India’s has always had one of my favorite buffets, but I’ve loved it for other reasons, too. I love the clutter of the dining room filled with art and knickknacks and statuary. I love the smell — that deep, rich, infinitely complex aroma of curry and warm bread and burst…
After my visit to Forbidden City (see review), I headed to the other side of Aurora’s Asian/Russian triangle to try a place that occasionally creeps up in conversations with the buffet faithful: Mr. Panda Super Buffet, at 2852 South Havana Street. (There’s a second, newer location at 9595 East Arapahoe…
If Colman Andrews can come clean over his love for the crab rangoons at Trader Vic’s and Ruth Reichl can fess up to her preference for coffee and doughnuts bought on the street in front of her old office at the New York Times, there’s nothing weird about my admitting…
Back in the day — and I’m talking six months, maybe a year ago — Le Central had a taste that was all its own. Put three orders of escargot in front of me, three orders of anything in béarnaise sauce, three orders of lotte au basilic, and I, with…
There was a time when I would’ve argued that Johnson’s Corner (I-25 at exit 254, north of the Berthoud exit) was the perfect diner, better than the Peppermill in Vegas, the State Diner in Ithaca, that joint on Telegraph Road in Detroit where I almost got mugged but ended up…
Chef Patrick Dupays is in the kitchen. I can see him through the big four-pane window at the end of the line, working a pan with one hand, giving directions with the other — his fingers loose, his arm moving like a conductor’s trying to keep a runaway orchestra on…
So much news — good news, bad news, ridiculous news — keeps coming out of Steak au Poivre (231 Milwaukee Street), I sometimes wonder when they find time to cook. Chefs have come, chefs have gone, a consulting chef has come and will go after the holidays, menus have been…
The last time I was at Sabor Latino, I heard a recorded pan-flute rendition of the Titanic love theme so sappy that it silenced an entire dining room — except for the laughter. An order of arepa fell just as flat: The white-corn pancake was so nasty, thick, heavy and…
While my meals at Milagro Taco Bar (see review, page 59) left me with mixed feelings, my opinion about another Frank Bonanno operation remains unwavering. Mizuna was Bonanno’s first restaurant (with late partner Doug Fleischmann), and it remains his best. Ever-changing, impeccably serviced by a thoroughly professional floor staff and…
achlan Mackinnon-Patterson is a busy guy. He’s chef/owner (along with partner Bobby Stuckey) of Frasca, the restaurant at 1738 Pearl Street in Boulder that’s one of the best in Colorado. And one of the busiest: He’s running a killer crew in a kitchen that gets slammed night after night. He…
I was sitting in the dining room at Milagro Taco Bar scratching hieroglyphs into the mole with my fork: hearts and squiggles, my initials. It was a good mole — dark and glossy, thickened enough to stick, with a flavor like coffee beans and charcoal and bitter chocolate and fire…
When I stopped by the new, improved Mickey’s Top Sirloin for lunch last week (a few months ago, it had moved from its decrepit, decades-old home across the parking lot to a shiny, family-friendly, cookie-cutter space with bright-green corrugated siding), the strangest thing about it was the pictures of the…
A round noon, my phone rings. “Is this Jason Sheehan?” “Yes.” “You’re the restaurant guy?” “That’s me. What can I do for you?” “Man, I don’t know if you’ve been there yet, but I’ve got to tell you about this…” About this new sushi restaurant, about this little Mexican place…
We argued right up to the front door about how I ought to dress for dinner. What shoes to wear. Jacket or no jacket. Tie or no tie. I’d climbed into the car wearing everything: white button-down and dress slacks, my best tie (meaning the pleasingly muted and abstract one,…
While the Chen brothers now have their own Fontana Sushi in Littleton (see review, page 57), former partner Kevin Lin continues to run the original Fontana Sushi in central Denver. The two Fontanas have similar menus — both places offer tempura and gyoza, donburi plates and soba noodles — but…
The Chen brothers didn’t just take on an awkward strip-mall space when they made their break from the chain and opened the renegade Fontana Sushi in Littleton (see review). They also picked up one of the more unusual Sushi Basho locations — a former old-school IHOP at 2188 South Colorado…
Eels and tofu, sweet raw shrimp and tuna head and giant clam — I eat it all. Flying-fish eggs, as alien to a suburban rust-belt brat as eating asbestos or living on freon and Pixy Stix, are now a regular part of my diet. They get caught in my teeth…
I had barbecue on the brain this week, and stopped by a spot that nearly killed me on my first visit just from the sheer volume of food a ten-spot can buy. L&L Hawaiian Barbecue has been around in its current incarnation since 1976 — a Big Island marvel that…
I have always lived and worked under the precept that too much is never enough. Too much food, too much drink, too much fun. No one ever wants to hear the story about the guy who had just enough of something and then called it a night. This week, I…
We saw Hog Heaven Bar-B-Que coming from a distance. Laura and I had been out wandering — ostensibly making a quick, up-and-back run over Guanella Pass to see the aspens changing like good Coloradans, to ooh and aah over the foliage along with several thousand other day-tripping yuppies in their…
Denver’s ethnic eateries sneak up on you. La Praviana (first reviewed in Westword on May 20, 1999) is a stand-alone joint facing Broadway that in a previous life was a breakfast bar called the Omelet House. Then Hector and Maritza Gil took over, and today it still does three-a-day service…
Steakhouses, burger joints, places serving safe, recognizably Betty Crocker, ham-and-pineapple-slices American grub close all the time and for all sorts of reasons, so just imagine how tough it must be for a place like Los Cabos II (see review) to stay open while serving monster-shrimp soup and laurel bouillabaisse and…
