Duy Pham has moved around a lot over the past few years. He first made a name for himself as the very young chef at Tante Louise (4900 East Colfax Avenue, now home to the Cork House) when it was run by Corky Douglass. He was the exec at Opal…
When I was a young man of nineteen, maybe twenty, I spent three weeks living in a motel in Detroit. The particulars of how I found myself in such a sorry state — staying in a room where, on my first night, I found a dead rat under the bed…
As the world now knows, a man named Jeff Peckman is fighting to get an initiative on the November ballot calling for the formation of an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver — which would deal with any problems that might arise should a group of day-tripping ETs decide to stop…
I’m tired of sliders. Seriously, they were cool for about a minute two years ago when a few brave chefs decided to resurrect them as jewel-box examples of haute-gone-south lowbrow chic. Then they were amusing for a few months as everyone scrambled to add them. Kobe sliders. Barbecue sliders. Truffled…
Required summer reading for burger fans: Hamburger America, by George Motz, a canonical listing of the hundred hands-down greatest, most historic burgers served in the United States. While I am not usually one to pimp any sort of guidebook or top-whatever list (since they are generally compiled on the fly,…
With every meal we eat, we betray ourselves. Our politics and our personal history, our deepest longings, our most private loves and hates — all of this is laid bare every time we open our mouths and shove something in. Think about it. What beer do you drink when the…
There are two distinct kinds of barbecue: Barbecue that tastes like it was cooked by a master, and barbecue that tastes like it was cooked by your Uncle Larry at his annual Fourth of July backyard picnic. Brothers’ barbecue? That’s Uncle Larry through and through. It’s not that the stuff…
Broadway is enjoying a restaurant renaissance, what with the recent openings of Delite and Beatrice & Woodsley at 32 South Broadway and 36 South Broadway, respectively. And next week, Bistro One could be open at 1294 South Broadway. Late last week, I got chef Olav Peterson on the blower (he…
I can be bought with an easy smile and a pint of sweet tea. When someone has a grill going in my neighborhood, I will sometimes sit out on my porch just to smell the air. My wife has often told me that I’ve never met a barbecue restaurant I…
I’m slowly coming to the realization that the quality of a neighborhood sushi bar can be judged by the number of personalized sake boxes displayed behind the bar. Why? Because the sake box is a mark of dedication — like a gang tattoo or Heidelburg dueling scar — that shows…
I’ve always had a fascination for watching chefs work. The way they hold a knife, the way they turn a pan — I can tell a hundred things about a working cook’s training and upbringing from just these simple motions. How a man closes an oven door during service (whether…
I watch the guy behind the counter work the rice, his hands moving with the formality and grace of a Balinese dancer’s, through a series of motions so natural, so ingrained, they are like breathing. “Slow today,” I say, and he nods. “Slow,” he repeats. “Not for lunch. Lunch was…
“If you’re going to take Vienna, take Vienna.” Napoleon said that, and I’ve always liked the line. He was speaking, of course, not just about sacking Austria’s capital, but of a certain conqueror’s mindset: Don’t just say you’re going to do something; do it. And once you’ve started, see it…
While going back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth…) from Gemelli’s for this week’s review, I noticed that one of Denver’s longtime Italian restaurants, 3 Sons, at 2915 West 44th Avenue, was sporting some new exterior decor: a huge FOR SALE sign. A couple of them,…
Three weeks ago, I had the worst shrimp scampi of my life. Two weeks ago, I wrote about it when I reviewed Grand Lux Cafe. The shrimp scampi there was so bad that even though I ate only a few bites before pushing it away, the horror of it (and…
Most restaurants in town serve both lunch and dinner. And while at most of those places, the difference between the two meals is minor (the lunch menu missing only the most high-end steaks and chops, the most complicated entrees, the dinner menu slightly less cluttered with salads and sandwiches), at…
I last talked with chef Chris Cina back in August 2006, after I stumbled across a corporate website that listed him as chief of Roundstone Restaurants LLC. Here’s part of what I wrote after that conversation: “Chef Chris Cina (ex of Tuscany, the Fourth Story, Beckett’s Table and the kitchens…
One of the great things about being a gastronaut — one of the great things about living a food-obsessed life — is that you can engage in quests. And while you may not get to slay any dragons while you search out foie gras or Chinese soup dumplings in the…
At Grand Lux Cafe, the kitchen tries to cook a little bit of everything — the menu runs to over a hundred plates — and does almost nothing well. I don’t blame the cooks for this sorry state of affairs. I mean, how could I? You walk into an Italian…
I’m supposed to be anonymous in this job, and while I don’t always perform with perfect super-spy cool and élan in the dining rooms and back alleys of this city (my own private Berlin, the secret agent’s Valhalla), I do recognize a few hard and fast rules. First, never do…
Much as I might enjoy them, man cannot live on caramel corn and kartofelpuffer alone. So while I was experiencing springtime in the Rockies, I stopped by another Georgetown favorite, the Raven Hill Mining Company, for a quick lunch. Like T-shirt shops on the boardwalk and shacks selling coconut boats…
On my way to Westfalen Hof, I decided to make a quick detour into Georgetown to visit a couple of my favorite, uniquely Colorado businesses. First stop, the Georgetown Valley Candy Company, at 500 6th Street. Owners Rube and Nina Goeringer have been making and selling artisan chocolates, fudge and…
