The Philly cheesesteak at Aspen Lodge
I’m convinced that my dinner at Aspen Lodge Bar & Grill had to have been some sort of fever dream.
I still don’t fully understand where reality ended and the dreamy, subconscious world of the Lodge took over, but it doesn’t matter. I found the cheesesteak.
The late May snow derailed my dinner plans and somehow deposited me at the door of Aspen Lodge. That’s when the magic started. Through that wormhole of a door, I left a Westminster strip mall and entered Christmas Land. Not because of the winterlike snow outside, but because the inside of the restaurant was fully decked out for Christmas — ornaments dangled from the ceiling, Christmas trees twinkled and giant poinsettia plants adorned the room.
That — the Christmas part — is why part of me doubts the validity of my tale. I love Christmas. Like, I-put-mylights-up-in-October-and-listen-toCeline-Dion’s“O-Holy-Night”-yearround love Christmas. And while all of the Denver’s Facebook universe had spent the day cursing the weather, I gleefully commented about how magical it all was. To “accidentally” enter a Christmas-bedazzled restaurant in the middle of a snowstorm on May 18 seems a little Twilight Zone-y, if you know what I mean.
But wait: It gets even weirder. Aspen Lodge is a Turkish restaurant, but what you must order is the cheesesteak. I know. It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I’m making this whole Christmas-in-May-Turkish-cheesesteak thing up. I don’t quite believe it myself, but I’m pretty sure that this restaurant actually exists and that it is, indeed, decked out for Christmas right this second and that the ponytailed Turkish owner makes a darned good Philly cheesesteak.
The sandwich is super greasy and heavy. (What? You want a light cheesesteak?) It’s loaded with onions — more onions than you’re probably used to having on a cheesesteak. That’s OK. Heck, it might even be the key. The meat is chopped and seared and tastes like good, greasy meat. The French bread is hearty enough to hold up against the drippings, so long as you eat it fast. Which you will.
It’s a cheesesteak inside a Turkish restaurant that just so happens to decorate for Christmas year-round. Or maybe I got frostbite and hallucinated the whole thing. There’s only one way to find out.