Dine & Dash: raw or braised 🍽
Mini reviews of neighboring (and mighty) Akarui Sushi & Wok and La Taquiza Cocina Mexicana
Akarui Sushi & Wok
Akarui opened back in November on North Academy Boulevard near Vickers Drive. Reminding me of how Loyal Coffee originally launched as a venture by a handful of Springs baristas, this operation has been started by six friends that include Thailand native Anne Pongchana and Salvadorans Hector Vasquez and his two brothers and two cousins. Pongchana and Vasquez worked together for a decade in Aspen at a Japanese restaurant named Jing. When they got the urge for a place of their own, they scoured Denver and the Springs and found this former Oka Ramen 2 spot attractive.
They’ve done a great job appointing the space. It’s clean, wide and split by a divider down the middle, creating two dining sections trimmed in gray with red walls surrounding; and there’s room to grow. The menu offerings are expansive too.
During our visit, we’re less interested in the entrées, which range from Chinese standards to Korean BBQ to Pad Thai and Singapore Noodles. Instead, we’re drawn-in by a small list of dim sum items as well as sushi plates. Pictured and described directly above you have the Butterfly Kisses and chicken and sweet potato dumplings. The latter benefit from a great peanut sauce: rich, sweet and robust. And the fillings are filling. The former presents soft, delicate textures throughout (hence the name, methinks), kicking off with creamy salmon and avocado and finishing with lightly briny umami. It’s a lovely bite.
Ratcheting up the umami more is the phenomenal plate of blue crab soup dumplings with a coconut-truffle sauce. (Yes, that’s sexy just to read — it’s pictured as the opening image to this article.) Worth mentioning for eye appeal are Akarui’s dishware selections, several with lined patterns that draw the focus into the center of the plate for maximum impact. But these dumplings arrive on a blushing pink plate with white cherry blossom flower prints and real edible orchid petals as garnish. The dumpling dough’s soft, starchy and a treat in itself, but the stuffing and dried truffle segments on top create an absolute bomb of potent earthiness that commands the senses and just might make you close your eyes as you chew. The light soup broth serves to underscore, not distract.
Onto a roll actually named Akarui’s Bomb Roll, you’ll find double yellowtail portions (one in, one outside) and a sweet-heat dance between Serrano slices and soft, floral mango bits. Yum and yum.
The spicy tuna crispy rice reminds us of another version we not-long-ago ate at Sushi Row (that’s a compliment, mind you, fairly paid). Atop a deep-fried wad of balled rice sits lightly spicy, vibrantly colored chopped tuna garnished with green onion flecks and crunchy fried shallot bits. We experience a pleasant contrast in hot and cold components inside of one bite, appreciating the shallot essence in particular.
Given everything we sampled, Akarui didn’t miss a beat, and leaves us excited to try more sometime soon. We felt like we scratched the surface, and more gems await.
La Taquiza Cocina Mexicana
Next door to Akarui Sushi you’ll find two-month-old La Taquiza, operated by Blanca Vazquez and her nephew Carlos Vazquez. Separate from this venture, Blanca’s husband operates both Miguel’s Mexican Bar & Grill locations (one on Eighth Street and one on Cheyenne Mountain Boulevard) as well as Aspen American Bar & Grill in the former Flatiron’s space on Tenderfoot Hill Street not far from the World Arena.
Blanca describes the menu to us as more home-style cooking, evocative of Mexico City cuisine. They employ a person to make homemade corn tortillas in house — and you can take some for $4.50/half dozen or $7.50/dozen. We did, because they’re high-quality, sturdy and don’t fall apart even when loaded with toppings.
La Taquiza’s menu is built around “guisados” — a word that translates to “stews.” Carlos also refers to them as “braises,” as he describes something like a taco buffet setup at events like weddings. You grab a plate of empty tortillas and load them with fixings of your choice as you walk the line.
Here, you choose tacos, a burrito or torta and then select from 10 guisados split into chicken, pork, beef and vegetarian categories. It’s clear the menu’s strategically designed with Grubhub and DoorDash in mind. In addition to a few specials and breakfast burritos plus family packs for $30 or $60 (that include 12 or 24 tortillas and either two or four guisados plus rice and beans) La Taquiza sells homemade desserts (including tres leches) and extra sides and beverages.
We try the horchata cold brew espresso concocted from commercial ingredients we learn, and find it cotton candy sweet. That’s overly sugary for me, but I will say the creaminess aids in cutting the heat from some of our tacos. That’s partly because I asked for hot sauce and received two lovely house sauces: one a mild but bright jalapeño salsa and the other an earthy, fairly scorching habanero-chile de arbol mix.
For food we order the Super Taquiza plate of five mini tacos for a very fair $12.95 considering the portions. We choose mole poblano, chicharron, cochinita pibil, bistec guisado and rajas con crema. We add in one full-sized taco ($4.25), the nopales con puerco, so that we can try it.
In reverse order, that soft, chewy pork and thick threads of aloe-like cactus welcome the hotter salsa layered onto the existing tomato-jalapeño sauce. Along the same vein, the roasted poblano strips (rajas) make for a fibrous, hydrating bite as they’re mixed with white onions, corn and a cream sauce that finishes sort of like French onion dip at a house party.
The chicharrón are not of the crispy pig skin snack variety of fried pork rinds, but instead the fatty, gooey stewed-down version of it. A tomato-morita pepper sauce holds some nice, faint smokiness and this is one of a couple of our tacos that come with Mexican rice under the meat. The other is the mole poblano with juicy shredded chicken, a properly complex (and sweet, anise-forward) dark mole sauce and Cotija crumbles. The flank steak and potato taco with a tomatillo sauce comes atop a smear of refried beans and eats like … well, steak and potatoes, which is hearty as hell. Our feeling after the last bite is this one should be ordered as a burrito or even custom breakfast burrito off-menu; it calls for eggs.
Our favorite for last: the cochinita pibil presents a fine rendition of the Mayan slow-roasted, pork favorite garnished with pickled purple onions. Between their acid and the citrus element of the achiote marinade it complements the rich, shredded pork. On the whole, we’re impressed with La Taquiza and would definitely return to try the guisados we missed.
