For more than 30 years, Tante Louise on East Colfax Avenue was Denver’s favorite French restaurant, famous for its sauce-heavy menu, old-school service and heady wine list.
Back when I was a kid in the 1970s, my dad would takes his dates there to impress them and often told me stories of how the maitre d’ would remember his name without giving away the fact that he’d been there a few months earlier with someone else.
We all thought that the venerable Tante Louise would last forever. But time marches on, and last year The Cork House opened up in the old Tante Louise space.
A more casual, neighborhoody affair than La Tante, The Cork House correctly bills itself as a wine restaurant. Even its tagline, “Come for the wine, stay for the food,” makes this point.
Heed the first part of this directive: Come for the wine. The Cork House is rightly proud of its small but lively list, which offers several dozen wines by the “glass” (or more precisely by the quartino, a one-person portion that’s been decanted into an individual vessel) or the “taste” (a half-pour). Wines are served, more or less, in the appropriate stemware, which is refreshing and really does make a difference.
Choose “tastes,” and you’ll be able to sample four wines while putting back only two full servings, thus saving your waistline (and driver’s license) a few points. You’ll also have a better chance of sampling something you haven’t tasted before.
Some of the more interesting pours on the current list:
The Josmeyer Rielsling from Alsace, a fresh, apple-tinged mouthful.
The Kunde Sauvignon Blanc from Sonoma, with a citrusy-mineral backdrop.
And the Tamari Malbec from Argentina, which makes for a rich, plum-cherry glass that’s not overcharged with tongue-lashing tannins.
As with all good wine lists, The Cork House’s changes with some frequency. Watch carefully, and make note of your favorites, so you can pick up full bottles at the wine store.
As for the second part of the tagline, it should perhaps be altered to read, “…stay for the cheese.” The Cork House has a pleasant, wine-friendly roster of goat, cow and sheep cheeses, available
a la carte or assembled into thoughtful flights.
Some no-risk choices: The beautiful rust-colored Colo-
Rouge from MouCo in Fort Collins and the tongue-stinging English Stilton. Round them out with a sultry mascarpone from Italy or a savory French morbier.
You’d be smart to get a five-
cheese flight and call it dinner. Because once you stray into the small plates or entrees sections of the menu, your meal enters shaky territory.
The first evidence of this is in the menu itself. While the by-
the-glass wine list is presented on a full-size menu, and the reserve wine list is tastefully clipped into a binder, the food menu is little more than a takeout-style sheet of paper, folded in thirds and riddled with typos like “Napolean” and “Mossarella” and vague descriptions like “Pheasant” and “Tournedos.”
The first time I was handed the fold-up paper menu, I was sitting out on the lovely patio, so I figured it must be the outdoor-version of the menu, something they didn’t mind getting wet in case of rain.
Or perhaps it was just an interim menu while a new one was being printed up.
But on subsequent visits, when I sat at the bar and in the dining room, the same folded sheet of 14 1/2-by-8-inch paper landed at my setting, dog-eared and crumpled.
Is a sloppy menu a deal-breaker to a good meal? Not necessarily. But menus do matter. They’re the best sales tool a restaurant has, besides the staff itself. And while the menu may not be the first impression you get at a new restaurant, it’s the one you scrutinize most closely. It should excite, entice, and explain. Cork House’s menu, with its slapdash layout and confounding language, merely confuses.
Note: Before you visit, check the website (corkhousedenver
.com) where fuller descriptions are provided.
Your best option is to stick to the plates that include cheese, like the well-executed iceberg wedge salad, a refreshing quarter of crisp-cool lettuce under a heavy crumbling of blue cheese, or the tomato mozzarella stack, an iconic summer salad with a subtle balsamic reduction (and more blue cheese).
An exception to this rule is the saggy, soggy crab and lobster stack, in which semi-recognizable bits of crustaceans were layered with sodden cheese crisps and gummy mango salsa. More slushpile than stack, this dish was unfinishable.
Many of Cork House’s other small plates were disappointing, from the lamb nachos (a limp pile-on of chips and shredded meat with no pep) to the Kobe beef burgers (four minis with overcooked beef and stale buns).
Also a letdown: the salmon “lollipops,” skewered chunks of salmon dipped into a brown sugar-soy sauce and eaten like a popsicle. The fish was fishy, the sauce too sweet, the effect negated.
Order the coffee-dusted seared ahi tuna instead, which was fresh, meaty and ruby-red, and, thankfully, didn’t taste like coffee at all.
Beware the salads. The Mediterranean beef version, in which rubbery chunks of beef were tossed with field greens (so oversaturated in a red-pepper dressing they’d wilted by the time they reached the table) and mushy red tortilla chips (such a bizarre addition that we wondered if it was an accident), was puckeringly vinegary and fought with our wine.
Many entrees were equally frustrating, most egregiously the “Colorado Rack of Lamb” which featured four nice-looking but chewy and underseasoned chops. The bright mint sauce that decorated the plate nearly saved it, but in a state famous for its fresh and abundant supply of world-class lamb, this pile of flavorless meat just didn’t make sense. Choose a steak instead.
Better yet, just order more cheese.
The service at the Cork House can range from just fine to totally slack. Get the right server, as I did on my most recent visit, and you’ll have a good sounding board for which cheeses and wines to select. Her descriptions about wine and cheese were right on, and she did her best to keep our meal on track, and with minimum upsell.
But get the wrong server at the Cork House, as I did on two previous visits, and there’s no telling where your track will lead.
On one evening in particular, out on the patio, we had to ask the server a couple of times to wipe off our pollen-covered table before bringing our dishes. We waited much too long between small plates. Even the pre-fab tasting menu was sloppily timed, with plates delivered out of sync.
And while we waited, we watched one server get chewed out by a manager, and another server sit and flirt for a while with a pair of customers a couple of tables away.
Not that I begrudge anyone the opportunity to flirt whenever that opportunity presents itself. I just want my glass of wine first.
The Cork House has every advantage, from a romantic dining room to a clever concept to a terrific location in an up-and-
coming neighborhood, to be one of Denver’s coolest local hangouts. What’s more, the folks behind it have proven chops; they’re responsible for a Denver institution, The Broker.
But so far, the kitchen, a year after opening, hasn’t found its feet. Management is tinkering with some dishes, mainly in presentation, but the food just doesn’t match up to the promise of the wine and cheese. And the experience of dining here can be anemic and trying.
Is The Cork House worth a visit? Yes, for a flight of wine and a plate of cheese. Come between 3 and 6:30 p.m. for happy hour, when wines by the glass are offered at half-price.
But when the dinner hour approaches and hunger strikes, make it a progressive night and move on for better food down the road.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-820-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
The Cork House
American/Mediterranean/Wine
4900 E. Colfax Ave.; 303-355-4488
|*|Good
Atmosphere: Casual dining room and bar areas with good window seats, a fireplace and a pleasant patio.
Service: A gamble. Sometimes service is professional, efficient, knowledgeable. Sometimes it’s distracted and confounding.
Wine: Strongest attribute: eclectic, creative and mostly accessibly-priced. Happy hour specials.
Plates: Cheese flights from $8. Small plates $6.75-$12.95. Entrees $14.75-$27.95
Hours: 3-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday. 3 p.m.-midnight Friday-Saturday. Brunch Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m.-2 p.m.
Details: All major credit cards. Happy hour specials. Acceptable for kids, but not ideal. Good for dates. If you can, grab a seat on the patio.
Three visits.
Our star system:
****: Exceptional.
***: Great.
**: Very good.
*: Good.
No stars: Needs work.
