Going loco moco at the 20th Street Café
At first glance, the 20th Street Café (1123 20th St., 303-295-9041) looks like a standard-issue greasy spoon. The frilly draperies, the low counter, the buttery aroma of frying potatoes—it’s just like thousands of breakfast-and-lunch joints all over the country. The breakfast classics—pancakes, bacon, eggs any style—are in their proper places, along with the requisite lunch offerings. For larger appetites, there’s even chicken-fried steak and big-ass burgers.
It’s all pleasantly predictable until the eye glimpses some unusual diner-menu items: Noodle bowls? Here? Keep looking, and there’s more: The board of daily specials has fried rice dishes, including the intriguing-sounding breakfast fried rice, and then there’s something called “loco moco.” It’s the café’s Hawaiian specialty: white rice, topped with a hamburger patty, topped with gravy, topped with an egg. Yuck.
If you know the story of the 20th Street Café, it all makes more sense. Founded by a Japanese-American man, the restaurant has been a neighborhood staple since 1946. Sakura Square, traditionally a Japanese enclave, is across the street, and it doesn’t seem too big a leap for 20th Street to serve the Hawaiian loco moco, a treasured island favorite, alongside tuna salad sandwiches and French toast.
The love for this dish is a little puzzling, however, since it comes from a land of fresh fish and lush greenery. Plated with a smattering of green onions, it’s an intimidating mound of yellow and brown. The hamburger patty is massive and oblong, the gravy thick and dark. The scrambled egg on top offers contrast, but it’s no match for the hulking slab underneath. It looks like an ancient rock formation.
The plate is a powerhouse of salty blandness. In a typical diner dish, bread is the foundation of such a meal; the trouble is that bread gets gross and soggy when it’s drenched with gravy. Rice stays firm and chewy, even under a gravy assault. Bust off a chunk of hamburger and egg, scoop it with some gravy-soaked rice, and there it is: A mouthful of “blah” that's neither bad nor good. It’s like the Jack Johnson of lunches.
