Chef Thach Tran has brought wonderful new dishes to Ace Eat Serve’s menu, including these ethereal stir-fried rice noodles (or rice pillows, as Tran calls them) dressed in Tran’s house made X.O. sauce.
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Chef Thach Tran is a rising star in the Denver restaurant scene for good reason: His cooking comes from a childhood spent by the side of his restaurateur grandmother in Saigon, years of industry experience, and a joyful passion for Asian street food. Today marks the launch of Tran’s new menu at Ace Eat Serve, which we were lucky enough to preview earlier in the week. Not only are the new dishes extraordinarily tasty, but Tran has also updated some of Ace’s standbys to delicious effect. Here’s a peek at what’s in store; we plan on trying every item on the new menu, and so should you.
The Crazy Sichuan Shrimp Wontons come in a rich, spicy, ginger-y sauce, in the style of a Hong Kong street food stall.
New cocktails are available as of today as well, including the Saipan Sunset (left) and Paper Plane (right). Not pictured is a delightfully spicy-sweet Vietnamese coffee cocktail made with UCC Coffee, chile-infused Patrón XO Café, cinnamon, and star anise.
On Friday, February 16, to celebrate Chinese New Year, Ace Eat Serve will offer guests adorable, dog-themed scratch-off tickets good for free ping pong and Ace gift cards. The Year of the Dog cocktail (Ron Zacapa rum, Bird Dog spiced whiskey, orange bitters, Dancing Pines black walnut liqueur, Hair of the Dog tonic) highlights the Chinese Zodiac animal for 2018.The “OMG” is a stunning dessert: A white chocolate sphere encloses a silky mango cheesecake, garnished with citrus, grapefruit custard, and ginger crunchies. Photo by Anna Regan/Ace Eat ServePho + Taiwanese noodle bowl = Chef Tran’s Spice Market Beef soup. Photo by Anna Regan/Ace Eat ServeWe can’t decide which part of this dessert we love the most: the creamy miso caramel mousse underneath the house-made magic shell or the fried mochi butter cake cubes. Eaten all together, it’s one of the best sweets we’ve tasted in recent memory.Tran’s version of khao soi (a northern Thai coconut-curry noodle soup) features rich kabocha squash, lotus root, springy egg noodles, and pickled chiles.Look at that egg! Cooked in a sous vide bath to a precise 64-degrees, the custardy egg tops fried rice studded with chunks of bacon.The Jade Stir-fry is the perfect verdant veggie foil, with kale, chard, and gai lan (Chinese broccoli) and plenty of garlic.
If you’re planning on celebrating Chinese New Year on Friday, February 16, Ace Eat Serve will hand out traditional red envelopes with a lucky scratch ticket inside that could get you an hour of free ping pong or an Ace gift card. Also, on that night only, Tran will serve “Chả Cá Hà Nội,” or whole fried Alamosa bass, which comes with turmeric-pickled shallots and charred pineapple and is served with lettuce cups for making wraps. There will also be Tsingtao specials and general revelry as the Year of the Dog kicks off.
