Here’s the thing with brunch buffets – they are great and you can pick and choose what you want, but it always looks like an unappealing mishmash on your plate. The oysters, prime rib, cured meat, salads and sweets all end up mingling their juices (unless you want to juggle a bunch of different plates as you walk back to your seat). What I like about bottomless brunch at Tamayo in Larimer Square, is that you still get what you want but it’s paced out, plated separately and beautifully, and brought to you. There’s all that, and then there’s simply the fact that the brunch food at Tamayo is very good and a good deal.
Tamayo’s Bottomless Brunch has to be ordered by the whole table and comes with two options – with unlimited brunch cocktails and small-plate-food for $47 or food-only for $34 which is brilliant because not everyone wants to booze it up at brunch. Not included in either option is coffee, tea, soft drinks, or mocktails or guacamole! Those are extra. I’m a little sad about the guac, gotta say – maybe a small portion, Tamayo folks? There’s also a 2-hour limit per table because, apparently, people would camp out there for hours, otherwise. Really, people?
If you don’t think you would make good use of the $34/$47 deal, you can order individual items off of the a la carte menu. But really, the variety is so good, I think you’d be better off going Bottomless. Tee hee.
Here are some of the food options you can choose from to the Tamayo Bottomless Brunch:
I’ll go into some specific dishes below but the menu has a decent selection of options including different types of enchiladas and tacos, egg dishes, caramelized plantains, seasonal fruit and tajin and lime, and desserts.
Conceivably, you could order one of everything and that would be a good idea for four really hungry people or a larger group. For the two of us, the list of items below turned out to be a bit more than we should have gotten. But it’s just so hard to choose because it all sounds really good!
The Bottomless Brunch Items we had:
Ensalada Mista – Nice mix of greens, caramelized almond, and lovely avocado vinaigrette dressing. A few too many red onion slivers though. This is the only salad on the Bottomless Brunch menu and it’s a lovely one – definitely worth ordering.
Chilaquiles – They are so smart to cut the tortilla into small squares to make this dish easier to eat (I’ve always found the large, soppy triangle chips difficult to maneuver to my mouth). The yolk from the sunny side up eggs on top mixes nicely with the saucy chips. My only complaint with this dish is the one I always have with chilaquiles which is that the flavor and texture gets monotonous – it’s sauced up chips and an egg, bite after bite. Even with Tamayo’s wonderfully complex sauce, a little bit is enough. It’s also a plentiful dish so it would be good to share with four or more which would elevate the monotony.
Flautas – Coming four to a plate, sharing is easy. With pulled chicken, pickled red onion and black beans, they are crisp and tasty, cooled by crema on top.
Posole – A highlight of the meal, a bowl comes with very tender hominy, delicious broth, crisp ribbons of cabbage, plenty of shredded chicken and cubes of avocado on top.
Poblano Chili Breakfast Potatoes – Although I couldn’t get much poblano pepper flavor, the potatoes are tender and yummy comfort food that goes well with everything else on the menu. Consider getting two orders because everyone’s going to want some.
Chipotle Crispy Bacon – My only complaint here is that the bacon is, I’m guessing, broiled on a baking sheet in overlapping strips. It comes to the table a thin little slab like an edible picket fence but still overlapping. It’s difficult to peel off individual slices without mangling them so you have to basically tear some off horizontally. That wasn’t a biggy for the two of us but I noticed the table of four near us struggling with how to divvy it up among them. But hey, are we really going to complain about bacon? It’s bacon. I’d happily eat it mangled, torn, crumbled – any which way. I’d suggest ordering two for the table to avoid a nasty fight.
Carnitas Taco – There are two to a plate and the street taco size is piled with tender shreds of flavorful braised pork plus tomatillo salsa, onion, cilantro and habanero aioli. Delicious. I could have happily eaten a plate of the pork on its own.
Pan Dulche – Although we were really already full from everything we’d eaten above, we had to order dessert. The Bread Pudding is interesting, and not what you’d expect. The description on the menu says “Mexican French Toast – chipotle cajeta sauce – banana – Nutella and crema fresca. To be honest, I couldn’t figure out what all was what in this dish based on that description. Perhaps the thin, dense bread is soaked in the sauce, thus giving it a unique tang. The Nutella seemed to be coating the bread and then frying it on. It was good but the Chocolate Ice Cream was the winner for us. We wish we’d tried the Bread Pudding with strawberry sauce, whipped cream and toasted coconut but the description of the Pan Dulce lured us in. Next time!
The cocktails you can choose from, for the $47 Bottomless Brunch includes a Traditional Mimosa, Traditional Margarita, Bloody Mary and Bloody Maria. In addition to coffee, juice, and agua fresca, the mocktails are the Non-Collins with Seedlip grove, strawberry, lemon, mint, top with sparkling water and the Garden Grove with Seedlip garden, lime, basil cucumber, black pepper. I had the latter and that drink is a sleeper – deceptively simple but oh, so, delicious. Get it! (Tamayo shared their Non-Collins recipe with In Good Taste Denver, which you can get in the bar below).
The Tamayo Bottomless Brunch is a very good deal considering how plentiful it is, what the options are and the quality of each beautifully plated dish.
I’ve never had a bad meal at a Chef Richard Sandoval restaurant and have very fond memories of previous restaurants, Zenga (how I miss the albondigas meat balls!), and La Sandia (guac + margarita + patio = good times). Both Tamayo and Toro (located in Cherry Creek North) have the Bottomless Brunch, available weekends, 10:30am-3pm. While the food wavers between “good” and “excellent” in our book, that means we feel you can’t go wrong brunching it up at either restaurant. And your food doesn’t have to touch.
Reservations are strongly recommended, and we advise going early, when they first open at 10:30am. By the time we were done, just an hour later, the place was packed.
Tamayo is located at 1400 Larimer Street at the corner of Larimer Square, in Denver. Visit their website, here.
-Article and photos by Courtney Drake-McDonough, Publisher and Managing Editor, In Good Taste Denver
Please note, as is often the case in our industry, we were hosted for this visit. However, as always, our opinions remain our own for the informational benefit of our readers.
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