We’re juicing! The Jessica Rabbit ($5) with apple, carrot and ginger made us want to be health food freaks. And The Purist ($5) with apple, beet and carrot was earthy and just so darned pretty!
Punch Bowl Social is encouraging us to put some south in our mouth with the recent addition of celebrity chef Hugh Acheson to serve as Culinary Partner. In this newly created role, Acheson is providing culinary direction and a revamping of the menus at all Punchbowl Social locations in Denver, Portland, Austin, Detroit and Cleveland, with more opening in other states by 2018 (including Stapleton here in Denver). That’s a mighty task.
Based in Athens, Georgia, Acheson is a well-known and nationally admired chef who serves as a Top Chef judge, has been named Best Chef Southeast by the James Beard Foundation numerous times, was honored as Best New Chef by Food & Wine Magazine and is the author of the James Beard Foundation award-winning cookbook A New Turn in The South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen, Pick a Pickle: 50 Recipes for Pickles, Relishes, and Fermented Snacks and The Broad Fork, Recipes for the Wide World of Vegetables and Fruits!
For Punch Bowl Social, Acheson has developed all seasonal menu changes, created daily green plate and blue plate specials and has provided guidance and leadership on the PunchBowl Social management team. Here in Denver, Acheson’s vision is being carried out by Denver chefs Chris Cina and Matt Selby.
Acheson is best known for sourcing local ingredients and preparing food from scratch while taking foods like farro and quinoa and giving them a southern slant that feels very modern. We got to partake of some of the new menu items on a recent (return) visit to Punch Bowl Social. See what it was like, in pictures:
Quinoa Hoe Cake Benedict ($12) with tenderbelly bacon, a quinoa hoe (a coarse cake made of cornmeal, originally baked on the blade of a hoe, don’t ya know), British breakfast tomato, crisp potatoes and an egg served any style. We’re suckers for creamy yokes spreading their goodness all over everything so we opted for poached! This dish was delish!
The Chicken Biscuit ($10) absolutely requires two hands and a very big mouth to devour! With the stickiness from the spicy honey glaze and plentiful pickles, we just gave up and took a fork and knife to it.
The only dish we weren’t crazy about was the Baked Eggs. A great idea, especially with the inclusion of black eye peas and crusty bread, the dish was too dry. Under-doing the eggs a moment and a good drizzle of olive oil would have been perfect. We hear they have since remedied this issue and that the dish is much better. We’re still thinking about this dish, in a dreamy sort of way. The Superfood Grain Bowl ($12) will turn even junk food junkies into health food-lovers. Oh, the blend of textures, colors and flavors with crispy farro and quinoa, kale, radishes, roasted carrots, chiles & shiitake mushrooms (roasting made all the difference), sprouts and a subtle miso ginger vinaigrette. The poached egg on top, allowed for combining the whole thing with creamy yolk (see above about our love of egg yolk). The dish was even good leftover and made us want to eat like this all the time!
Punch Bowl Social is located at 65 Broadway in Denver. Their website is PunchBowlSocial.com.
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