Escargot wontons would get anyone’s attention. But French onion soup nachos seals the deal.
Adam Branz, the chef behind Ultreia and Split Lip: An Eat Place, is introducing a new concept at Dewey Beer Co.’s Denver taproom. The Delaware-based brewery has been running Mockery Brewing’s former space in the River North Art District since January.
The kitchen, called Cul-de-Sac, will feature what Branz calls “sleazy French street food” served out of a food trailer. In addition to the wontons and nachos, the menu will eventually include other tantalizingly off-centered plates like coq au vin nuggets on a stick, duck confit quesadillas made with “a stinky French cheese,” and even slow-poached frog’s legs served with clarified butter, like a lobster roll.
“My first chef job was at Bistro Vendome, so I have a special place in my heart for French food — and Parisian food in particular,” said Branz, who attended Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts before moving to Denver and working his way up through the restaurant group founded by Jenn Jasinski and Beth Gruitch, which included Bistro Vendome, Ultreia and Rioja.
But for Cul-de-Sac, he wanted to approach French food in the same way he does with the menu at Split Lip, which specializes in flavor-packed, cheffed-up versions of casual regional dishes like Nashville hot chicken, Oklahoma-style fried onion burgers, and Buffalo wings.
“The Split lip lens is playful, raw and even abrasive at times,” he said.
That means treating fun food with extreme attention to detail — timing, balance, degrees of heat — that classically trained chefs use in more formal settings.
For the wontons, for example, Branz and his team braise the snails low and slow to bring out the aromatics, pre-cooking them in a classic French butter sauce. Then they are cooled down and folded into the wontons. (Before landing on wontons as the vehicle for the escargot, Branz experimented with jalapeno poppers and ravioli.) “But the wontons came out incredible.”
Branz’s inspiration for this approach comes from an usual place. “I once spent nine months working on a dish at Ultreia,” he said, making minor adjustments and tweaks over that time in order to find the perfect balance of flavor and texture. Then after work one day, he went to the drive-thru at Carl’s Jr. — Branz loves fast food — and ordered a Western Bacon Cheeseburger. “The amount of balance was perfect. … That’s the beauty of casual American food.”
To run the trailer, Branz and his team, including chef Cameron Tittle, will prep all of the food in a commissary-style kitchen inside the Number Thirty Eight bar and venue where Split Lip is located. Then they’ll carry it down the alley to Dewey for the final stage of cooking.
The partnership with Dewey came about first because of proximity: Number Thirty Eight, at 3560 Chestnut Place, is right around the corner from Dewey, at 3501 Delgany. “I used to finish up my shift at Number Thirty Eight and go have a beer at Dewey,” Branz said — the brewery’s Pizzetta Pilsner in particular, a lighter, floral “Italian-style” lager with a gentle hops profile. After a while, he and his friends and co-workers became friends with Dewey’s Matt Lindy.
“It was because of us hanging out there that the conversation started up,” Branz explained. The name Cul-de-Sac comes from Dewey’s location on Delgany, which dead ends, while the logo plays off of the Canadian street signs for cul-de-sacs, which are accidentally provocative.
Cul-de-Sac will open today, Oct. 3, with a very limited menu and hours, growing slowly during October before a grand opening on Nov. 1. It will have extended hours — as will the brewery — Oct. 10-12 while the Great American Beer Festival is taking place in Denver.
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