Our 3rd wedding anniversary was last week. We celebrated the day of by going to Taquiera San Miguel, the food truck that catered our wedding. We ate tacos and drank margaritas in the comfort of our home. It was perfect.
We celebrated a little more a couple days after that. Friday night we went to Denver to eat at Stoic & Genuine, a seafood restaurant in Union Station. We had been dying to go there, but never found the right occasion. It isn’t the most fancy restaurant we’ve ever been to, but definitely higher end.
We got to town and check into the hotel. We splurged and decided to stay at The Oxford Hotel, which happens to be the oldest hotel in Denver. It was really nice and really cool! They still give you actual keys for the rooms and they come with giant tassles on them for you to carry. They let you leave the key at the front desk if you are going out so you don’t have to carry it around. It was actually pretty neat to have a real key, rather than than the normal plastic cards these days.
Naturally, Donny talked his way into an upgrade (we had to pay a little more, but not full price). We stayed in a corner suite that had two different windows, rather than one. I tried to get several angles so you could see all the fun stuff in there.
It also had a pretty big bathroom with a nice pedestal bathtub. We didn’t use it, but chose to use the shower instead (which was really nice too).
Now the fun stuff….FOOD!
The Oxford Hotel is half a block from Union Station so it was awesome to be able to walk and be there in no time. From outside the front doors of the hotel you can see the giant letters on top of the building “Union Station Travel by Train”. It is a great location!
We tried to go to Cooper Lounge, which is a tiny spot upstairs in Union Station, but they had a 30-45 minute wait. Instead we decided to go down to Stoic & Genuine early in case they had room for us.
They were actually able to seat us right away! Our reservations were for 8:00pm but we got there closer to 7:15pm. I’m actually happy we were able to eat earlier!
They knew it was our anniversary so they gave us each a small glass of champagne! Very nice.
I also loved that the salt on the table came in this little pail along with a very tiny shovel. How cute is that?!?!
We started with a dish they had on special. It was a piece of polenta cake topped with a romesco sauce, house made bacon, a large shrimp and crema. They added some fresh dill on top, which was surprising delicious. It was our favorite dish, which is sad because we won’t be able to go back and get it again!!! At least we got to try it though, right? Look at that glass-half-full outlook.
We also had the Big Eye Tuna Tartare which had raw tuna, watermelon, avocado and shishito peppers combined on the plate. It also came with lotus root chips (three on the entire plate). The waiter explained lotus root by saying it looked similar to a sweet potato, but had a bunch of air pockets in it and it wasn’t orange. Very interesting. The mixture of tuna with watermelon and avocado was surprisingly delicious! Super light and summery too.
Donny has mentioned this to me before, but he thinks if he had to choose his last meal it would be a seafood tower. I cannot argue with that. Seafood towers are the bombdigity if you love seafood the way we do!
The Seafood Tower of Power (as they called it) consisted of a dozen oysters (three different varieties), shrimp cocktail, crab legs and then caviar. Delicious! I was debating with Donny if I’d had caviar before, but I don’t think I had. It was good! They served these tiny little chive pancakes that you spread with crème fraiche and then top with caviar. He taught me to push it to the roof of my mouth and the caviar will burst, making it taste perfectly salty. It was good!
After the seafood tower our waiter brought us dessert menus. We both laughed at him and told him we were not done yet. We were just getting started!
We decided to share an entrée, because in all honestly we were getting full (regardless of what we told the waiter)! We went with the Crispy Whole Haddock and it was awesome. It comes out with the head and tail still attached and you just pull pieces of the fish off the body with your fork. It came sitting in this sauce that was fantastic. I don’t know how to describe it, but it paired perfectly with the fish. It had lime, lemongrass butter and ponzu (one of their sauces).
We also wanted to try the Peas & Carrots, which were amazing! It came with cooked carrots, sugar snap peas and pea shoots that were in a lavender honey glaze. It was really good!
Sorry for the REALLY close up picture of the veggies. I started eating them before I took a picture. I won’t lie, we were a couple bottles of wine into dinner and I forgot I needed to take pictures! Hahahaha luckily Donny reminded me after only a couple bites.
We would usually do dessert, but my favorite ice cream shop is also in Union Station. Nothing jumped out at us as a “must-have” on their dessert menu so we went to The Milkbox instead. I first posted about Milkbox in my post about our date night at Bones. It is SO good! I highly suggest stopping there if you are near Union Station. Delish!
After dinner we went to the new Plaza Beer Garden that sits out front of Union Station. We had a beer or two and then went for the ice cream! Nom nom nom. We barely made it in time….one of the workers came up and handed me an ice cream scoop and said we were the last ones in line and that we had to tell anyone else walking up that they wouldn’t get ice cream. We had to be the bad guys! I was just glad we didn’t miss out on dessert.
The next morning we slept in, go coffee and an almond croissant from Pig Train Coffee in Union Station and hit up the farmer’s market in the courtyard.
It was such a fun anniversary celebration and I would LOVE to go back to Stoic & Genuine some time. I highly recommend it! I also highly recommend The Milkbox. Shocker.
Have you been to Union Station since they renovated it? What is your favorite part?
