For better or worse, a sign on the front door of a restaurant that reads “Dress Code: Be Yourself” elicits some kind of response from the potential diners walking through it.
One possibility is the sense that the diner may be about to enter the physical embodiment of a fashion magazine ad that involves paper-thin people wearing nothing but nipple piercings and alarmingly expensive cologne, or Ralph Lauren smiling in that white-toothed way that says, “I can afford to look casual. What’s your excuse?”
On the other hand, maybe what the owners of the new Coral Room are really aiming for with that sign is the culinary equivalent of an athletic-shoe slogan. If you eat here, you can just do it, however you want. And we’re going to go ahead and just do it the way we want, too, because that’s how cool we are.
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The Coral Room is the latest addition to the hip, trendy world that is sloowwwly being carved out of the Highland neighborhood, and the eatery says its aim is to bring an “eccentric retro Asian flavor” to Denver.
But what it’s really doing is posturing itself as some sort of eccentric, retro hangout, especially if you’re a buff, cute guy in your mid-thirties.
If you’re not, this isn’t a bad place to come look at some. The owners are chef John Nadasdy, who most recently cooked at the Rapids Restaurant and Lodge in Grand Lake, and Nick Mystrom, a former pro football player and owner of a construction company, and from the looks of their photo on the press release, they, too, are buff cute guys.
And the tiny Coral Room is their idea of a masculine Asian place to eat. Mystrom designed the dining room, which had been some horrible Chinese restaurant for what seemed an eternity, and his dark-wooded furniture, sensuously curved bar and boldly striped upholstery are invitingly mod. Not to mention that they bring together the colors of avocado, fuchsia and aqua in new and exciting ways. Smart accents abound, too: salt grinders in addition to pepper ones on the glass-topped tables, and the under-a-microscope wall art has a vaguely sexual, vaguely bacterial feel, in a good way.
Overall, though, the Coral Room has the feel of a shirt worn by Pamela Anderson. The room is just too small for whatever comes through the opening, and so everyone feels just a tad bit self-conscious and overexposed.
The restaurant tries to overcome that deer-in-the-headlights experience with a gauzy curtain at the entrance. A staff member closes it for dinner service each night with all the grace and sensitivity of a nurse in a backed-up emergency room. At least in the ladies’ room, though, there is some exposure, courtesy of the generously drawn, big-breasted gals of the comic-book world, tastefully framed.
And it’s that sense of humor and fun that serves the Coral Room well. When the kitchen focuses on funked-up standards, such as coconut-sweetened tiger prawns ($7), it pulls them off every time. This dish is a perfect example of why the sweet-fleshed, gentle-textured black and brown tiger shrimp are becoming more widely used in cooking.
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Its sweet flesh and pull-apart texture go well with the tropical taste of coconut, and here the palm tree’s fruit had fused to a light tempura batter that turned each one into a crustacean candy bar.
Also a little offbeat is a risotto cake made spiritual with shiitakes, the best part of a plate that offers a reasonably flavorful filet mignon ($18) atop a pool of demi-glace defined by its use of sambal, an Indonesian condiment made from fiery chiles, lime juice and plenty of salt. And sour cherries and sambuca sound overwhelming, but they’re a heavenly fruit-tart, licorice-sweet match up for a chicken breast.
It’s only when the Coral Room purposely tries to be offhanded that it fails miserably. Rolling your own lettuce wraps ($7) is fun when you’re sitting at a long table in a bustling, family-run Vietnamese joint, but in an eccentric, retro Asian bistro at lunchtime, it seems somehow tacky.
But we complied, taking large sheaths of curly edged green leaf and wrapping them around too-cold, previously grilled chicken, dipping them into a watered-down Thai dipping sauce. And where a combination of roasted duck, brie and caramelized onions ($8) could only ever be heavenly, here it’s marred by the queasiness of too-buttery French bread.
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And you can go retroactive only when you have the basics down. Just because the sea scallops ($16) and ahi tuna ($19) are reasonably priced is no excuse for under-seared scallops with the texture of a chew toy or dry tuna that was medium-rare just in the inch-wide center (that means the grill heat was too low, so it had to cook longer to get the outside well-seared). It takes away from the fact that they do have jasmine rice down pat, each grain hot and well-separated, with the nutty perfume intact.
Desserts are made in-house daily, and the little roster is printed with the date and stuck next to each table’s curvy Asian-style vase – nice touch with the fresh flowers – but the offerings are odd. The chocolate mousse ($6) appears regularly and is an uninspired take on the classic, and a sabayon ($6) is a textbook sweet froth but comes with crunchy, tart, off-season strawberries.
Tart and off-season would also describe the staff at the Coral Room, typically inexpert and not surprisingly a little snooty, and that only adds to the cooler-than-thou atmosphere. Still, there’s enough good intention here to keep it from being a write-off.
And maybe once it’s done being so self-conscious, the Coral Room can go ahead and be itself, too.
