Rocking Out With Fried Pickles at Cheeky Monk

Every Tuesday starting at 8 p.m., the Cheeky Monk Belgian Beer Cafe (534 E Colfax) gives its patrons a little something special: live acoustic music accompanied with better-than average-pub grub.

I say better-than-average like it's a good thing, because let's face it, pub food sucks like a barrel of leeches, and really, why do these beer-peddling places need to serve food any better than artery killing, unfresh fish n' chips? They don't, because no foodie is going to hold a pub accountable for pubic hairs in their buffalo wings. It's a well-known fact-it's even in the dictionary next to the word Suck-pub food is no good.

Enter Cheeky Monk. Enter fried pickles with garlic aioli. Enter mussels in every flavor imaginable, I'm talking Curry to Chipotle, and you have a pub taking its food to another level. And the best part is that it all revolves around Belgian beer! Yes, please, and thank you very much!

Now here's the obligatory sentence about décor: this place looks like a mix between a monastery and a brothel, and you should go just to see what that looks like, and now to the food.

Unfortunately, I had spent the morning testing out the Atkins Diet, which, by 3 p.m. resulted in me never wanting to eat meat again, so when I got to Cheeky Monk I opted for the Caesar salad with the soup of the moment, butternut squash. The Caesar salad was disappointingly every Caesar salad I've ever had-except for that one time at Panzano. But the soup was yummy, sweet, and creamy, so I was happy, mostly because one doesn't get butternut squash at a pub and when one does, it's a special moment.

My dining partner, on the other hand, is an all-out carnivorous Meatasaur, so he ordered Smoked Apple Sausage with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. This dish was so good that we licked the plate, which is one great thing about pubs-you can lick plates and no one cares. They just buy you more beer.

The only downside to the evening was when we consulted Meatasaur's boss, who is from Belgium, and the Belgian boss said that everything we ate had nothing to do with Belgian food. So don't go there for exotic fare. Go there for the best pub food this side of the Mississippi.