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Friends with restaurants The restaurant business is a tough nut to crack. You either have to work early in the morning, late into the night or both. The failure rate is spectacularly high (80 percent fail within a year), and for those places that survive, the break-even point can be a long time coming. Cooks are notoriously temperamental and are only surpassed in being irresponsible by servers. Your food depends on the whim of the purveyors and getting a license to sell drinks can cost a small fortune. And even if you manage to avoid all the other pitfalls, a bad location alone can ruin a business. So it is always nice to see hands-on restaurant owners who still seem to like what they are doing, even several years after starting. It gives the whole place a uniquely pleasant feeling—just like dining with friends who like cooking. You can find just such an atmosphere at Hunan Garden in Lafayette. The service is friendly to the extreme. In fact the owner/server will spend so much time talking to you, asking questions and relating anecdotes that you really will feel like you are eating with old friends. Each table has pictures of diners' children under the glass top. At a recent dinner trip there our table boasted snaps of a smiling red-haired baby and an adolescent boy in hockey gear. The baby has been brought in so regularly, we were told, that he is learning to speak Chinese. We were exhorted to bring ours back for the same lessons, and even though our little guy is still too small to speak, much less hold thin pointy objects, he was given a light-up pen and a set of beautifully decorated chop sticks. But don't think he was the only recipient of our host's generosity, my husband was given a second beer on the house and I got to fill out an entry ticket to win a free dinner. By the time it came around to the food we were already on great terms with our new friend, the owner. So after we picked a few dishes I asked for a recommendation. Chow fun it was, along with mu shu and tofu with mushrooms in black bean sauce, to follow scallion pancakes and hot and sour soup. The pancakes had a subtle green onion flavor and a great salty, tangy dipping sauce. The soup, made with a chicken broth base, could have used both a little more hot and a little more sour but was nicely loaded with slivers of black mushrooms and bamboo shoots. The main dishes were much the same—not overly flavorful but chock full of fresh ingredients. The mushroom and tofu dish was the best of the three, with the taste of the mushrooms and bland tofu greatly enhanced by the bean sauce. I was surprised to see the mu shu served, not with the usual thin Chinese pancakes, but with tortillas instead. I saw that once before years ago at a restaurant in Flagstaff, Ariz., where they had run out of the mu shu pancakes and sent someone to the grocery store. At that time the local groceries didn't stock such exotic specialties so tortillas substituted. I would have thought that the real thing would be easier to find here. And the chow fun had a good wide noodle to other ingredient ratio. In addition to serving lunch and dinner at their restaurant, the happy couple who runs Hunan Garden delivers lunch to Peak to Peak school. They started out several years ago providing lunches once a week at the charter school and now, even though the school has its own kitchen, they still serve their popular food once a month. You don't go round to friends' houses for dinner only for the food, and you stay even if the meal isn't the best thing you've ever had. The same is true here. I'll go back but not because the food is exceptional or exciting. I'll go back because this place has heart. And it doesn't hurt that the food is fresh, filling and not expensive. Maybe the owner can teach my baby to say that in Chinese. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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