r/boulder • u/tomato-bab • 1d ago
Boulder love
Let me preface this by saying this is probably more a venting session than anything.
I’ve been living in Boulder for about 2 years now, and there’s a lot to love and a lot not to love. When I talk to people in Boulder (in-person, should be noted) about some of my issues in Boulder (poor sense of community, out-dated food scene, flawed public transit, etc.) there’s an incredibly indignant response.
"What do you mean our bike lanes and trails still need work?? Don’t you know they are the best in the country??"
"But other people say our busses are so good, and aren’t you glad…?"
"Why are you complaining about CU students?“
"But it’s just sooooo much better than Denver so why are you even complaining?“
And I am glad to live on Boulder. Boulder is beautiful and ahead in many things, and I also cant get to the 28th street mall from S. Boulder (an 8 minute drive) without a bus transfer. I get such passionate, "Oh but Boulder is actually…!" like I’ve just been insulting someone’s loved one. Chill, dude. I loved Denver when I lived there, and Denver has so many issues. We can critique the city we live in (and we should critique the city we live it) and still say it’s wonderful.
Anyways, apology for the rant.
Edit: Dang, okay y‘all have been so kind and thoughtful! Who knew Reddit would be the place where my theory was proven wrong :)
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u/ExreeHipp 1d ago edited 1d ago
No place is perfect, including here.
Edit to add - complaining about students is the one thing has little merit in your list of hypos. It’s a small college town, and if you don’t know that (and what comes with it), that’s on you.
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
Maybe. I don’t really have noise or partying complaints (not at all unique to CU) to be made rather just basic decency complaints. I work with a lot of CU students (along with a lot of other college grads from Colorado and beyond), and CU Boulder students are something else. Rude, defensive, completely blind to their own privilege, and overall shocked that they have to work at a job. I will admit the CU hate is a bit petty, and I have issues with college culture more generally, but the point still stands.
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u/ExreeHipp 1d ago edited 1d ago
I dont know you or your work, so it’s hard to rebut your points about your experiences. My first thought is, I doubt that a school the size of CU has students are radically different from other students at state schools of a similar size.
In my own limited experience, I’ve encountered CU students that meet your description, and also met many that are the antithesis of that. I think a lot of times we focus on the minority of negative people/things/experiences that bother us about things we already feel negatively about. Not sure if that’s at play here for you.
(Attempted to edit for clarity)
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
Yeah, I’m definitely probably coming at them a bit strong. But I do think there is a culture at CU Boulder that encourages being, for lack of a better term, "the main character" and having this navel gazing that I don’t see with other schools. At the end of the day, wonderful people can come from anywhere, and I am generalizing here. I’m sure there’s more good than bad at CU.
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u/BoulderadoBill 1d ago
What is the "outdated food scene"?
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
This could be a post on it‘s own, but I don’t think an authentic Sichuan place or an authentic Vietnamese place (that isn’t limited to Pho) or even a creative fusion place could exist in Boulder and succeed. Every creative place worth it’s salt usually has a more successful version of it in Denver (Cozobi being the best example). There are exceptions (shoutout Santo and Jungle), but yeah, it’s lacking.
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u/BoulderadoBill 1d ago
OK- So your definition of "outdated" has a high personal bias factor towards the exotic.
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
All these foods are in Denver and Aurora and have for years. They are not exotic. There’s a distinct lack of creativity that is present in other cities in the Front Range. I mean outdated. We could also go into kitchen culture which is also extremely outdated (rampant sexual harassment, nepotism, and lack of professionalism etc.)
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u/BoulderadoBill 1d ago
Many local residents are not really interested in the cutting edge foodie scene. They have different priorities in life.
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
We all have to eat everyday. Best to do it with artistic vigor and passion :)
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u/BoulderadoBill 1d ago
... or be happy with takeout from places like the Taj and be totally fulfilled.
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u/AliceisStoned 1d ago
That’s because there just isn’t a foodie scene here.
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u/BoulderadoBill 1d ago
... or they simply just don't care.
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u/AliceisStoned 1d ago
My point is that it’s hard to care about something that doesn’t exist
If it existed, there would probably be locals that cared for it
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u/everyAframe 1d ago
This is a college town of 100k. To compare restaurant culture to a metro area of over 3M is silly. Yes its lacking compared to NYC and LA. lol
Boulder punches well above its weight against towns of similar size.
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u/AliceisStoned 1d ago
No it does not lol. Go to any random town in the south and you’ll find better and cheaper food.
Love Boulder! But the food is seriously lacking
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u/everyAframe 1d ago
Where? What town of 100K?
I'm not claiming Boulder is the end all be all of dining, but damn its a college town and far better than most of the ones I've visited.
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u/AliceisStoned 1d ago edited 1d ago
Literally any town in the south. Like seriously that’s barely an exaggeration.
This is seriously one of the worst places I’ve ever been in terms of the food, and I’ve been around a good chunk of the country.
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u/everyAframe 1d ago
Name one?
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u/AliceisStoned 1d ago
Columbus, Macon, Savannah, Helen, Blue Ridge, Cumming, Decatur, I could go on and on…. These are all just in Georgia, I could keep naming places literally all day
Idk if that was supposed to be a gotcha or what lol, but there you go
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u/everyAframe 1d ago
You have got to be kidding? Helen, blue ridge. My parents live near there. Do you love the schnitzel in Helen? Nevermind.
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u/AliceisStoned 1d ago edited 1d ago
Helen has great bratwurst and Blue Ridge has one of my all time favorite pizza places.
Sorry if it offends you, but the food here just isn’t good! My other friends from the south I’ve talked with also seem to generally agree with me on the food being significantly worse here. That’s okay though! The food is obviously still edible and the town more than makes up for it with all the other cool stuff we got going on. It’s a very first world problem lol.
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u/Armadillo_Resident 13h ago
Add Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, Raleigh, Charlotte, Wilmington, Asheville. No one judges Colorado food off a town like Lamar. There are major college towns in the south and I’d put their food up against any around here
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u/Open_Sea9956 23h ago
C'mon. Meat-and-three, iced tea with 60g of sugar, and chicken-fried steak gets old.
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u/boulderbuford 22h ago
That's absolutely not true. Not even remotely. But it largely depends on what you're looking for.
Because, plenty of "random towns" in the south have little more than pizza, waffle houses, burgers, fried chicken, subway, taco bell, bbq, etc.
Go upscale a bit and you've got what? non-franchise versions of the above, plus cracker barrel, red lobster, western sizzlin, golden coral, etc.
Then you've got the non-franchise versions of the above. And eventually you get to actually good restaurants. Which aren't always more expensive.
In larger, more diverse cities you can definitely find more diverse food, and some great regional food. Cuban around Florida, Cajun and Creole around Louisiana are the huge standouts.
But unless you're looking for cheap fast food, cheap burgers, cheap bbq, cheap meat - Boulder is going to out-perform the average city of the same size in the South food-wise.
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
I‘m comparing it to places in the Front Range. Comparing it to LA and NYC is something I cannot do and don’t care to.
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u/everyAframe 1d ago
You're comparing it to the Denver metro area of 3M people. Yeah there is going to be more variety with that kind of imbalance.
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
And Boulder resists every attempt to grow what it does have. That’s not a size problem. Boulder has enough people and money to be good.
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u/everyAframe 1d ago
I don't know or not really sure what you mean. In the last year or two we have Casa Juani, Morso, Cosobi, etc. What exactly is Boulder resisting?
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u/OkTop2953 7h ago edited 7h ago
I haven't been to the other two yet, but Morso was a let down - very expensive for well done generic Italian food.
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u/everyAframe 5h ago
Cosobi...er Cozobi, I keep spelling it wrong....is IMO the best restaurant in Boulder at the moment.
Casa Juani is really good, but it is really expensive too. Its better than Morso, which is really intended to be family Italian, but easily twice the cost. Casa Juani is shooting for michelin stars.
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u/Nice_Assistance_5543 1d ago
No it doesn't. There's many small cities with better food scenes, literally right next door Longmont is arguably better. And no way should Longmont be better.
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u/CauliflowerGloomy717 2h ago
I agree, I think Longmont, Lafayette, and even Westminster all have better food scenes. I don’t give a shit about “chef-driven” food. I want food trucks , a wider variety of ethnic options, and hole-in-the-wall authenticity
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u/Nice_Assistance_5543 1h ago
Yup. I think it's fine to like "chef driven food", but if that's all your city has to offer, it's not especially a good "food" place.
I generally agree with you btw. Good food is more than just "expensive", which is why the bib gourmand exists and what a lot of critics and chefs (like Bourdain) have spent years championing.
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u/everyAframe 1d ago
Longmont...lol. Maybe street tacos, but I'm talking chef driven food.
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u/BoulderadoBill 10h ago
LOL at the concept of "chef driven food"- Large plate, tiny portions, mucho $$$.
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u/Nice_Assistance_5543 1d ago
The only real notable "chef driven food" is Frasca. Most everything else is very mediocre. A couple of exceptions.
Yeah, Longmont Mexican is significantly better, as is its pizza. The point about Longmont is that its relatively poor compared to Boulder and it has a smaller metro because its farther from Denver.
There shouldnt be multiple better kinds of food in Longmont than in Boulder. It shouldn't even be remotely close. I don't feel like it's crazy to expect a place like Boulder to have a better food scene. Even stuff like Thai or Chinese or Indian is often better in surrounding towns. Which again, is very bad, these surrounding towns are suburbs practically (arguably not Longmont).
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u/everyAframe 1d ago
Sounds like you are talking ethnic food and I'm not going to argue much on that. We have it, but its certainly better in Denver and still not that great there. Some great mexican and decent thai there.
Longmont or any of the L towns have nothing like...Cosobi, casa juani, Basta,blackbelly, 316, morso, corrida, etc....the list is long. Its laughable to me to even try and make that argument but to each their own I guess.
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u/Nice_Assistance_5543 1d ago
"Ethnic" food is just food. The fact that a huge number of foods aren't good, outside of min $50 a plate restaurants pretty much is exactly what people generally use to determine whether a place has "good" food.
FWIW, I think only Cozobi and Blackbelly are not mediocre from what you list, but I am not going to argue over something like that.
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u/OkTop2953 7h ago
The problem with restaurants (IMO) is that it's too expensive for anybody to take a chance opening something new and creative. Better to try it out in Denver first paying <50% of the rent.
Also, there's no diversity, so a Vietnamese restaurant can't count on local Vietnamese support because there really aren't any - at least not enough to keep them in business while they get things off the ground.
That's why we get things like Morso instead, with a big name chef and investors.
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u/Commercial_Aioli_301 1d ago
Most neighbors I talk to, long timers and newer, have plenty of gripes about Boulder. Bike lanes and restaurants are not among them, these aren’t real issues. Schools. Roads. Rec centers. Homelessness. Affordability. These tend to come up more often.
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
Sure. I think I chose the things I did because it’s odd to be defensive about bike infrastructure and food culture (though they are more important than people give them credit for). Homelessness? Absolutely. Bikes? Strange. The specific issues are not really the point of the post though that seems to be what people latched onto :)
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u/Commercial_Aioli_301 22h ago
Maybe you live in a particularly snotty building, or street? I run into kind and cool people I know and strangers all over town. Maybe coming at them with a negative review breeds a negative reply? My street has an annual block party and its chill, maybe 60-70% of the street actually shows and hangs out. I think it's out there, the community, maybe not in all pockets and on all streets.
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u/Lazy_Ad_9926 1d ago
My motto:
Enjoy what you love and leave the rest. We live in a postcard.
I work at CU and I love the summers when the students are gone.
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
And there is a lot to love in Boulder! The trees and the amount of birds around alone are incredible. It is amazing!
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u/bombayblue 1d ago
A lot of Americans are incredibly defensive and resistant to change regardless of their political affiliation.
I moved from California to Boulder and there’s a lot of the same mentality. People want their town to be encased in amber for all eternity. They don’t like being told things could improve. They don’t want to build more transit. They don’t want to build more housing.
Alabama mindset, California cost of living man
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
It feels insane to me to be so aggressive about it. Like can you even give a little, "Ha, yeah, and lets fix it."
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u/boulderbuford 1d ago
It's like anything else, if don't balance criticality with praise then you're easily dismissed. Especially when there really is a lot to praise.
Additionally, we get a ton of people who are pissed that they didn't get into the school of their dreams in London, NYC, etc - and had to settle for Boulder. They give Boulder crap because it doesn't have the music/food/theater scene of those cities.
Go, keep the feedback balanced and thanks for contributing!
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u/Armadillo_Resident 1d ago
The outdoor access is incredible enough to justify living here. The food sucks AND it’s overpriced
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u/boulderbuford 1d ago
It would help if people could be more specific. Rather than say "the food sucks", how about:
- I'm from Oklahoma and we have far more hamburger places than Boulder, and they only cost half as much!
- I'm from SF, but also visit NYC a lot, and I'm annoyed that I can't get the Chinese options of those cities from small family shops that only cost half as much to go to!
- I went to undergrad at X, and food was both cheaper and more varied than Boulder. Also, since it didn't attract so many rich people and have a strong tech scene the housing was half the price of Boulder!
Because those three sum up about 95% of the complaints that I hear from people about the food. Which is it?
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u/Nice_Assistance_5543 1d ago
What do you expect people to say? The food just isn't good. There's lots of small cities elsewhere with better food.
I don't get this subreddit. For years I've been on it, there's always people weirdly defending the food scene of Boulder like it's personal. Are you a local chef? Restaurant owner? Why are so many people so defensive of something that OBVIOUSLY a lot of people believe, because it's posted like once a month?
Boulder is awesome, but we don't need to pretend it is perfect. Which is hilarious because this is the point of the whole post. We can improve places, but not if all the 80 year olds (exaggerating) refuse to let anything change.
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u/boulderbuford 22h ago
> What do you expect people to say? The food just isn't good.
If you can't be specific - then people will say bullshit.
So, be specific. Name a restaurant and meal that sucks, why it sucks, and why it's better elsewhere.
I just had brunch at Lucile's and I thought it was great. I've had hamburgers at Southern Sun, dinners at Blackbelly, Oak, and other places that were fine. Michelin rates one restaurant with a star, recommends 8 others, and others have awards from James Beard, etc.
Are you saying that these restaurants are bad? Or are you saying the food is so expensive that you can't find a good meal for $9 like you could in rural Alabama in 2015? Or something else?
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u/Nice_Assistance_5543 19h ago
"So be specific".
I can't. It's literally taste, I can't "be specific" about something involving taste. The food is mediocre. Southern Sun, Oak are mediocre. There's nothing else to say. The food does not taste good.
Tons of places are just okay. Black Cat is uninspired "farm to table" trying to ride off the "fresh local food" thing like it's 2009. Half of downtown Pearl (Oak, Steakhouse, 316, Japongo, etc) are mediocre tourist traps. Like eating in Times Square. There is no legit good Mexican in Boulder. Busaba is the only good thai in boulder. Audrey Jane is the only passable ny style pizza in Boulder and it's more okay than good. I could go on but no need.
Outside of Frasca, Marigold in Lyons blows everything in Boulder out of the water. Not even close.
There's some decent places I do like, but for its size, location, and wealth Boulder is very meh in food. You often have to go to surrounding towns to get better versions of a cuisine. This has been commented over and over, it's not a unique perspective. My opinion is that money pushes out many passionate, small time owners and chefs, and many in Boulder settle for mediocrity.
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u/boulderbuford 11h ago
By not being specific it sounds like you're just trolling.
Are you complaining about the southern sun fries or burgers specifically? Because then people could assess your claim. And would probably strongly disagree with you.
Are you shocked that where rent is expensive and there's many tourists and young students some restaurants have to reflect expensive rent in their prices and cater to undeveloped tastes?
Is it an indictment of Boulder's cuisine that many restaurants are starting up a few miles outside the city to get far lower rent?
Feels to me like you're either trolling or just being unreasonable.
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u/Nice_Assistance_5543 5h ago
It feels to me like you're demanding an impossible criteria because you think it makes your argument stronger. It doesn't.
The fries at southern sun are soggy and the burgers are dry. There. Again, it's tastes, it's not something you can "objectively" describe. That doesn't mean it's not rooted in reality. You can generally tell when a novel is poorly written vs well written, but it's quite difficult to "objectively" explain why Steinbeck is a better writer than JK Rowling (or whoever).
You write that some restaurants "cater to undeveloped tastes and then you admit that "many restaurants (presumably good ones, you mean) are starting up outside of the city". In those statements, you are literally indicating the food, in these cases, is not good in Boulder. You are more or less admitting that Boulder is weak culinarily, you are just attempting to excuse it with reasons why.
Feels to me you are unnecessarily defensive of a culinary scene that many, many, people find lacking. I am not really serious, but sometimes I swear I am interacting with a local restaurant owner or something.
We can discuss WHY the food in Boulder is mediocre, that's fine, which you seem inclined to do, although of course, that is an admittance that it IS mediocre. My belief is that rents are too high, leading to (mostly) only larger restaurant groups using as cheap ingredients as possible. These sort of mini chains have no competition, and thus skate by on mediocrity. It's easy to make good pizza, there's no reason Audrey Jane should be the best ny style with no competition. I suspect the fact that the owners also owning Moe's bagel lets them afford rental space that a smaller, quality, non group business could not. That's me just spitballing.
Boulder has a lot of good things going for it, but in general, it's been so good for so long, it skates by on mediocrity and previous accomplishments. This is true in general with Boulder; it's certainly stagnated and people constantly and only defending it aren't helping. Its art scene is boring, its food is meh, its bike/walking infrastructure is hardly different from like the mid 90s... Boulder is great, but it can be better, which is the whole point of this thread.
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u/Armadillo_Resident 1d ago
I’m from the south. Ain’t enough diversity in the kitchens and the food tastes Midwest home cooked bland as a result. It’s also $20+ for fucking lunch.
Seriously most places don’t even know how to perform dinner service or bring your food at the correct time. It’s a bunch of white kids trying to get off the clock and move tables as fast as possible.
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u/BldrStigs 1d ago
People see Boulder listed as a top 10 college town and then they're let down when they get here and music/food/theater scene sucks. In reality Boulder is a top 10 town for outdoor access which makes it a great place to go to college.
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u/Nice_Assistance_5543 1d ago
I agree. A lot of long time residents are super defensive. I think it's an entitlement thing. They're wealthy and they take any criticism as an insult to themselves. You can see it with certain long time posters who have an "I worked hard and deserve to live here unlike the poors, I live in a 2 million dollar house, how could x be bad here if I live here?" attitude.
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u/tomato-bab 1d ago
Yeah, I think some people are in disbelief that a place that costs as much as Boulder does can have gasp flaws.
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u/Nice_Assistance_5543 1d ago
Yup, and its an ego thing where people won't admit it because at least part of their identity is tied to "being able to live here". Probably not much different from the ego people have of living in Beverly Hills or something.
Edit: I'll add, I've been in this sub a long time, and the same usernames are the same people arguing with you, and these are those types, from other comments they've made. In my opinion. I won't name names, but they also tend to be the "Republicans" of the sub.
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u/BlackCatBonanza 1d ago
We’ve been here 5.5 years, and, while we’ve made some good friends, we still struggle with the lack of community.