Sometimes, the mood just strikes to hop in the car and hit the road. With an afternoon to kill, we didn’t have to go far for a mini-adventure. We just headed straight down Parker Road and found ourselves at a grungy road house.
Right on Main Street (I love places that actually have a “Main Street”), The Tail Gate Tavern (19552 E. Main Street) caught our eye because one of our favorite words in the English language is “Tavern”. It had a heavy, dark interior, and that special beer-in-the-carpet-smell. The somewhat rough crowd consisted mainly of very attractive women keeping company with scruffy men.
The menu includes everything from sandwiches to burgers to fajitas and ribs – a really good selection for a hole-in-the-wall place. Prices ranged from around $7 to nearly $18. We ordered nachos – because, yes, nachos can be a meal. While they weren’t as good as our favorite at Blake Street Tavern, they were still good. We also ordered the Freddie’s Alpine Yodel burger with sauteed mushrooms and swiss cheese, served with fries for $8.95 and the Triple Decker BLT for $8.95, a standard but tasty, mile-high mouthful.The kids menu offered good variety all for $4.95 including a soft drink. They chose from grilled cheese, chicken tenders, a burger, hot dog or cheese curds.
Tailgate Tavern has a large stage area set up for live bands that play good old rock and roll every Friday and Saturday. We’ll be back for that because it’s, well, a roadhouse so the music is probably great.
Yearning for a little something more proper, we headed to Fika Coffee House (from the Swedish word loosely meaning “to meet over coffee”), just across the street from Tailgate, 19559 E. Main Street. The Kaladi Bros. coffee was first-rate, the Swedish pastries lovely and staff, friendly. We took our goodies to O’Brien Park with a charming gazebo, and a large playground with a very clever see-saw, unlike anything we had as kids.
There’s a lot more to Parker, we
know, but we had to return to Denver for our next adventure.
We’ll return to Parker to ex
plore beyond Main Street. Do you have any recommendations?
To plan your own road trip to Parker, go to www.parkercolorado.net.
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