please give me a reasonable rationale for this rule?), Wine Experience Cafe and World Cellar owners Eldon and Rita Larson are at least making it easier to dine and wallow in wine in one fell swoop.

Their lofty boutique wine shop, bedecked with easy-to- navigate redwood racks designated by country (Italy, Spain, Germany and France), state (California, Oregon and Washington) and hemisphere (Australasia, South America), is stocked floor-to-ceiling with more than 700 varietals priced from $8.

And while the wines are the big draw, the map-spanning beer selection, including Lambic and Chimay, coupled with English dry cider, mead (fermented honey wine) from local producer Redstone Meadery and high-end spirits, is equally impressive.

But the Larsons haven't stopped there: Every month, the restaurant hosts a series of tastings and wine lunches and dinners, including these events in March:

* March 4: French Wine Tasting; 4-6:30 p.m.; $12 per person

* March 15: Timbach Wine Luncheon; 2-4:30 p.m.; $50 per person, plus tax and gratuity