Now that the Super Bowl is behind us, we can turn our/our s.o.’s attention towards Valentine’s Day! No matter your “status”, it’s a great excuse to treat yourself, and we like to do that with a night out at a new restaurant. Valentine’s is next Tuesday and many Denver restaurants are offering special dinners, menu items, or events. Here are a few on our radar that showoff the delicious diversity of the Denver dining scene. Cheers love bugs~

Ace Eat Serve is offering a luxurious prix fixe meal for two for $100 Friday, February 10 – 14th. Or if you’re looking for a more affordable, fun vibe, consider entering the weekly Tuesday ping pong tourney on Valentine’s evening, or simply gather a group to play a few rounds for fun (Ace has 11 ping pong tables). Plus, the $1 spicy Asian BBQ wings, $5 Bulleit Bourbon specials, and $20 bottles of Prosecco are the perfect pairing.

Beatrice & Woodsley, the beautiful wooded restaurant on Broadway, is throwing the ultimate Galentine’s Day dinner party for 16 guests, below the main dining room in their private wine cellar. Along with a cupid piñata filled with secret gifts and treats, bubbles and delicious food will be bountiful at this female-only, community-style dinner! For $48 per person, guests will enjoy a cocktail and hors d’oeuvres reception at 6:30, followed by a three-course prix fixe menu, with optional wine pairings available. Reservations are required (303) 777-3505.

11th annual Wine & Chocolate Weekend at Bonacquisti Wine Co, February 11th, 6p-9p and Feb. 12th, 1p-4p. 2016. The pairings include: Sparkling Riesling with Cashew S'more Toffee
[d] RED with Jamon Serrano and Manchego Cheese Truffle
2015 Cabernet Sauvignon with Manhattan Truffle
Sangria with Sangria Truffle

Tickets are $30 ($25 for Wine Club members). https://www.bonacquistiwine.com/collections/frontpage/products/2017-wine-chocolate-weekend

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House is celebrating Friday, Feb. 10 – Feb. 14 with Oysters & Pearls For Two, $48 Chilled Oysters on the Half Shell, Caviar Mignonette paired with 2 Glass of Veuve Clicquot Champagne or Grey Goose VX Vodka. Or Chateaubriand For Two, $130 Roasted & Sliced Tenderloin, Butter Poached Lobster, Green & White Asparagus with Hollandaise, Peppercorn Sauce and Bordelaise.

Guard and Grace downtown is offering a full weekend of Valentine’s Day features February 10-14. Specials include an extravagant 45-Day Dry-Aged Ribeye with Périgord black truffles & sauce perigueux and for dessert an Aphrodite’s Sphere with macadamia pecan brownie, milk chocolate mousse, passion fruit cream, chocolate five-spice ganache, and caramel.

Infinite Monkey Theorem GALentine's Day! Ladies will receive 20% their tabs all night long 4-10pm. So grab your gals and head down for a little “Valenwine”. The following night, IMT will be holding a “Wine & Cheese Me” night, February 15th. 6:30-8:30pm. The Truffle Table will be there to host a wine and cheese pairing of 5 wines and 5 cheeses at $35/person. Reservations are required - email or call 303-736-8376 x4 to reserve your spot.

Jax Fish House in Glendale is offering a romantic prix fixe menu of sustainably-caught seafood specialties. Dinner begins at 4pm and is $65 per person for 3-courses, and an a la carte menu will be available at the bar as well. In addition, Jax will offer 25% off bottles of wine $50 or over.

Jax Fish House in LoDo is also offering a special prix fixe menu for the evening showcasing some of the finest delicacies of the land and the sea, with raw bar selections and an optional wine pairing. The 4-course dinner is $75 per person and the wine pairing is an additional $35.

La Sandia Northfield and Park Meadows Valentines Day 4-course modern Mexican dinner $32 each or ala carte option. Includes soup or salad, tuna tartar, tamales, pollo, steak, and a Mexican cheesecake or chocolate mousse to savor.

La Guera, Richard Sandoval's new gastro-cantina, is having an anti-Valentine’s Day special, with all drinks buy one get one free and $2.00 tacos.

LOLA is making date night all the more romantic this Valentine’s Day with a complimentary glass of bubbles and chef’s specials like Whole Maine Lobster Zarandeado, Lover’s Parrillada, and Mexican Chocolate Covered Strawberries (ordered in advance). Dinner reservations start at 5:00 p.m. and are not required but are strongly recommended. An abridged version of the regular menu will also be available. And the Saturday night before LOLA is hosting a Singles Salsa Mixer 9:00 -11:00 p.m. with DJ Joseph Snowhawk spinning some spicy Latin tunes for guests to get down to, cover free.

Los Chingones locations in RiNo and DTC have created a Valentine’s Day feature called Aphrodisiac Valentines Taco. It has seared swordfish, artichoke & smoked Fresno chili puree, fresh arugula salad tossed in rose water/pomegranate/honey vinaigrette, and chili-spiced pepitas for $5 each.

Mister Tuna, trendy new cocktail bar and Hawaiian-influenced restaurant by Troy Guard, is offering a 4-course prix-fixe menu for $69pp or $99pp, with beverage pairings. http://www.mistertuna.com/

Nocturne Jazz invites you to celebrate Valentine's Day in proper fashion with a special four-course tasting menu set to the music of Nat King Cole performed by the Paul Musso Trio. Tickets/Reservations required and you can choose between an early 5:30pm set or a late 8:30 pm set.

Postino Wine Café will have $5 glasses of Mercat Sparkling Rosé and Ioppa Rosé of Nebbiolo, from open ’til close (11 a.m. – 11 p.m.). Got a date? From 8 p.m. on, take advantage of the Tuesday night Board and Bottle special: a bruschetta board and bottle of wine for $20. It’s easily to fall in love with a deal that good!

Punch Bowl Social is a great escape from a dull night with darts, wall size scrabble, giant foosball table, ping pong, skee ball and bowling! Try out the featured February punch, Shot Through the Heart, made with Old Forester Bourbon, strawberry cinnamon shrub and Teakoe pear tea. Don’t forget to grab a photo in front of the famous I Love You wall.

Retrograde Speakeasy & Frozen Matter Ice Cream are a dynamic duo, scooping up sweet treats in front and crafting cocktails behind the freezer door in one dynamic space. If you haven’t heard of this place yet, it’s a great date spot and they’ve made a special batch of ice cream for February. Rose Tyler has rose water, elderflower liqueur and vanilla. And/or you can get a bottle of wine or two cocktails of choice and an ice cream sundae for $45.

Vesta has been named the “Most Romantic Restaurant” or “Best Date Night” spot in Denver year and again. This year, new Executive Chef Nicholas Kayser has cooked up a menu of sure-fire romantic dishes perfect for sealing the deal along with their special craft cocktails.

Food, fun, friends, music, local, libations, collaboration… These are things we are very fond of here at Ultra5280 and believe you, our readers, are fond of as well. Last weekend we discovered The Dinner Party Association, a new pop-up concept that brings all these wonderful things together once a month! Its founder, Megan Ranegar, and her “traveling supper club” are new to Denver as of this past December, but she didn’t waste any time acclimating her concept to the Mile High City. This first Sunday was the 3rd Dinner Party Association event, “The Taco Situation”, which took place three stories above the 16th Street Mall at a co-working space aptly named The Hive on 16th.

The basic concept is simple Megan explains, “We dinner party in unlikely places, eat delicious food, and toast with local brews.” Their goal is to create a community between Denver residents, foodies, chefs, musicians, photographers and the like. “I feel like I always meet the coolest people and have the best conversations in a dinner party atmosphere; I want to spread that magic through The Dinner Party Association.”

If grassroots involvement is any indication a concept is gaining momentum, then we think it’s pretty obvious Denver digs The Dinner Party Association’s arrival. We found out about the event via a post on Instagram and other brunch goers heard from a friend of a friend, or via social media as well. And now, you can say you heard about it here from us! While Dinner Party Association’s Instagram page has nearly 3,000 followers, it also has many other people and businesses that are outwardly supporting the pop-up on their social media outlets. Before moving to Denver, Megan organized similar pop-ups in Los Angeles but wasn't sure she’d continue them here, “I was mostly hesitant because I didn't have any connections to chefs, venues, etc. but I can't believe how collaborative the Denver community is! I've been so happily surprised at the reaction and support my concept has received here.”

Megan shares the one thing that really helped turn her California concept into a reality in Denver was meeting Brooks Gagstetter of Logan House Coffee. “Brooks basically said ‘you're doing this’ and proceeded to provide a beautiful warehouse space for our first event in January, and I’ve just continued building relationships from there.” The events now take place the first Sunday of each month in a unique new venue, with a completely different lineup of food, drinks and ambiance each time. “The theme of each event is something I dream up and then reach out to different spaces and chefs who I think would be a good fit. Then comes the fun part - designing the event. I have a background in marketing, so creating content to promote the event is fun for me too.”

Their first event was a “Coffee Beer Brunch” in the Logan House Coffee warehouse, in RiNo. Megan explains it's their goal to find cool, unique spaces for an alternative dining experience. The first Denver bunch to brunch with Dinner Party Association ate Thai fried eggs, rosemary chia pudding jars, pork rillettes with preserved pear atop Apache fry bread, and aged Rocky Mountain beers from Beryl’s Beer Co. For their second event they held a dinner and beer pairing and added live music to the mix with a musician from Denver and one from Chicago. Megan is very good about setting a scene and weaving a theme to make the dining experience truly unique, “I love thinking of little touches that will make the pop-up feel special,” she tells us.

The third event, which we attended, was titled “The Taco Situation” and began at 11am with cocktails, coffee and time to chat. Everyone was seated and plated with their first round of tacos around 11:30am. The brunch featured Horchata with Jameson on the side, coffee, a delicious hand crafted Apple cocktail from mixologist Lawrence Mack, and a series of Water, Land and Air inspired tacos.

The first round was Rainbow Trout Escabeche atop blue corn tortillas with pickled root veggies with a salty and astringent flavor palette. The next was a savory grilled Elk tenderloin with caramelized onion and subtly sweet pear jam atop potato tortillas. The third round was a sort of salty, smoky roasted Duck with beans, bacon crumbles and crispy shallots on butternut squash tortillas. Chef Kyle Morgan of Morgan Handmade Rations created each of these dishes which were very different in flavors and allowed you to experiment with pairing each up with the variety of drinks most of us had in front of us…They were all so good it was hard not to horde!

For the sweet finish, we each got a little jar of chocolate Serrano and tequila-infused dulce de leche with fresh, fluffy churros from El Camino Community Tavern! We lingered over this delicious dessert while wrapping up conversations and exchanging contact info with our new friends.

With all the new dinner halls, open markets, and community dining options we’ve come to frequent in and around Denver, it’s no wonder The Dinner Party Association found a home here. The next three months of upcoming events are already posted on their online calendar and they have full intentions to make this pop-up concept bigger and better. “We're hoping to partner with many Denver chefs and creatives as we continue to make our events magical--the more the merrier.” Megan thanked everyone in attendance and invited us all back to the next event for a discounted price, something she always does for repeat guests. The next event is April 3rd “Beer and Blues Dinner” with New Belgium and live music from Dragondeer. May 1st is a Spring Brunch and June 5th is an Artisan dinner at Cheese + Provisions. More information on The Dinner Party Association and tickets to April’s dinner can be found through the links below.

http://www.dinnerpartyassociation.com/

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/blues-beer-pop-up-dinner-tickets-22935789564

By Tiffany Candelaria