When the weather’s this hot, why not take a cold plunge?
And we’re not talking about the polar kind, where people strip to their skivvies and disappear into icy baths. Rather we mean food, and specifically, cooling yourself down from the inside-out with favorite local dishes, served cold.
Here are five that are ideal for chilling, both literally and figuratively.
Cold Spicy Sesame Noodles at Uncle
Denver’s food scene offers lots of great cold-noodle and chilled-tofu dishes, including at mainstays such as Domo (but also R.I.P. Lao Wang Noodle House). Still, Uncle’s Cold Spicy Sesame Noodles are another great excuse to stop into this beloved ramen shop in the Highland or West Wash Park neighborhoods.
The dish, $19, arrives with spicy sesame sauce, confit chicken, arugula, cashews, Granny Smith apples, and Japanese seven-spice togarashi. As with most cold dishes, the flavors are meant to play off one another brightly but evenly, and as with a salad, every bite can be an adventure.
Tuna salad at Tessa Delicatessen
Tessa does sandwiches and salads right every time, so when this upscale deli takes on tuna salad, you know it’s going to be an epic rendition. Fresh is the word, with simple, smartly sourced ingredients (tuna salad, mayo, mustard, arugula on sourdough) meeting casual-looking yet detailed prep and presentation ($16 each).
You also can’t go wrong with another chilled-ingredient sandwich at Tessa, whether it’s chicken salad, caprese, or their knockout veggie sandwich, which includes muffuletta spread and pesto. Be sure to schedule some downtime for your taste buds afterward.
Oysters at Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar
The 30-year-old LoDo outpost of Jax — a company that debuted in Boulder in 1994 — runs a daily oysters happy hour from 3 to 6 p.m., known as Shuck Yeah, with $2-$3 East and West Coast oysters and drink specials. There’s an even better one on Mondays, where happy hour prices last all night long. Anticipate fresh, savory flavors and lots of reasons to come back, especially with Jax’s Colorado Rockies game-day specials.
Ceviche from La Loma
As a wonderland for Mexican, Colo-Mex and New Mexican food, the Front Range also offers a respectable amount of gazpacho, or cold Mexican vegetable soup, and ceviche, or cold fish marinated in citrus juice (instead of cooked with heat). Denver Mexican institution La Loma offers its crisp Dorado Ceviche appetizer ($24) to share, and it’s a surfeit of seafood and texture: mahi-mahi, jumbo Gulf shrimp, mango, red onion, serrano, tomatoes, cucumber, cilantro, and avocado, all tossed in a mango vinaigrette and served with house-made tostadas.
Seaweed salad at Sushi Den
Most salads and chilled soups are naturals for this list, but not every restaurant has a Vichyssoise or borscht on its menu, and that’s just fine. Most Japanese restaurants worth their salt, however, offer a seaweed salad as an appetizer, and it’s hard to top Sushi Den’s version. The Denver restaurant predates Uchi, Matsuhisa and other top-line competitors and has stuck around for good reason: its best dishes, including its crispy, subtly sweet seaweed salad ($9), are absolute knockouts.
It features wakame and kuki-wakame (seaweed varieties known for their toothsomeness), cucumber, and sesame ginger soy vinaigrette. Simple, refreshing and almost worth a visit to Sushi Den or its related Izakaya Den on its own.
