My dinner was better than yours.

Why, you ask? 

Simple.

I went to Nosh.

Stop - Rewind - Take it from the top.

Having decided that it was high time for me to take a nice little break from life, I hopped a plane to Denver and hitched a ride down to Colorado Springs for a few days.  Okay, so it was handled with slightly less vagabond-esque charm.  Point being, though, that I'm on vacation and that means at least one mealfest.

Mealfest, you ask?  Less simple, but all the better for it.

It means spending no less than two hours at the table, due to the amount of courses served, time spent enjoying the meal - really enjoying it - and no less important, enjoying the company.
It means being able to talk over the food, about the food, the service, and the ambiance (note to reader:  overused Italian music and/or cheap mariachi hats do not count as ambiance).
It means a still-poor post-college kid dropping $100 on a meal and not even trying to feel bad about it.
It means the sincere discussion of the social ramifications of the holiest of matrimonies with your entree.  Which may or may not be polyamorous (we're still working out the logistics).

It means, quite simply, that this was not simply a meal.  This was an experience.

The experience, as it were - because that's precisely what we had.  Nosh's The Experience.

First, a note on Nosh.

Nosh is (and I quote) "an intimate yet vibrant downtown restaurant and bar focusing on delivering new experiences in flavor, sight and sound..." 

A touch eager, I should think, as I don't recall my eyes and ears being blown away by anything spectacular.  The restaurant itself is contained within a larger business building (making it a touch hard to find for those unfamiliar, although completely worth the mild effort required).  We arrived on the early end of dinner, to an uncrowded space with our choice of tables and, more importantly, in time for happy hour cocktails.
The lighting was dim-chic and the music just low enough to ignore.  A wall-to-wall scene of giant Koi perhaps nods its head to the subtly-included Eastern flavors and ingredients sprinkled throughout the menu.

Now, on to The Experience.

Of course Nosh offers a full menu, focusing on what I like to call 'Fancy American' edibles.  Most would refer to it as 'Upscale Modern American'.  Potato, potahto.  End result, we have a collection of dishes, many down home favorites, many fine dining influenced, and many internationally tinted (usually tastefully americanized).
The focus is on small plates and shared food, with nearly every selection coming in two sizes.  I'm going to break off on a tangent here and say how incredibly in love with this idea that I am.  I love shared food.  It gets people to talk, it gets people to truly experience.  It stops being about just eating a meal, and it starts being about coming together.  End tangent.
Further, they've hit a sweet spot of offering interesting and very well prepared selections without heading into 'scary' territory.  Now there may be some valiant foodies out there who simply won't give out their oh-so-coveted five-star rating without 'the perfect foie gras' on the menu... but the truth is food, no matter how passionate you are about it, is still a business.  And if the majority of your clientele won't eat what you're offering, you're doing it wrong.  Sorry.

So there's that.

So you can pick and choose from the menu, or you can put your mouth in the sweet, supple hands of fate.  Or, in this case, the whims of our server.

We opted for the latter.

The Experience is just that - the chance to sit back, relax, and let your server and kitchen team put together a four-course menu for you.  No, you don't have a say (unless, I suppose, you're deathly allergic to something).  Yes, it's a good idea.  The staff is knowledgeable, and the food delicious.  It's also a bit of a deal at just $20 a head, and the aforementioned lack of the more 'out there' choices (at least in the collaborative mind of America) makes this option all the more accessible.

We started off with some cocktails - a Cherry Sour for my friend, and a Dark 'n Stormy for myself.  The Cherry Sour being a cousin of the Amaretto version, and considering that almond and cherry flavors actually get confused on many palates means you're liable to be happy either way.  I heard good things, and my personal favorite part (read; the only part I actually got to try) was the Italian cherry garnish.  Well worth it, though, as it had a succulent, meaty bite similar to that of a kalamata olive (which, by the way, is the olive that started my love affair with olives in general).
The Dark 'n Stormy featured a Vanilla-Caramel dark rum, with lemon and ginger notes.  Reminiscent of a Long Island, but a touch darker and, in my opinion, far superior.
Neither, I think, would live up to a "true" cocktail bar, where the list of ingredients can sometimes require an almanac and a compass to get through, and a thirty minute wait per drink is both expected and worth it.  However, Nosh is in no way claiming to be a cocktail bar, and at only $5 each on happy hour, both were well worth the second round.

Now, however, the story really begins.

The first course was the Calamari.  Simply done, perfectly fried strips of calamari steak served with an Asian-hinted house sauce and lime wedge.  Too often do I steer away from calamari, because too often is it overcooked, rubbery, and, in a word, gross.  Hence the beauty of someone else choosing your meal, as this is, to date, the best calamari that has had the pleasure of being devoured by yours truly.  The sauce was clean and flavorful, and the lime added a spritz of brightness that was a wonderful accompaniment.

Following this came the Beet Caprese.  Roasted beet slices served with a duo of basil and tomato pestos, balsamic glaze, house made chips and labna cheese, and perfectly toasted baguette.  I'm a fan of good beets.  I'm a fan of good pesto.  I'm (now) a fan of fresh labna.  You do the math.  The baguette (technically extra) is a must, as spreading about any mix of these flavors on the chewy-yet-crispy bread makes for a mouthful of happy.  Rich, creamy cheese with smooth pesto and robust beets - there is simply no wrong to this plate.

Next up was the Mac 'n Cheese.  Made with penne noodles, three cheeses, pulled pork, and in our case fresh jalapenos and anaheim peppers, this dish perhaps leaned over the line between 'macaroni' and 'meat and pasta with cheese'.  Nevertheless, the flavors were on par.  My friend found this dish to be on the "too spicy" side, but I (and my admitted tolerance) found it rather mild on this front.  While not my personal favorite version of this classic, it's definitely one for the books

Finally our main arrives - the Oven Roasted Chicken.  Served with brown-butter applesauce, charred onions and burnt scallion sauce, this was, in a word, delectable.  Further accented by a pair of eight-hour braised apples (which, we were told, took three days to prepare) - the word tender simply does not have enough meaning to apply here.  While I must go on record saying that this is not the single most moist piece of bird I've ever had (that record is currently held by an Airline Breast in Paris), the bone-in flavor with a clean, crisp sear was, simply put, succulence.  The brown-butter applesauce will hold a spot in my fondest of dreams.

Despite the end of The Experience, we couldn't leave without dessert.  We are, after all, sane.

While Nosh offers a small host of digestifs to finish the evening, we opted for something a bit more solid, and settled on the Chess Tart.  Described to us as similar to a southern pecan pie, we dived into a vanilla tart, topped with whipped cream and fresh blackberries (subject to season, of course), served with house-made white chocolate pocky sticks and strawberry coulis. 
The tart was buttery, flaky, light, and all things good.  The fresh fruit and coulis were the perfect mates to the dish, and I am stealing that pocky so hard it's not even funny.

Spectacular on all fronts and, combined with the massage I had the night before, entirely worth the trip.

My thanks to the team at Nosh for a truly wonderful experience.