From Mexico with love
By Marty Meitus
Rocky Mountain News
Food Editor
When Norma and Nabor Nuñez opened La
Cueva, 9742 E. Colfax Ave., in Aurora, in 1974 the restaurant had six
booths, 13 stools and a unisex bathroom.
Today, the restaurant seats 80 to
100, bathrooms have become genderized and the crowds line up on Friday
nights for a chance to eat the homemade tortillas, salsas and other
Mexican foods. "When we bought this place, it was my luck," says Norma
Nuñez. "I am a very lucky person. The street was torn up and people had to
come in through the dirt road in the back ... The big stores like Joslin's
and Sears moved out of the neighborhood but still here we were. Norma
Nuñez is the people-person in the restaurant. Nabor Nuñez is the cook. He
rises early to mix the tortilla dough and prepare the fillings and salsa
in the small kitchen restaurant that has held off the onslaught of mall
Mexican food all these many years. "People know the difference between
fast chains and those like us," says Norma. "... Our beans are washed and
cooked with love."
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WestWord:
Best Chips and Salsa
(1992)
La Cueva
9742 E.
Colfax Ave.
Aurora
Alfonso Nuñez proudly prepares
everything from scratch at his fluorescent Aurora cantina, and the chips
and salsa are no exception. Fried in-house in perfectly clean oil, the
chips are thin and brittle, yet have the heft of coarsely ground corn that
make them fantastic to crunch. The salsa is a dark, intriguing purée of
fresh tomato enlivened by sweet grated onion and roasted Mexican oregano.
More than a stomach-filling freebie, these chips and salsa provide and
incredibly appetizing starting point from which to experience Nuñez's
fresh, lively cooking.
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You'll
love La Cueva's made-from-scratch Mexican food
La Cueva
Address: 9742 E.
Colfax Ave.
Phone: 367-1422
Food: ****
Service:
***
Atmosphere: ***
By Alan Katz
Denver Post Staff
Writer
Which is Denver's best Mexican
restaurant? I cast my ballot for La Cueva in downtown Aurora.
The food here is so fresh, the chile
rellenos so light, the baked goods so flaky, the service so friendly that
I plan to make this a personal hangout.
La Cueva ('the cave') is a brightly
colored 75-seat restaurant owned and operated by chef Nabor Nuñez of
Guanajuato, Mexico, and his wife, Norma. For some mysterious reason, La
Cueva is rarely mentioned when local foodies swap tips on their favorite
restaurants. But take my word for it: This place is the real
McCoy.
Although most of the standard Mexican
items are listed on the menu, there is nothing standard about their
preparation. Nabor Nuñez takes no short cuts and used no canned goods in
his recipes. He arrives at work each morning at 5am to cook his sauces,
his spicy tamales, his fragrant red and green chile. Even the refried
beans are made from scratch.
This labor-intensive method is really
the only way to make first-rate Mexican food, which is why we encounter it
so seldom.
When La Cueva opened in 1974, it was
a neighborhood dive with 13 stools. Five years ago, 'PM Magazine' on
Channel 4 touted its exceptional food, which led to an expansion into the
storefront next door.
Last year, one of the Nuñez children,
a graduate of the Colorado Institute of Art, remodeled the dining room
with startling turquoise banquettes, hanging piñatas, tacky silk flowers
and bright green neon.
Now, the place is clean,
contemporary, cheerful and somewhat noisy, with Latin vocalists emoting
over the loudspeakers. It is heavily patronized by families, many with
small children. Don't come here for a tete-á-tete.
Do bring a hanky and an ice pack. The
green chile is the hottest I've eaten. It is so hot that I experienced the
following symptoms: heavy perspiration, numbing of the mouth, hair loss,
constriction of the esophagus, acid indigestion, heartburn and a burning
discomfort the next day.
It hurt so bad, but it felt so-o-o-o
good.
We had the chorizo con huevo ($4.95),
a delicious sausage-and-eggs concoction accompanied by refried beans and
the notorious green chile. The tamales ($1.75 each) had green chile inside
of them and were hotter than I could bear.
But I loved the chile rellenos ($2.65
each), which I ordered unsmothered, with a side dish of red chile. They
were pancake-shaped and stuffed with a fresh Anaheim pepper and mild
cheddar cheese.
Perhaps the highlight of our meal was
lomo de cerdo ($7.50) shredded pork with fried onions, refried beans and
rice, picante sauce and a perfect guacamole made of avocados, fresh
tomatoes, onions and salt no cilantro and no sour cream.
The chicken fajitas ($7.50) did not
arrive on a sizzling platter and they didn't splatter grease on my shirt.
The plump and juicy chicken chunks came with good flour tortillas, refried
beans, fresh lettuce and fluffy light brown rice with a picante sauce for
dipping.
For dessert, we ordered sopapillas
with honey ($2.85). Until I ate these, I hadn't understood why sopapillas
are so popular. Lightly flavored with cinnamon, they were nearly
greaseless.
But my favorite dessert was the
empanaditas (a bargain at 95 cents) little pies with fruit fillings and
flaky crusts. Mrs. Nuñez confided that the secret ingredient in the crust
is beer.
I found the service somewhat slow, in
part because each dish was cooked to order. But I didn't mind waiting for
food of such consistently high quality.
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All in La Familia
By John Kessler
Westword
Norma and Nabor Nuñez, owners of La
Cueva, have reached an age and a level of success where they afford to
look at options. They could, for instance, move: After nearly twenty years
in downtown Aurora, on a pawnshop-ridden stretch of East Colfax that time
forgot, they might profit by taking their talents closer to north Denver's
Mexican community or to a spot with more foot traffic. They could expand
again: The two small rooms of La Cueva fill up quickly, and the Nuñezes
could serve twice the number of customers if they had the space. They
could even take a long and well-deserved vacation, leaving the restaurant
to their children and employees. But on any given day you can find Norma
sitting in the back booth going over the books and Nabor in the kitchen
cooking.
It's been a long, slow ride for the
Nuñezes. They met in 1957 at La Bonita, one of Denver's original Mexican
restaurants; he was a chef, she the head waitress. It wasn't until 1974
that they decided to get their own place, opening La Cueva at 9742 East
Colfax. Seating was originally limited to four booths and a counter.
Before long, people were lining up outside to try Nabor's homemade
tortillas and oh-so-spicy green chile. In 1987 they bought the building
next door, knocked out part of the wall and hired daughter Molly, a
designer to come up with a new look. Taking the name (which means 'the
cave') literally, she turned the place into a mod adobe grotto offset with
neon wall signs and coral and sea-green table appointments.
The menu, however, hasn't gotten an
update. Nabor Nuñez still cooks the kind of modest, flavorful homemade
food he grew up with in Mexico. Everything tastes absolutely fresh and,
occasionally, remarkable. Most remarkable is Nuñez's green chile, a
disarningly simple concoction of roasted jalapeños, tomatoes and meaty
minicubes of pork, each individually browned and stewed. You just want to
keep spooning it onto his thick, chewy, right-off-the-griddle homemade
flour tortillas and pray you never get full. Next time I go I may just get
a bowl or six of green chile and sit intently in the corner.
Before I visit I try it poured over
the La Cueva combination plate ($8.75), a good introduction to the flavors
of this kitchen. The beef taco holds shredded beef, exquisitely seasoned
and perfectly lean, in a crisp shell. Guacamole is chunky with ripe
avocado, and the chile relleno filled with cheddar cheese is lightly
battered and quite thoroughly soaked, like some sort of ethereal sponge.
Otherwise, there's a typical cheese enchilada and unremarkable bean
tostada. And everything on the combination plate beats á la carte tamal
($1.95) that's rubbery and crumbly like a worn tire.
There are also a number of house
specialties that come with rice, beans, guacamole and tortillas. The two
we try are tasty, if not memorable. Pollo a la ranchera ($7.95) brings a
standard-issue chicken breast in a watery but flavorful ranchero sauce.
It's similar to the green chile, bolstered with plenty of tomato and
onion. Lomo de Cerdo ($8.25) offers shredded and somewhat stringy roast
adobo pork in a quick sauté with onion, tomato and jalapeño
ringlets.
Maybe the most outstanding aspect of
the cooking at La Cueva is how well it sits. A typical meal contains
little cheese, hardly any discernible grease and no sour cream whatsoever.
You don't walk out gasping for breath. And none of it tastes packaged,
processed or overly seasoned. After twenty years, it's still home cooking.
I can see why it caught on.
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