I know I haven’t posted anything since Sunday. Partially that’s because it’s January, the time of year when I start getting really sick of winter and just wish to hibernate. The other part is probably the near crippling feeling of overwhelm and general malaise. Let’s call it seasonal depression.
It’s not been the best year already. I lost one of my best friends from home earlier this month, and had to travel back to my hometown for his memorial service. Going home is always just…stressful for me, I guess. Between family stuff and whatever friend drama is going on, going home always gets me in a weird mood. Maybe it’s just a lot of baggage attached to the town, I don’t know exactly. But I loathe being in Iowa, honestly, and generally avoid it if I can, ESPECIALLY in January.
Anyway, I’m in a mood, and fortunately for me, Patrick’s been about on the same wavelength. So I’ve mostly been hiding in my office, like below:
We did, however, do a couple things on Monday – we went to fancy dinner and saw a show! I got Patrick and I tickets to L’imperatrice at the Ogden Theater for his birthday back in December (I owe a giant thank you to my best friend Court for facilitating ticket acquisition).
I figured since it was a birthday present, that I would also take us out to a fancy dinner beforehand, so I got us bar reservations at sắp sửa over next to the Tattered Cover on Colfax. It’s been open since mid-2023 when Esquire named it one of the 50 best new restaurants in America, and the New York Times (warning: paywall) not only put it on its 2024 list of the best restaurants in the country, but also put their Trúng Và Trúng, which is basically soft scrambled egg, brown butter, fish sauce, trout roe, and rice, on its list of the 26 best dishes they ate in the US last year. We’d been meaning to try it for a while, but pricewise it’s a special occasion type place and we hadn’t made it over there yet.
So we went. I was familiar with the space, since years ago when I first lived in Denver, I worked at the adjoining Tattered Cover for a short stint and had gone to one of the prior restaurants that inhabited it. I don’t actually remember the name of the place that was there at the time, but I’d gone once or twice with co-workers. It’s very light and airy, and when we went at 5 pm on a Monday it wasn’t busy at all, and we probably didn’t need to make that reservation.
We’re still doing mostly dry January, so I opted to get a mocktail called Hey Love, which consisted of Pathfinder, sesame, pineapple, and herbs. It was actually really complex for a mocktail, and didn’t remind me of juice, so it was a win. I may have to order a bottle of Pathfinder to experiment with. They also had Untitled Art’s NA Italian Pils, so Patrick was pleased.
The bartender advised that 4 to 5 dishes is usually good for 2 people, so we ended up ordering 5 things, none of which I took pictures of as I was too busy inhaling them.
We ended up getting five dishes. First, the little gem salad, which had some asian cucumber which neither of us hated despite both of us disliking regular cucumber and probably the best green goddess dressing I have ever put in my mouth. The pork larb tostada was next, which I loved but Patrick was so so on. I’m a big fan of larb and the tostada part was crunchy and delicious.
After that was the NYT fave trứng và trứng which came in a misleadingly tiny bowl. It ended up being one of the butteriest things I have ever eaten – Paula Deen and her sticks of butter have nothing on this. A half a bowl of this was plenty – it was delicious and delicate and felt absolutely sinful.
At this point, we were starting to get full and realized we probably should not have gotten 5 things, but we bravely soldiered on.
The fourth dish was a really lovely shrimp cake with more gem lettuce, which surprisingly I liked more than Patrick did. The man will almost always devour all shrimp set before him, and I was shocked when he did not absolutely love the plump, juicy cake. Not sure if he was just full or what.
The last dish was a lovely hamachi collar, which took us several minutes to figure out how to eat. it was blackened with a lovely sauce. Unfortunately we were stuffed by this point, so we ended up not finishing it completely, but we tried.
I thought the food quality was excellent and the experience was really nice overall. It wasn’t cheap – those five dishes, my one mocktail and a NA beer and Patrick’s 2 NA beers ran us roughly $160 before tip. But I honestly felt the price was worth the experience and food. I would definitely go again for a special occasion and wouldn’t be surprised if they end up getting a Michelin star eventually.
After a walk down Colfax to digest and some pinball at the 1Up, we made it to the Ogden and our show.
Since we got there early, we thought we’d try getting a beverage. The only NA beer they apparently had at the Ogden was Gruvi Juicy IPA, so I got us each one, against my better judgement. I’m not much of an IPA fan – apparently I have the gene that makes hops taste like soap, but not the one that makes cilantro taste like it.
This is what it looks like:
This was the beer equivalent of some of those vegan cheeses where you try them and you wonder “when the hell was the last time the vegans who made this ate cheese?”
It was uniformly terrible. Like someone glanced at a beer and thought they could replicate it on sight alone.
Anyway, we got our crappy not beers and settled in a good spot on a railing by the sound board.
The opener was Erick the Architect, and it was okay. The sound mix for him sounded off, and his backup hype girl was distracting. The beats were so so and I just wasn’t really able to get into it because the mix was so offputting. I suppose maybe they had it set up for L’imperatrice and didn’t want to change it.
Then it was time for L’imperatrice. We were curious to see how the show would be – they recently hired a new singer, French musical artist Louve, to replace Flore Benguigui who had sung for them for 9 years or so. It sounds like it wasn’t a good breakup with their old singer so we were interested to see how it would pan out.
Overall, Louve did a good job as frontwoman. She brought a lot of energy, bouncing around the stage in a short skirt and crop top. You could definitely hear there was a backing track of the original vocals at times, and it will be interesting to see where the band goes from here with the slightly different vocal style.
I liked their stage setup, with the drummer on a high pedestal covered in large silver circles in the center, keyboards and synths to each side flanked by the guitarist and bassist.
If you’re not familiar with L’imperatrice, the best description of them would be French electro disco dance party, and that’s exactly what occurred. The crowd loved it, and we all danced happily. There were a couple technical issues, and they had to stop a few times while the stage crew fixed some things, but overall the show was vibrant.
The highlight for me was towards the last quarter of the set, when they played a cover of Daft Punk’s Aerodynamic. Usually I’m one to be skeptical of any Daft Punk cover or anything that samples them too much, as I think you should generally leave a masterwork alone (LOOKING AT YOU, KANYE), but they absolutely killed it. I put the video I took up on Youtube so you can see it too:
They unfortunately didn’t do an encore, probably due to the technical issues and running out of time for an all ages show, but it was an excellent show regardless.
That’s pretty much been the only thing we’ve done recently. I’m going to try to force myself to leave the house more after my next doctor’s appointment next week, until which time I’m still on the wagon, probably at home watching the second season of Squid Game, and trying to pretend everything happening in the country is not actually happening and we’re not actually dealing with fascism in America in 2025.
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