Film-worthy Chinese food

Restaurants shut down for the most predictable of reasons -- bad location, uninspired food, health code violations, and, of course, a man in a uniform poking the warm muzzle of a gun into your side as he says, "Time to shut down your restaurant". Starting over in America after facing something kinda like that, the guy behind Se7en. Nestled in Cap Hill's Beauvallon and in no way affiliated with Kevin Spacey, Se7en is a sparsely modern, burnt-orange sleeve run by Jax Wang, who left China in 1993 soon after the government shut down his eatery due to his support of the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square -- filled with the same number of communists as Larimer Square thanks to the influx of Boulderites on Friday nights. Dishes with Chinese, Indonesian, and Thai roots include Lovers' Shrimp with both sweet-spicy and lobster sauces, calamari served with an Indo sweet dipping sauce called sambal kecap, and deep fried chicken marinated in apple juice and cooked Mexican-style with pureed apples, prompting your waiter to ask "how you like dem?". The script's flipped with tweaked American stalwarts, like an oyster-sauced Big Apple Strip, Colorado lamb seasoned with U.S., Mexican, and imported Mongolian spices (the latter so exotic, there's no English name for them), and the lunch-only Inside Out Bacon Cheeseburger, with the pork & dairy stuffed inside the patty, as "a popular way to make dishes in Northern China is to find a way to put something inside something else" -- a philosophy that, applied outside the food world, can leave you with another mouth to feed.Because drinking is an international concern, Se7en features a full bar, the specialty being a gimlet made with house-infused cucumber vodka -- one too many, and the bad location will be across the table from you.