It’s been a long day of shopping. Your lower back hurts. The kids are cranky. Everyone’s hungry. You don’t want fast food, but you don’t want to go home and cook, either.
With six Colorado locations, mostly in newer shopping areas, Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery offers a varied menu of dependable dishes and generous servings.
Even the teenager who eschews beef will find something satisfying among the burgers, steaks and ribs. Mine chose the grilled mahi-mahi tacos, which come with a tangy pineapple slaw that’s good with the black beans and red ale rice. The salads are mixing-bowl huge, with lots of crunchy, satisfying bits (like the candied walnuts and Granny Smith apples in the Tuscan chicken salad).
Each restaurant brews its own beer and has at least six on tap. Downtown on the mall, you can have a 16th Street Wheat, a sweetish, malty beer, or a Red Rocks Red, an Irish-style brew. At the Centerra location, we chose a Double Barrel Pale Ale for its hoppy (slightly bitter) and citrusy flavor.
Beer stars on the menu, in pairing suggestions and in the stout onion soup, honey brown ale pizza crust and pale ale carrot cake, among other dishes.
The burgers come with caramelized ale onions or stout barbecue sauce, but for those who prefer their beef soaked in whiskey rather than beer, the Bourbonzola Burger comes glazed in Jim Beam and loaded with Gorgonzola and a tower of fried onion slivers. You won’t be hungry again till your next shopping trip.
The Little Havana Melt, a special that is auditioning for a spot on the main menu, should make the cut. The tower of slow-roasted pork, ham and melted Swiss cheese on sourdough comes topped with our new favorite condiment — “pickle de gallo”: sweet pickles, tomatoes and onions.
Kristen Browning-Blas: 303-954-1440 or kbrowning@denverpost.com
Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery
Six Colorado locations. Open for lunch and dinner. We visited Centerra Promenade, 6025 Sky Pond Drive (northeast corner of Interstate 25 and Colorado 34, Loveland, 970-622-2077; and 16th Street Mall, 1001 16th St. (at Curtis Street), 303-534-7616.
