Vita

Dan here today.  Today’s restaurant review is brought to you by this site called Savored that allows you to get 30% off at a restaurant if you reserve through them (although it costs $10 per reservation).  In the interest of full disclosure, I’m pretty sure we got this reservation for free, probably because we are clearly INFLUENTIAL ARBITERS OF THE BLOGOSPHERE!  (It seems important to use all caps when making bold proclamations like that).  It also might have been a Groupon.  I can’t really remember.  Beth usually deals with all daily deal related aspects of our existence.

Anyway, on to the actual restaurant portion of the post.  We went to Vita, a restaurant in Highlands just across I-25 from downtown Denver.  Parking was a bit of challenge, but cruising a few side streets, we finally found a spot a few blocks away.  The restaurant next door was packed, but Vita was relatively empty.  We took a seat out on the patio and decided to start off with some brie, crackers, and apples.  I think I forgot to eat lunch that day, so I was pretty hungry, and these disappeared fast.  It’s hard to go wrong with fruit and cheese.

Then it was on to the main course.  Beth had gotten some mealy mussels a few days before, so she decided to get some that were properly done. 

Surprisingly, while these might look like mussels, they are actually bacon in disguise.  The bacon in the broth completely overwhelmed any other flavor.  I’ve been known to enjoy a little bacon-flavored seafood now and then, but I think Beth was hoping to get a little more of a pure seafood experience.  I guess we’ll just have to go back to Le Central.

As for me, this was the place I mentioned in passing last week that inspired me to make pork chops with bleu cheese.  I ordered the pork tenderloin, expecting oodles of bleu cheese flavor, and I couldn’t taste any.  After careful review of the menu, it appears that the bleu cheese was actually supposed to be in the Johnny cakes underneath the tenderloin.  I still didn’t taste it, though.  Mostly what I tasted was heat – not a terrible amount of heat, but still not a terribly interesting flavor, at least for me.The fennel and parsley salad on top definitely had both fennel and parsley in it, but that’s all I can say about it.  As you can see, there was also some random red onion off to the side.  I decided to eat it, since it was there.  Overall, our meal was okay, but we don’t have plans to go back there anytime soon.