Cholon

I truly apprecitate restaurants that embrace fusion cusine (think Zengo and TAG), so I was particulary excited to finally dine at Cholon, which opened in LoDo in early october to rave reviews.  5280 magazine even named it one of its top ten best new restaurants of 2010!  Headed by a  NYC trained chef,  the interior of the restaurants was sleek with an exposed ceiling and kitchen and hand crafted wood tables and bamboo accents.  As we scanned the menu, our waiter handed us a weekday prix fixe option which turned out to be an amazing deal.  It was a steal, $55 for two people considering that an entree is already in the low twenties.  We decided on the kaya toast, pork belly dumplings, butternut squash soup, braised lamb shank, chinese sausage fried rice and one and a half desserts (i'll explain soon enough).  Everything was served family style (thank the Asian cultures!) and was delicious, even the "bread basket" was unique

This is a puffed rice cracker with sesame seeds, served with a spicy tomato jam.  The tamarind (a sweet soy glaze) lamb shank served with roasted peanuts, asian pear and butternut squash puree was flavorful and fell off the bone, but i kind of wished there was more of a sauce for the meat.  The star of the show was the Kaya toast with coconut jam and egg cloud.

It is actually hard to describe the flavor, but the toast (what i assume is brioche) was glazed with some type of lightly sweetened condensed milk, neither of us could taste the coconut.  The "egg cloud" was an emulsion of sorts with a slight saltiness that complemented the sweet flavors on the toast.  My description might seem unappetizing to many of you but if you go to Cholon, you MUST order this!

The dessert was a chocolate molten cake with salted peanut ice cream and homemade marshmallows.  We (well my roommate mostly) complained that the ice cream was too much like eating peanut butter and to quote her, "little man's ice cream would kick this ice cream's ass."  She is a serious ice cream connoisseur.  I on the other hand sweet talked my way to a delicious replacement scoop of vietnamese coffee ice cream.  Sweet ending to fantastic deal!

Plate Score:  8.5