Rose suggested. “So much better for you than beef.” Lacey felt like she’d been buffaloed by her family all afternoon. Eating a buffalo might be poetic justice, but she never ate burgers of any kind. “Skip the hairy beast, sis. Let’s get the rattlesnake bites,” Cherise suggested. “Yum.” The Smithsonian family was dining at the Best of the West Steakhouse in LoDo, the lower downtown area that had become Denver’s nightlife hub. Rose had picked the place, but Lacey’s dad liked it because it was close to Coors Field, home of his beloved Colorado Rockies baseball team. Like the rest of LoDo, it was hopping on Saturday night. The steak house was decked out in high Western style, with copper, leather, and mounted trophies. The menu featured a dozen kinds of steak, including buffalo steaks, and novelties, like Rocky Mountain oysters and rattlesnake and gator bites. It was not cheap. Lacey was impressed. The Smithsonians’ dining-out experiences had always been economical and family-friendly, heavy on chicken and burgers.
