Jason? Hey, this is Duy. Man, I just read your column about JJ Chinese closing and I just had to tell you…” Over the years, Duy Pham, currently chef/owner at Kyoto at 7301 South Santa Fe Drive in Littleton and ex of just about everywhere, has told me a lot…
There are many strange delights to be discovered in Aurora’s Asian triangle, behind the doors of karaoke bars, noodle shops, Chinese bakeries, tea shops and stores selling herbal back-pain remedies, manga, car insurance and brain tonics. From strip mall to strip mall, the sensory landscape changes mile by mile, sometimes…
Fruition, reviewed in this week’s paper, was the restaurant I picked as the Best New Restaurant in this year’s Best of Denver edition. When I made that choice, I knew that Fruition wasn’t yet the best restaurant it could be, just the best there was at the time. And it’s…
It’s crazy,” Alex Seidel says. “Every night. I tell you, man, it’s Tetris all the time in here.” He’s talking about his kitchen at Fruition , that tiny, one-man, Lord Jim foxhole that Sean Kelly once worked alone, like Kurtz at the end of the Nung River, and which Seidel…
On my first night at Fruition, I splashed an entire glass of water onto my date before I’d even said hello. I was late to table and had stuck out my hand to shake hers just as the steward (for lack of a better term) was trying to set a…
I sometimes wonder how long pleasant memories are good for. What’s the shelf life on one really good night? On one brief afternoon, three strong margaritas and a smile across a crowded table? In my sweeter moments, I want to think that memories last forever — that they never sour,…
I called Limón chef/owner Alex Gurevich last week, and as a measure of just how frazzled the man was, for the first few minutes of our conversation, he thought I was a contractor calling to tell him that things weren’t going to be ready for his restaurant expansion’s launch this…
Laura was downstairs watching TV. “There’s that Indian place by the thing — that place with the fish,” she yelled. I was upstairs in front of the computer. “No.” “What about the Japanese restaurant?” “No.” “Seriously?” “Yeah, no. Not this time.” Quiet for a moment. “I don’t want Italian.” “Neither…
There are many voices at the restaurant-reviewing table these days, not all of them professional. And Tula, perhaps more than any other place in town, has both profited and suffered from this new blog/message board/MySpace world, where everyone believes they get a say. Right now, the three top reviews for…
By the time this issue hits the stands, Mel’s — that Cherry Creek institution and stronghold of ever-changing American cookery — will have served its final meals, poured its final glasses of wine and turned out the lights for the final time. And you know what? I’m glad to see…
I was having dinner with two friends — one who was attempting a wise quasi-diet by never cleaning a plate, the other who, like me, ate every scrap of everything she liked and burned the excess calories by viciously mocking anything she didn’t. Together, the three of us had worked…
Zengo has always been the weird cousin in the Richard Sandoval restaurant family, the guy with his shirt unbuttoned a little too low, his breath smelling of sweet wine and peppermints, the relative who — if you had to pick someone — would be the relative most likely to have…
Remember The Restaurant, the reality show that crashed Rocco DiSpirito’s career? Remember all the pissing and moaning about how Rocco seemed to spend all his time zipping around on his Vespa and tongue-kissing B-list celebs while his restaurant fell to pieces? Yeah, well, as anyone who’s had any dealings with…
La Sandía is an absolutely beautiful restaurant. It hits that magic balance between light and dark, design and open space, and it seems to glow. In the middle of Stapleton, where everything is new and aloof and distant — all hard surfaces, right angles, mercilessly focus-grouped corporate logos, and clean…
My buddy Gracie and I were sitting at the end of the bar, drinking whiskey and talking about Kurt Vonnegut. Gracie is a beer snob, a Rust Belt kid like me in town for some computer conference; he’s also incredibly well-read and a Vonnegut fan. I’d made some passing mention…
When Andy Ho and May Giang announced they’d be opening a new restaurant at 603 East Sixth Avenue, in the space that had been Emma’s, I didn’t shed any tears. I’d never been crazy for Emma’s the way some people were — for that slightly stuffy, somewhat over-romanticized Victorian house…
There are seventeen items on the menu at Montecito. Today there are seventeen items. That might change tomorrow, next week. And those seventeen items involve about ninety ingredients (a rough guess, because I’m making a lot of assumptions on prep and construction) that are stashed in the restaurant’s pantry, in…
Rosie’s Diner 14061 East Iliff Avenue, Aurora 303-752-3663 www.rosies-diner.com I have never been a morning person. Most days, it would take a major crisis to get me out of bed before 10 a.m. And if I’ve had a late night, a rough night or been forced to self-medicate with black-cherry…
The revolution has begun — in Niwot. Last fall, chef Bradford Heap (late of Full Moon Grill and the Chautauqua Dining Hall) and his wife, Carol, bought Le Chantecler from Liz Darling, who had taken the place in a settlement after she split with former owner Radek Cerny. For the…
Where I grew up, in upstate New York, there was no Mexican food. No tacos. No burritos. Just a Taco Bell down on Ridge Road (which did not count at all) and a few square feet of shelf space at Wegman’s dedicated to Latino foods: a couple bags of stale…
The week after the Best of Denver 2007 is the perfect time to revisit Chama for a Second Helping. Why? Because at Chama, chef Sean Yontz proves that coming in second is not a bad thing. Chama has been a perennial runner-up since it opened almost eighteen months ago (“Dirty…
By Thursday, the calls and e-mails had already begun — the complaints, the disputes, the polite thank-yous from winners and strange, ominous silences from those shut out of the Best of Denver 2007. In the interest of democracy and spirited debate, this year we’ve made it even easier for you…
