DINING REVIEW: Antlers' brunch better than bar, but only a selection of offerings shine

An electric sign above the bar in Judge Baldwin's Brew Pub at Antlers Hilton hotel that reads "__ Kegs Sold" might be a bellwether for the hotel's two restaurants, which I recently checked out.

The sign has been turned off but not taken down. Evidence of past ambition sits everywhere in both restaurants among current mediocrity. Things are changing for the better, but they are not there yet.

Judge Baldwin's opened in 1991 as part of a face-lift of the downtown hotel. At the time, it was lively and hip: The first pub in town to brew beer on site, with a sophisticated-sounding name taken from the stumbling town drunk from Colorado Springs' pioneer era, who got his title, as the story goes, from judging a sheep contest. The place even had commercials (I can still picture them in my head) where the ghost of Judge Baldwin would try to drink customers' half-yards of ale.

Things went downhill over the years. Baldwin's no longer serves half yards. The beer hasn't been good for years (it earns mostly C's and D's from Beeradvocate.com), the food is so-so.

Locals have all but abandoned the place, and on a recent visit, even a gaggle of name-tag-wearing businessmen staying at the hotel were discussing whether they should search for a better bar on "Tee-john" Street.

The hotel's formal dining room, Antlers Grille, has succumbed to a similar fate.

In 2008, the hotel hired a local dream team of chefs, Ryan Blanchard from Plate World Cuisine and Jay Gust from Ritz Grill, to rebuild these burned-out eateries.

"My first week here I was a little shocked. It was bad. They were using instant mashed potatoes," Gust said. "But it is coming around."

In the year Gust and Blanchard have been at the hotel, they have taken a number of steps in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go.

This is clear as soon as you order a pint in the brewpub.

"This beer is an affront to my senses," one friend said on a recent evening when our pints arrived after a long wait. We had ordered an amber lager, a wheat and a pale ale. We spent several minutes arguing over which was which. Finally, we decided the one that tasted like old iced tea was the wheat. The others we never figured out. We didn't finish them either.

The food was better.

Gust revamped the menu, keeping a few classics like fish and chips, but throwing out other odd balls like lobster ravioli in favor of more familiar pub fare. Basically, the bar does everything Phantom Canyon Brewing Co., across the street, does - but not as well.

The room has the forced familiarity of an airport bar. The menu is not much different.

Nachos, wings, rings and burgers all make an appearance.

The cheese steak ($7) was a generous pile of shaved sirloin and melted cheese, flecked with peppers and onions, but it was finished under a broiler, which dried out the roll and made it impossible to fold. I ate it with a fork.

The grilled mahi-mahi ($12) with cilantro-lime rice and pico de gallo was well-cooked, and had a good balance of flavor, but came swimming in a pool of butter, which most diners who order grilled fish are probably trying to avoid.

Two nice surprises were the beer-cheese soup ($4) and calamari ($7) - both additions by Blanchard and Gust.

The soup is not too thick, bright with the bitterness of the beer, and sprinkled with a playful garnish of popcorn.

The calamari is a bountiful mound of small rings and many-tentacled ends, lightly battered and served with a trio of spicy marinara, lemon aioli and cilantro-lime cream.

The Sunday brunch buffet ($23.95) at Antlers Grille was better, but, as at the bar, diners could look to the wall to see a metaphor of lingering problems.

The dark, elegant room is full of old photographs of the stately former Antlers - a 1901 architectural masterpiece festooned with colonnades, balconies and twin stone towers framing Pikes Peak. It was torn down in 1964 and replaced with the bland modern box you see today. The brunch, at times, suffers from the same bland modern homogenization.

But it also has high points.

Blanchard and Gust have turned brunch into an international affair, with the cuisine of a different spot on the globe featured each week, with everything from Geman hassenpfeffer to deep, dark mole from the ancient Toltecs. All recipes are whipped up by Gust. Much of it is quite good, but the underlying breakfast fare has the food-service feel of Anywhere, USA.

I visited on Brazilian day and found such delights as spicy coconut shrimp soup, chicken in a peanut and banana sauce over aromatic rice, rich black beans and tender pork with spicy smoked sausage.

Many of the more traditional brunch offerings are just as enticing.

A pile of ice holds thumb-size pink shrimp, perfectly cooked and tossed with a hint of dill. Next door is tender poached and smoked salmon.

Just around the corner, beef tenderloin is served delectably rare.

Since Antlers Grille is not very popular, there is no elbowing to get to these premium items.

The down-home breakfast line yields light, flaky biscuits and sausage gravy. No brunch would be complete without a little cantaloupe. Here it is, ripe and fresh, scattered in generous platters of fruit, cheese and cold cuts.

With such fancy offerings, a number of cheap shortcuts seem particularly jarring.
Blintzes come covered in a gooey cherry topping that seems to have been squeezed from a Hostess pie.

Bagels and croissants all seem to be baked far, far away and designed for shelf life rather than taste.

The omelet bar is good but inconsistent.

Sometimes the cook was there, sometimes she wasn't.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that the Antlers - Colorado Springs' oldest hotel - offers fresh-made waffles, but serves them with fake maple syrup. I'd trade it for the real stuff on an Eggo any day.

Gust agreed that the bread and pastries are weak. It is one of the things, he said, with which they still need to make progress.

He said once brunch is dialed in, the Grille will look at opening for dinner.

"First we have to get service prim and proper, and get the back of the house prim and proper," he said. "Then we can look at all these little things and make them better and better."

Judge Baldwin's Brew Pub and Antlers Grille
*** (needs some work)

Address: 4 S. Cascade Ave.
Phone: 473-5600
Hours: Judge Baldwin's: 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sundays. Antlers Grille: 6 a.m.- 11 a.m. Mondays-Saturdays, 6 a.m.-2 p.m. Sundays
Entrees: $7-$24
Vegetarian: Yes
Alcohol: Full bar
Credit cards: Yes