Après is up and running!

Thank you to all our good friends who came to check out the Après Dessert Bar during our first few weeks! It's been a lot of fun, although of course there were some unpleasant crises and Jill and I have both come down with terrible colds, likely due in part to the stress and lack of sleep. I know some of my out-of-town readers have been hoping for the "after" pictures of the space, but it turns out to be so small that it's very hard to photograph! In fact, I think we might have the smallest restaurant in Denver, which is pretty cool. Here's one shot from our Grand Opening last weekend (you're looking at the entire seating area here--all 18 seats!).

I'll try to take some more pictures soon, so you can see some of the details we're so proud of. One of the heartwarming things about opening Après is all the help we've gotten from the friends we've made over the last couple of years of running Generous Servings: we had friends ably assist with everything from upholstering the banquette seat to sewing the table runners to choosing the wines.

Now that we've been open for almost two weeks, I'm running into an unexpected problem: we planned to rotate one new item onto our menu every couple of weeks, and I have several new recipes waiting in the wings, but I can't choose which of the current ones to vote off the island! The seven desserts we serve now are my favorite seven desserts in the world. The popular favorite appears to be the oliebollen, which are little Dutch doughnuts that I discovered while putting together recipes for my winter Teen Camp this year. They are pretty much the greatest thing in the universe, and we serve them with a ginger caramel dipping sauce, which is also the greatest thing, and people are already telling us that we can never take this item off the menu. Also, whenever anyone orders this, everyone in the kitchen yells "Oliebollen!" (pronounced "O-lee-bole-en") in a goofy Dutch accent (not that we know what a Dutch accent sounds like), so that's another reason to keep them.

Then there's the flourless chocolate torte. Boring, kind of overdone, you say? Uh, I have had a lot of flourless chocolate tortes, and this one is not dragged down by the ubiquity of its imitators. Plus, we serve it with a kumquat purée, which is the least boring fruit I can think of. If it were served with a raspberry purée, I would grant you that it was a little quotidian, but that is not the case. Besides, it is a restaurant rule (as well as a personal one) that you must have something chocolate on your menu, and there is not going to be a better dark chocolate dessert this side of paradise.

Okay, next up for rewiew is the apple dumpling. This is a dessert I would never order at a restaurant, because things with lots of pastry tend to disappoint me: they're always pasty and dry. But Travis loves apple dumplings, and we worked on our version until it was the epitome of apple dumpling-ness, with perfect pastry, great sauce and ice cream, but still very much the comfort food one wants it to be. And then some people came last week and tried a bunch of desserts, and on the way out one of the guys told me that the apple dumpling was the best. I waited for him to qualify that statement with "of your desserts" or "of all the apple dumplings I've ever had" or even "dessert I've ever had". But instead he paused and said, "Just the best. The best thing I've ever eaten. I can't imagine anything better." So how can we take it off the menu now? Plus, it comes with a really cool apple chip on top.

I could go on, trying to choose between my children. The logical choice to go would be the one dessert that no one has ever ordered, the mint granité with grapefruit and port reduction, but it is the most inventive and interesting dessert I've ever had. In fact, it was the first dessert I thought of when I sat down to brainstorm for Après, all those months ago. And I just figured out how to make these awesome ice bowls to serve the granité in (it's hard to see in the picture, but the shaved granité is piled inside a bowl made of ice). Just because no one orders it doesn't mean it's done anything wrong.

So what's a proud parent to do? I'll keep thinking about it while I test my newest idea, a Meyer Lemon concoction with homemade crème fraîche. Meanwhile, you better come in and taste everything on the current menu quick!