With its Bass Pro Shops, sprawling movie theater and an explosion of retail at Northfield, including a new Macy’s, the old Stapleton airport has become a Denver destination.
And as you’re shopping, your stomach might growl and you’ll ask yourself: Where should I eat?
One good option is Taste of Asia at Stapleton, a small, spare, pan-Asian restaurant in the Quebec Square commercial center, between Northfield and the Stapleton residential neighborhood.
This is no destination restaurant. Worth a drive across town? Nope. But if you’re in the area and hungry for Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai food, it should make you happy. And it won’t break the bank.
My family of four visited the restaurant recently on a weekday evening, squeezing into a booth and selecting dishes from all the offered cuisines.
It was frigid outside, and we wanted hot soup. We ordered the tofu vegetable soup for two ($4.50) and split it four ways.
Perfect. Fat squares of tofu, hunks of mushroom, crisp florets of broccoli and more floated in the clean, restorative broth, served in a large tureen. We kept ladling soup into our small bowls until nothing was left but a sheen inside the tureen.
The kids menu, thankfully, didn’t offer chicken fingers, pizza or corn dogs – just smaller versions of Chinese classics. The kids clamored for shrimp fried rice ($5.50), and were glad they did. They inhaled every bit of the melange of shrimp, peas, egg, rice and Chinese flavors.
The grilled shrimp and eggroll bowl ($7.95) was the best of the entrees we ordered. Filling a large bowl were soft, hot rice noodles, pickled carrot, radish and cucumber, lettuce, and shrimp freckled with grill spots. We spooned a clear, sweet Vietnamese sauce on the dish and ate and ate until it was gone.
Big shrimp and a mound of fresh, bright vegetables sat on the tangle of thin, crisp noodles in the double pan-fried noodle with shrimp ($9.95). The crunchy noodles softened as the sauce seeped into them – improving the hard nest we were presented – but we ended up picking at the shrimp and veggies and ignoring the noodles. Next time, I’d order something else.
The shrimp pad thai ($9.50) was far too sweet. Even my oldest daughter, whose world seems to spin around schemes for scoring sugar, stayed away.
“Too sweet,” she said.
The restaurant offers a wide range of lunch specials, with entrees starting at $5.50 and ending at $6.50. If you ever need one of those lucky bamboo plants, Taste of Asia sells them.
Staff writer Douglas Brown can be reached at 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com
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Cheap eats |
By Douglas Brown Denver Post Staff Writer
Taste of Asia at Stapleton
Pan-Asian|7505 E. 35th Ave., No. 310, 303-388-8982| $1.50-$10.50|Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Sunday 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Visa, Mastercard, Discover.
Front burner: Convenient, big portions, fresh vegetables and decent prices.
Back burner: Too-sweet pad thai, too little space inside and too bright.
