OAK at Fourteenth Seasonal comfort food and spectacular cocktails in Boulder

Moving away from home can be a scary prospect: you immediately lose your safety net, although it's not like there's a ton of work out there for trapeze artists anyway. For grub from a dude who decided to stick around, check out OAK at fourteenth.

Run by the former mixologist extraordinaire at Frasca (and current prez of the Colorado Bartender's Guild), OAK's serving up "local/seasonal comfort food" and fittingly killer 'tails just down the street; the space itself looks like a minimally decorated loft, lined with huge street-facing windows, light wood accents, and cafeteria-modern chairs each made by Coca-Cola out of 111 recycled plastic bottles, though not Coke Zero bottles, as they're still waiting to break the century sales mark. Said comfort-fooding comes via shared plates like wood-oven roasted beef marrow & caviar and braised meatball sliders, plus meaty mains like a beef ribeye & cripsy kurobuta pork belly, and a plate of shell beans/pickled peppers and two juicy Colorado lamb T-bones, though just one of those guys is enough to give you a Crazy Heart. The inventive drink menu's categorized by alcohol content, with scraps for the DD like a housemade raspberry/Meyer lemon soda, buzz starters like the gin/Aperol/lemon/sparkling wine "Day's End", and full-on joints like the mezcal/Domaine de Canton/cardamom- and cinnamon-infused agave "Ginger's Lost Island", and the gin/Strega/blood orange/egg white "Mo's Special", something those sadistic other Stooges probably already knew.

Though they're only going to have one beer on tap at a time, they promise it'll always be something super seasonal/rare. To wit: they're now pumping Avery's Rumpkin Ale, a pumpkin brew aged in rum barrels that clocks in at 13.2% ABV -- though if you feel like that might have you acting like a clown, you might want to go for something Tamer.