I’ve always been surprised that a city like Denver can support more than one dim sum restaurant. San Francisco? Sure. New York? Absolutely. But dim sum is something special, and this Chinese brunch rarely seems to travel too far outside major metropolitan areas. Most of the time, a medium-sized city…
First there was Denver Restaurant Week–a brilliant idea that boosted both the profile and the bank balances of many fine Denver restaurants. Restaurant Week was such a good idea, in fact, that this year, when everyone is broke and every day is starting to look worse than the day before,…
Just a few minutes from one of the best Chinese breakfasts in Denver (Star Kitchen, reviewed this week) is one of the best breakfast joints in America: Breakfast King. And for a change, it ain’t just me singing the praises of this perfect greasy spoon at Santa Fe and Mississippi,…
For more photos of Star Kitchen’s dim sum, go to westword.com/slideshow I woke up to the sound of pigeons beating themselves against the porch eaves. It was sunny, ridiculously warm and clear, beautiful for Colorado in February. Global warming or whatever. The world was coming to an end, but in…
This week’s review of Star Kitchen (2917 West Mississippi Avenue) ignores one very important part of the menu: namely, everything that isn’t dim sum. But the omission was deliberate because, given the choice between eating dim sum and eating almost anything else in the world, I’m going to go for…
I sat with my book and asked for tea. The host brought me a pot of fresh green tea, loose-leaf, still steeping. I opened my book, thinking I would have to wait for the first cart to come my way, but but the cart ladies, having spied me, descended like…
Driving down Broadway to Bistro One (right), where chef Olav Peterson is whipping his kitchen into shape, I got to thinking about all the other good places that have popped up on this storied strip. Some of the best: 1) GB Fish and Chips, 1311 South Broadway. Bikers and bums…
Well, at least someone in the restaurant industry has some money now… You’ve all heard that Colorado’s own Hosea Rosenberg (chef at Dave Query’s Jax Fish House in Boulder, at least for now…) won this year’s Top Chef prize. He walked away with a slot at this year’s Food +…
Had Steve Ells found his inspiration for Chipotle in Guadalajara rather than San Francisco’s Mission District, the result would have been Las Tortas. Instead, this spot inside a weird little strip mall/roadside plaza space that was once home to Les Delices de Paris (now at 600 South Holly Street) is…
Talk to me about your fish.” “The monkfish?” “Yeah.” And chef Olav Peterson of Bistro One starts talking. He talks about the beautiful lobster sauce, silky and rich and classically prepared. He talks about the mushroom risotto on which the curled fillet sat, and how, ideally, the fish ought to…
After Olav Peterson and I took apart Bistro One’s menu all CSI-style, I learned that it will soon be changing. Come early March, Bistro One will head into spring with a lighter, cleaner board that will take it even further from its Froggish roots. “We’re really just truly an American…
On Oscar night, the entire food world was abuzz. Not because of anything that happened during the Academy Awards ceremony, but because of one of the (million and one) commercials that showed during the proceedings: namely, the Tom Colicchio Diet Coke spot that appeared to show the Top Chef judge and…
I swore a few weeks ago that I wasn’t going to write another word about Bravo’s Top Chef until it stopped sucking. Until they stopped breaking the action every thirty seconds with completely inappropriate product placements (Diet Dr. Pepper cookoff!), until Fabio and Stefan stopped giving the mafia kiss of…
“Talk to me about your fish.””The monkfish?””Yeah…”I’m writing about Bistro One this week — and this review’s a little different. For a change, it’s all about the food. More to the point, it’s all about chef Olav Peterson and his menu and the things that go right and wrong between…
Venue, which I reviewed last week, was a tough restaurant to define. It wasn’t exactly American, certainly wasn’t French, wasn’t really Continental… If it’d opened five years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to call it a New American bistro, but these days, the phrase “New American” seems to define…
I dropped by Katie Mullen’s on Friday night to get a look at the finished place — and to see whether the numbers quoted to me regarding its first few days of business (800 covers one day, pushing 900 the next) were within hollering distance of the truth.And you know…
Frank Bonanno got his noodle bar, Bones, at 701 Grant Street, up and running at the end of December. Dave Query opened his Happy Noodle House at 835 Walnut Street in Boulder on Friday, February 13. The only holdout now? XO, the noodle bar and healthy Asian concept from the…
By now, you’ve probably heard that the economy is in just a wee bit of trouble. A bank failure here, a million foreclosures there. Nothing serious, really…But just for safety’s sake, the good people behind Denver Restaurant Week have now officially extended the festivities for an extra week. Though their…
The first numbers are coming in from Katie Mullen’s Restaurant and Pub, which opened on Monday at 1550 Court Place, and they’re huge. Yesterday, just two days after opening, they did 800 covers, give or take. This morning, the house was on a wait from the minute they opened the…
Dig it. I know there’s been a lot of talk, here and elsewhere, about the fantastic deals to be found during Denver Restaurant Week. One thing that’s not getting a lot of ink: How killed all those restaurant crews will be during that February 21-28 stretch. And where’s the payoff…
It was really no surprise when chef Scott Durrah moved 8 Rivers out of its Highland space (now occupied by Venue, reviewed this week) for bigger and better digs down in LoDo. Why? Because he’d already done it before. The Highland 8 Rivers was actually his second Colorado location, following…
For just a moment, I was stunned. It seemed so simple, so harmless: a lumpy mound of milk-white grits on a white plate. Grits — the ultimate comfort food. So poverty-simple and, like Britney Spears, so trash-gone-superstar. The American polenta, the best thing to happen to high-end food costs since…
