I’ve always wanted to sit myself down in the restaurant that won Best New Restaurant the night the Best of Denver issue came out, but there’s always been some complication — some crisis (generally alcohol-related) that required my immediate attention. My usual post-Best of routine is to drink until I…
A few weeks back, shortly after it was announced that Boulder chef Hosea Rosenberg had taken home the big prize and won this year’s Top Chef prize on the Bravo reality show of the same name, Rosenberg mentioned in passing that he was already working with a local artisanal foods…
The Best of Denver 2009 will be released today, and as I’ve done over the past couple of days (with discussions of the city’s best bread and places to go on a first date), I’m talking yet again about the process by which Denver’s best restaurants are chosen. The category…
As with yesterday’s post about the sudden shortage of rice-flour baguette in Denver, this is another explanation of how I came to choose a certain award in this year’s Best of Denver issue. This time around, it’s about the best restaurant for a first date. Award in question: Best First…
My review of Bones — Frank Bonanno’s new restaurant at 701 Grant Street — was a love letter, a total crush note from one shameless omnivore to another, to the kind of guy who would put bone marrow, ice cream, escargot and udon all on the same menu, from the kind of…
It was a rough year for Colorado chefs (and writers) in this year’s James Beard awards. The finalists were announced this morning — and our white jackets just got spanked. A handful of Coloradans had made the semi-finalists list. Frank Bonanno (above) got tapped for Best Restaurateur. Yasmin Lozada-Hissom from…
The 25th annual Best of Denver issue officially hits the streets (and this site) on March 26, and now that the hundred-plus food awards have been decided, I’m revisiting some of my favorite tales from this year’s always-weird awards process. Kinda like encounter therapy, and cheaper than going to a…
Yup. You read that right. I just got off the phone with owner Tom Sumners, who, along with his wife, Marna, owns and operates Cafe Star, a restaurant I loved when Rebecca Weitzman was in the kitchen, and liked well enough when I had a long lunch on the patio…
Got word today from one of my South Pearl neighborhood spies that things are looking bad for Nosh. This space at 1439 South Pearl Street, originally opened by John Hinman as the Gelato Spot back in 2005 only to become Nosh a couple of years later, was well-known in the…
Bones (reviewed on page 33) is an ultra-modern incarnation of a noodle bar: Asian flavors and French technique mixed on a menu that doesn’t require the following of any rote classical canon. But for almost a decade now (at least according to the cartoon moose/blob mascot on the menu), Denver…
See more photos of Bones at westword.com/slideshow. The first time I set foot inside Bones, I was drunk. I went there to meet a friend, eat some noodles and sober up before driving home. Nancy had beaten me there by a good twenty minutes, found a couple of seats at…
Frank Bonanno called me last Wednesday night, about ten-thirty. The first words out of his mouth: “So, how’d you like your lunch?” “How’d I like my lunch?” “Yeah, on Monday? How’d you like it?” It wasn’t Bonanno who’d picked me out of the crowd during my final meal at Bones,…
As anyone who was keeping up with the live blog of the St. Patrick’s Day/Jonathan Shikes fortieth birthday celebrations at the Fainting Goat yesterday is well aware, there came a point after several hours of Bud Light, Guinness and Irish car bombs when the acquisition of McDonald’s Shamrock Shakes became…
I’d already been out for a working lunch, out for drinks, then out for more drinks. Stopping in at the office, I got word that the James Beard Foundation had announced its semifinalists for the restaurant and chef awards, and that Bonanno was on the list. The announcement had just…
Shazz was a weird one to review. While I was both flummoxed and annoyed by the goofy, jazzy, half-Zen philosophy espoused by the restaurant’s website, some servers and owner Benny Kaplan, I absolutely loved the food. Which got me thinking… what other restaurants have what should have been a crippling…
Word came down from on high late last week that Kevin Taylor and his Kevin Taylor Restaurant Group will be adding a seventh name to their reconstituted roster of super-high-tone food-service operations. Let’s run the numbers, shall we? First, there’s Taylor’s namesake, the flagship Restaurant Kevin Taylor at 1106 14th…
Just in case you haven’t made your plans yet, the Fainting Goat has you covered this St. Paddy’s Day weekend. The bar at 846 Broadway starts the action at 5 p.m. tonight with a benefit for Volunteers for America that costs $40 but keeps the Guinness coming until the keg…
Today I was driving along East Iliff Avenue in Aurora when I spotted a name from the distant past: Shead’s. I’d reviewed Shead’s Fish and BBQ Heaven back in August 2002, just two months after I took this gig, and I remember the place as a rattletrap, strip-mall barbecue joint…
Want to do all your St. Paddy’s Day partying in one place? Then after Saturday’s parade, head to Katie Mullen’s, the massive new Irish bar at 1550 Court Place. Not only does Katie’s feature owners who run proper pubs back on the old sod, masterfully pulled Guinness on tap and…
For as long as I have been doing this job, I have operated with one unbreakable rule: that absent everything else — decor and design and reputation and style and money and privilege and location and buzz — it is a restaurant’s food that matters. Mostly, this rule has been…
See more photos of Shazz at westword.com/slideshow. I was at the diner. My cell phone rang. It was Laura. “So where are you going to dinner?” “I already told you.” “Yeah, but I can’t remember.” “Shazz,” I whispered. “What?” “Jesus, don’t make me say it out loud in public.” “Just…
I was at the diner. My cell phone rang. It was Laura. “So where are you going to dinner again?” “I already told you.” “Yeah, but I can’t remember.” “Shazz,” I whispered. “What?” “Jesus, don’t make me say it out loud in public.” “Just tell me the name, Jay.” “Shazz,”…
