GO! DINING REVIEW: Diner at its peak
We all have guilty pleasures, things we think are perhaps beneath us that we can’t help loving anyway.
The Peak Grill, at Garden of the Gods Road and Centennial Boulevard, is becoming one of mine. This diner makes me feel as if I’m in my grandmother’s kitchen, where she stands ready with a carton of eggs and a plethora of cheeses, eager to make whatever meal would please her beloved grandchildren.
The menu is massive — usually a big turn-off for me— but the service is fantastic, and The Peak Grill’s popularity as a destination for weekend breakfasts and its status as the neighborhood’s best greasy spoon is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Ambience
The aroma of maple syrup wafts from the entryway of The Peak Grill, where clinking coffee mugs and juice glasses ring through the quiet conversation. The wallpaper sports numerous dings and dents caused by years of patrons, but the diner is also scrubbed clean and bright.
An American flag and a veteran-focused bulletin board proclaim the restaurant’s patriotism, and its military discount proves it true. Plus, kids are uniformly charmed by Peak’s efforts to cater to them, including a step stool to help them properly wash their hands in the restroom. Well, the liberal application of whipped cream on the Happy Face pancake ($2.89) probably helps, too,
Highlights
Pancakes. Glorious pancakes. ($4.99 for a full stack of three). Though my order could have been a little crisper, Peak’s cakes are light and tasty and worth ordering again and again. With more than a dozen possible additions, such as berries, nuts, peanut butter and even zucchini (65 cents per item), the cakes can also be different every time.
Peak serves breakfast all day, and sure, breakfast food can be simple. Cooking a perfect egg, however, is not; but eggs are an art these cooks have perfected. The poached eggs of the Benedicts (ham, vegetable, corned beef or smoked salmon for $7.39-$8.49) are delicious ovals with a rich, drippy yolk. Over-easy eggs are similarly perfect, and the scrambled eggs I was served were never mealy or dry but universally springy and moist.
The fried foods are great. Golden-brown waffle fries are served with the burger ($5.99), and while the house grilled potatoes are OK, the fried version dipped in ketchup were delicious. Drinks were a highlight, thanks to quality coffee and fresh orange juice.
The fresh ingredients impressed me, especially the fresh veggie mixture of peppers, zucchini and onions included in the Vegetable Benedict ($7.39), and the mushrooms in the Bacon and Spinach Omelet ($7.49). (The omelets are not the traditional French version, but the thicker, fluffed American type, but all are cooked fresh and fast.)
In addition to being fast, the food was an extreme value, with no meal on the menu costing more than $10. For a family eating out in this day and age, Peak’s prices are a huge incentive to make the diner a regular treat.
Drawbacks
As you might expect in a diner, the sauces are generally heavy, greasy and thick. For instance, the green salsa that comes with the Breakfast Burrito ($7.09) is over-thickened to the point that it looks like gravy, and its heat doesn’t even rank on my spice meter. The hollandaise is rich enough to kill — not in a good way — and the Biscuits and Gravy ($6.39, served with two eggs and potatoes) was an unappetizing mountain of thick, salty gravy.
The Chicken Crepes ($7.89), filled with chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes and asparagus, taste too much like chicken potpie and are topped with the rich, aforementioned hollandaise. The tuna melt tastes of its canned origins, though its fine.
With a menu so large, it would be hard for any restaurant to excel at everything, but I recommend Peak Grill for its breakfast foods above its lunch options.
Service
This is a place that loves its regulars, and with the casual, friendly service, it’s no wonder it has a lot of them. The Peak Grill is an establishment where the servers wear their own clothes (including Broncos jerseys, which sparked up a lot of conversation on a recent morning) instead of uniforms, except for the standard server apron.
Based on my experiences, the servers and hosts were both deeply sociable and professional.
Also based on those experiences, I would just as warmly welcome any of them into my own kitchen as genuinely as they welcomed me into this cute, neighborhood diner.
Photo by PHOTO BY KATE JONUSKA
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