Takah Sushi has for years been our reliable first meal stop in Aspen following our cross-country flight. It never disappoints; the staff are very welcoming and we appreciate the very fresh fish, nice wine choices and innovative alternatives, such as the Viet-Namese type lettuce wrap with not pork but minced shrimp and chicken with the usual cilantro and mint, nuts, rice vinegar and hot sauce.
With a bottle of wine and no desserts our bill before the tip was $91.56.
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Casa Tua is a place that opened last year in a cursed space that has to have seen a dozen businesses come and go since we've been coming to Aspen. We enjoy the terrace setting and watching the "world" go by as kids frollic in the small stream under nearby trees. Casa Tua offers creative upscale Italian cooking; my tagliatelle and Bolognese sauce was great but Colette's boring quinoa salad with edameme, avocado "chunks", radishes, cilantro and an unassertive lemon-cumin vinaigrette was disappointing (next time she'll order the faro salad with shrimp.)
With a bottle of great Sangiovese and no desserts or coffee our bill before tip was $89.38.
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A quick break - the construction site of the new Aspen Art Museum, with a blown up balloon looking like a floating boulder.
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Above the Salt (you'll remember from the Days of the Knights when the noble folk ate above the big salt cellar and we underlings, peasants and serfs and ne'er-do-well relatives sat below). In any case, it opened this March in the old barrel structure that D19 inhabited and has generally received nice notes, but we cannot agree. Colette's panzanella with lettuce, beet greens, red onions, baby tomatoes and parmesan was "so-what" in her words. My special pizza with sausage, black olives, wild mushrooms, kale and two cheeses on a banal tomato paste base was a confused mess that was typical of what I call Aspen-Los Vegas very, very (indeed, too) busy food - we were told that the crust was made "thin" as those from Sicily, (although I always thought thin crusts were typical in Rome/Lazio and focaccia-like ones were Sicilian, but what do I know?) but it was thick (as we've had in Naples) and not at all crisp but indeed quite soggy.
With a bottle of red Italian, no bottled water, desserts or coffee, before the tip, our bill was $77.40.
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