100 Favorite Dishes: Hummus from Shish Kabob Grill

Lori Midson

No. 91: Hummus from Shish Kabob Grill

For more than six years, Shish Kabob Grill, an East Colfax corner cafe, across the street from the Colorado State Capitol building and a million miles from Lebanon, has been a popular Mideast feast house for falafel and fattouch, baba ghanouj and beef kafta kabobs, grape leaves and gyros, tabbouleh and hummus.

The food, created, cooked and plated in an open kitchen slightly obscured by a small counter that sits adjacent to a desk nearly always occupied by the owner or a staffer concentrating on paperwork, is stunningly prepared, especially the hummus. Nutty, silky, expressive with the tartness of lemon juice, jolted with enough garlic stupefy a clique of vampires and perfectly on point with its chickpea-to-sesame-paste ratio, it's no wonder the smitten snap it up in bulk. It's finished with a pond of olive oil that seeps into the crevasses, dusted with ground sumac and served with large rounds of piping hot pita bread that, while not baked in-house, is still a very good market-bought utensil for mopping up the zingy dip.

Hungry for more? All the dishes in our countdown are linked below:

No. 100: Italian wedding soup from the Squeaky Bean
No. 99: American Classic Burger (and fries) from Tarbell's
No. 98: E's clam linguini from Mangiamo Pronto
No. 97: Queso a la plancha taco from the Pinche Tacos wagon
No. 96: Prosciutto-wrapped jalapeño poppers from Tony's Market
No. 95: Fried chicken from the Pinyon
No. 94: Seafood soup from Farro
No. 93: Posole from The Porker
No. 92: Breakfast Burrito from the Taco Wagon in Lafayette

In late 2009, we embarked on a culinary journey that took us through our favorite dishes in the Mile High City -- one hundred, to be exact -- as a precursor to the Best of Denver issue. Now we're back with round two, counting down (in no particular order) a hundred more of our favorite Denver dishes in a list that, by our imperfect calculations, should be wrapped up by the time the Best of Denver 2011 hits the streets on March 31. In the meantime, if there's a dish you think we need to try, tell us about it in the comments section below, or shoot us an e-mail at lori.midson@westword.com.