Denver Magazine / Denver Magazine August 2009 / You're It

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The much-anticipated opening of TAG, Troy Guard’s (nearly) eponymous restaurant adds another layer to dining in Larimer Square.

The sign graced the windows at 1441 Larimer Street for months, teasing the opening of TAG in January, March, and finally May of this year. It was late June before we finally made it in to experience a taste of chef Troy Guard’s “continental social food.”

I first became enamored with Guard’s own brand of East-meets-West Pacific Rim style when he was chef de cuisine at Doc Cheng’s, one of the 14 restaurants and bars in the world-renowned Raffles Hotel in Singapore. The new restaurant’s tagline, if you will, promises a fusion of Guard’s culinary experience and education, which has taken him from Hawaii to New York to Hong Kong. And the menu delivers.

Begin your meal with a drink. Imbibing at TAG means choosing a variety of fresh ingredients combined with liquor in ways you might never imagine. We didn’t get past the top of the menu where the Amante Picante offered an encounter with a “spicy lover” that is part salad, part cocktail with tequila, cilantro, cucumber, green Tabasco, and fresh lime. Similarly meal-like was the mojito made with jalapeños and kumquats.

The beer list features a pilsner from Masaharu Morimoto and the seasonal Hawaiian Waialua Wheat from Guard’s home state. The wine selections come as a dossier — literally a file folder (but without the inky redacted bits you’ve come to expect from similarly packaged pages in spy movies). By-the-glass highlights include a nonvintage Gran Sarao Cava Rosé, a “Psychedelic Furs kind of bubbly” (a calculated risk of a description, depending on the tenor of your memories of 1987) and our current wine obsession: a 2006 Scholium Project “Garden of Babylon” Petite Syrah, which takes the varietal to a whole new level.

The TAG team — we did not make that up — describes the dining concept as more challenge than cuisine, and the menu makes good on both fronts. Guard plates starters of roasted bone marrow, oxtail, butterfish, and pork cheeks with creative accompaniments that range from brussels sprout leaves to yuzu. Surprising flavor profiles come from Guard’s use of Korean hot peppers, black pepper wasabi, and in the case of the flash-seared Kona Kampachi, myoga ginger and Pop Rocks.

Guard is one of those chefs who remain flexible with their menus to respond to seasonal availability of ingredients, so there’s an extent to which you can’t know your options ahead of time. But one star on each of our visits has been the Szechuan lamb fanned beautifully over grilled artichoke couscous and surrounded by swirls of multicolored dragon sauce. We also loved the miso black cod, which was served with an artichoke edamame salsa and a kabayaki sauce (the sweet-soy glaze most commonly seen with unagi, eel, preparations in Japanese eateries) made slightly citrusy with the addition of yuzu.

Lunch is equally creative, and some dishes cross over from the evening menu. The centerpiece of the lunch offerings is the TAG cheeseburger, which we dare you to order with everything: white cheddar, lettuce, tomato, onion, applewood bacon, avocado, braised pork cheek, an egg (organic, of course), tempura shrimp, and a slice of seared kobe beef. If you happen to be someone who does not travel with a portable defibrillator, you can get your kobe fix from the sliders with gorgonzola aioli and caramelized shallots. During our lunch, they were coming out of the kitchen like there was nothing else on the menu. Both these and the above-mentioned burger-to-end-all-burgers come with fries, which, if you have not yet discovered the flavor benefits (and health bonuses if you care to do the research) of cooking with duck fat, will make you a convert.

We had one disappointment (two, if you count my dining companion’s dissatisfaction with the iced tea) with the tandoori chicken tacos, in which the chicken had neither the expected color or spice, and the spiced yogurt may have been wonderful but was virtually nonexistent. I suppose a miss here or there is to be expected when you profess to treat your guests to an episode of “controlled chaos.” Regardless, we urge you to join Guard in exploring the recesses of your appetite.