Ali Baba Grill

The lamb curry reminded me a little of the sweet-and-smoky Pakistani curry I'd occasionally have at a tiny dump of a place in New York that catered mostly to adventurous college kids and off-duty restaurant crews with a few drinks in 'em. Spooned over pointy, stiff white rice, it tasted of paprika, strong winter spices, tomato and onions cooked so long and with such delicacy that they'd become like a dream of onions, nothing more. It tasted like goulash gravy that'd been sitting a day or two, like the kind of heavy, thick comfort that's been chased by generations of cooks across a dozen countries, and like nothing else I've tasted anywhere in Colorado.

When Laura and I returned, we screwed up again, ordering the marinated fava beans (dull, and not nearly as well done as Indian channa chat or the big bowls of baillila you find at other Middle Eastern restaurants) and spinach sambusek because it seemed more interesting than the cheese version, with crushed walnuts, onion and pomegranate sauce. This time, the filling managed to stay inside the wonton skin, but it was still just boring stuff wrapped up in a wonton skin, like a Middle Eastern version of a Totino's pizza roll without the pizza. We also ordered quail and expected the standard (and generally nearly inedible) stuffed quail with its tough meat and crunchy little bones. But again we were surprised. The quail looked rather like a small chicken after an unfortunate run-in with a tractor trailer, but it tasted like heaven. It was a boned-out bird, hammered flat, pounded tender, marinated in garlic, basil, lemon juice and crushed saffron threads, showered with competing but never acrimonious spices, and grilled the way I remember a Vietnamese restaurant in Albuquerque grilling farmed field mice: gutted, smashed flat and cooked quickly over blazing, smoky coals. The quail was crisp on the outside, tender in the center, too reminiscent for Laura of the creature it had been before it became dinner, perfect for me. I ate everything but the tiny leg bones, stripping the meat with my teeth and pretending I was a fairy-tale giant.

Third time should have been a charm, but we still made some mistakes as we continued exploring the menu. We had more terrible hummus, lentil soup that was separated and tasted like someone in the kitchen had accidentally knocked an entire salt shaker into the pot, and kobideh that was like a Middle Eastern hamburger on a stick, jacked with overpowering spices and dry. But then we also had chicken shwarma, chopped from a whole bird cooked on the rotisserie, gently coddled with a hundred spices and served with a garlic paste so good that I got a second order to go and ate it in the car. And that was after I'd devoured a double order of baklava so heavy with butter and honey that the mixture could be sucked like a liquid from every bite.

There are restaurants where it's easy to eat — places where ordering dinner is like slipping into a warm bath after a couple of beers or eating in the kitchen of a close, rich and talented friend. And there are others where you know immediately that a meal will break the other way, offering horrors sauced with bitterness and dimwitted stupidity. And then there's that tiny minority of places that, for whatever reason, come off one minute like the most middling and commonplace of eateries, then come through the next to deliver something so wonderful that suddenly everything snaps into sharp focus and all those years of endorsements and recommendations start making sense.