Star Kitchen restaurant, Denver

On Mississippi at Federal. This is a dauntingly broad intersection, wide roads in both directions. Strip mall tucked in the northeast corner. You see the numbers there on the post. 

It is a large cavernous room with small televisions in the corner, no design element to sectionalize, it appears one area in the back is slightly elevated. Non decorative fish tanks, the kind that seafood sellers keep live fish, common Asian elements of near uniform size, too small, out of scale for the room, and rectangular shape, too many of them, and hung too high, spaced regularly but incongruently and themeless, other than being Asian.

They could use a designer.

The chairs promote rigid posture. No slouching, oh no, you will be sitting up straight, and it's not just me, it's everybody. At other times it is a dim sum restaurant. 

They were offering two lobsters for $20.00 so we went there. I suspected nonsense lobsters. I've been suspicious ever since those silly little things in Reno that my brother, James, and I had. So I ordered Peking duck too. My friend was appled. I mean appalled. I said, "look I just want a backup plan, okay?"  

They brought out a plate with steamed dumplings the likes I have not seen. I learned something. A dough ball, flattened, folded, steamed for a minute. It's stuck together but can be peeled apart like a tiny moist soft taco. The plate also had crispy duck skin with streaks of flesh still on. Another plate had spring onion and duck sauce.  The idea was to make a little sandwich with the duck skin. My friend thought it strange, very strange indeed, then ate it all. I had one and that was enough for me. I thought that was it for the Peking duck I ordered but then they brought out another larger platter of duck piled so compactly that it appeared to be two ducks, which we could not finish. And all that was a half order of Peking duck. So, that was my backup plan but it came out first on three plates. The skin presented first to be enjoyed separately as tiny sandwiches, I think. It could have been the whole meal for two people. 

The lobsters are real lobsters. I was wrong. I apologize for all my careless assumptions.

It is the best presentation of lobster I've ever had. They chop it to bits to open it all up and then presumably wok to slather the whole pile of two chopped lobsters inside and out with an outrageously flavorful sticky saucy coating. With all that preparation it is still a complete mess to consume. We had a pile of crumpled paper napkins, piles of broken bits of carapace taken away on separate plates to clear the mess, both of us had fingers that would not be wiped clean. We poured our drinking water onto napkins and got off the worst of it. I would describe the extravagantly proteinaceous meal a straight up pig out except that it's lobster and duck and not pig. 

Okay, now you see these people slumped over and I said the chairs promote stiff posture. They're all doing it. That is the only alternate position. Mostly Asian students, it seemed to me, mostly young the night we were there. Serious eaters. When they cease leaning into it then the only possibility is straight up so they eat and leave. That is what I saw.

I have to say, the whole meal was quite extraordinary. The greens we had were ordered separately. 

So there is that. Before I left to go out tonight, on my way out my door, I noticed that one of my neighbors left this package right at my front door. It's a dozen tiny cupcakes with some kind of red filling.