According to most restaurant critics, the perfect Mexican meal is served on a plate, which rests on a table with legs. Enjoy Mexican the way it was meant to be: for $40, today's Groupon gets you a four-course dinner with tequila pairings at Tambien. The dinner is offered every Thursday evening at 7 p.m. (minimum of 25 and maximum of 50 people per meal, reservations are required) and includes chips, three salsas, and a four-course dinner with tequila pairings. Sample a bit of this and that at the restaurant that Westword called the Best Late-Night Mexican Restaurant of 2008.

Tambien's special tasting menu changes weekly but always includes the restaurant's signature creative flavors and authentic tastes. The highly acclaimed eatery provides a modern twist on the standard Mexican restaurant. A sample menu starts with sopes con chorizo (tasty masa cups overflowing with chorizo, spinach, and queso Oaxaca) and moves on to crispy crab tostaditos stuffed with jicama, black beans, and red-onion salsa. For a main course, diners are treated to grilled pork chop with achiote and sided with frijoles charros, wild mushroom tamal, and chiltomate salsa. The meal ends on a sweet note with chocolate tamal crested with cajeta ice cream and served with a Gran Centenario–infused raspberry sauce. The feast is enhanced with Cazadores tequila selections. View additional sample menus, posted at the beginning of each week, on Tambien's site.

Menu envy, when one spends hours in heavy debate between two entrees only to be pressured into ordering the wrong one and spending the rest of the time staring wishfully for forkings of a dining companion's much more appetizing dish, is the easiest way to sour a meal. A tasting menu not only allows diners to coast through the ordering process like happy figure skaters performing on a frictionless ice surface made by freezing canola oil, but also invites opportunity for unfamiliar or unexpected new tastes. The casual Mexican eatery is the brainchild of the gastrominds behind Mezcal, Rockbar, and Sketch, and is located conveniently in Cherry Creek North.

Reviews

The Denver Post loves Tambien's brunch, and the Examiner lauds its tequila selection. Along with awarding it Best Late-Night Mexican Restaurant in 2008 and Best House Margarita in 2008 and 2009, Westword says:

• The décor here is south-of-the-border kitsch, the staff a veteran crew culled from Morreale and partner Sean Yontz’s other operations. and [sic] the menu a Colfax-meets-suburbia version of Mezcal’s award-winning tacos, Chama’s killer posole and tamales evidencing the style and intelligence that Yontz polished during his fine-dining days.

Three Insider Pages users give Tambien four stars, while Citysearchers and Yelpers give it 3.5:

• If you want mexican [sic] food in Cherry Creek, this is the place to go. – Steve H., Insider Pages
• …it's never over-crowded and the staff and customers are not pretentious at all. – playlax20, Citysearch