When I moved to Denver seven years ago, fellow transplants warned me that I’d never find a pizza that compared with the ones I missed back East. For a long time that was true, but gradually I found a few longtime Denver pizzerias, many of them also good red-sauce joints,…
It was the first restaurant I reviewed for Westword , and in the years since, both Fratelli’s and I have gone through a few changes. Fratelli’s made its debut as a Colorado pizza kitchen more than twenty years ago, which puts it way ahead of the California Pizza Kitchen (see…
Question: What do you get when two California lawyers decide to open up their own pizzeria? Answer: A lot of pizzerias. But the California Pizza Kitchen is no joke. As of last week, when a second Colorado location opened at FlatIron Crossing, there are 83 full-service CPKs, as they like…
Q: Recently I ate at a very nice restaurant and had the smoked-salmon appetizer. The appetizer was thinly sliced, velvety in texture and had a very nice flavor. It was just like lox. So my question is: What is the difference between smoked salmon and lox? A: Back in the…
With chef Karl Rinehart now at Skydiner (see review), the buzz is over what his successor, former Wolfgang Puck and Strings chef Kim Adams, will be cooking up at the Hornet (82 Broadway), where she started just last week. “Kim is from New Orleans,” explains Hornet marketing manager Margo Gillaspy,…
Skydiner, bo-biner, banana-fana fo-finer, fee-fi mo-miner, Skydiner. Before they opened their second venture, the principals from The Hornet — Dave French, Brewster Hanson, Paul Greaves and Lisa Quinn — held a contest to name the space they’d taken over at 1700 Vine Street, the spot long occupied by Juanita’s Uptown…
Q. While I like to go to sushi bars, my budget just can’t handle it. But I love sushi, and was wondering if there’s any place in town that you’d recommend for buying sushi-quality fish. A. Buying fish to serve raw can be scary. Still, several local markets offer sushi-grade…
My voice mail keeps filling with calls regarding Sacre Bleu, at 410 East Seventh Avenue (“Good God!”, July 13), which continues to inspire much local chat as well as national interest: GQ recently visited the restaurant for a story about Denver’s must-dos, and owner Julie Payne says the New York…
You are not finished,” the seventy-year-old waiter scolded as he grabbed a spoon and scooped the bottom out of my seafood-filled potato boat, plopping the sauce-soaked spuds mound in the center of my plate. “You eat this, and then you are finished.” I wasn’t about to argue. After all, this…
Although in its infancy, the Manhattan Grill has already gained a reputation as a major power-lunch and -dinner spot (see review, this issue). Still, it has a long way to go before it tops another Rich Salturelli venture, CityGrille, as one of the town’s best spots for deal-making and bread-breaking…
I thought I was done for when the Bay Wolf went down,” says Rich Salturelli, remembering his Cherry Creek hot spot. “I got a divorce, and I gave the restaurant to her, and then she ran it into the ground. Me and my brother, Thom, who has the Cricket on…
What makes a great sushi bar? The formula is more complex than it used to be, back in the day when fresh fish was a rarity in these parts and people were happy simply to have access to sushi. But today the area is so swimming in sushi joints that…
Like so many other great culinary creations — cheese, jerky, prosciutto, pickles — sushi was invented as a way of preserving food. In early Japan, slices of raw fish were sandwiched between layers of heavily salted rice, with a stone then placed on top. Months later, the rice/fishwich was ready…
Q: I love gazpacho. Adore it. Tomatoey, vinegary, spicy, with bits or bites of veggies, even with seafood. With bread or without, creamy or not, Spanish in origin or modified by any one of us. Please, please, please, any good ideas for a place to get it? A: Oooh, you’ve…
Sacre Bleu (see review this issue) has been in existence for only three months, and already general manager Ryan Fletter has called it quits because of philosophical differences with owner Julie Payne. According to Fletter, he wants the place to be more of a restaurant, and Payne wants it to…
Raise your hand if you didn’t leave Sacre Bleu satisfied — or get satisfied shortly after leaving. No? You are soooo in the minority. This what’s-old-is-nouvelle-again restaurant specializes in feeding all the appetites — the hunger for attention, the hunger for food, the hunger for sex. Even the name is…
Each year, a few Best of Denver food finalists are culled from the herd for the simple but crucial reason that the restaurants close before the issue comes out. And this year was no different: Several eateries that had distinguished themselves since last year’s awards shut their doors before they…
When I first visited Great Northern Tavern, the place was a virtual train wreck, with some ill-conceived dishes colliding with poor timing (“Train in Vain,” December 10, 1998). But today it’s the best brewpub in Denver. So how did Great Northern get back on track? First and foremost, the restaurant…
Years from now, we’ll look back at the turn of the century and remember a time when you could have cybersex with a perfect stranger who remained a perfect stranger, buy a car from someone whose hand you never shook and have your precious retirement money moved around by someone…
Summertime, and the outdoor eating is easy. But in their heated attempts to offer al fresco dining, some restaurants push the boundaries too darn far. It’s one thing to squeeze seating onto a sidewalk or into a fenced-in area beside an alley, but who wants to eat crammed against a…
Americans make movies about violence and sex, and the Japanese make movies about violence and food. So who do you think makes the better noodles? If you’ve seen the film Tampopo, you know that the noodle house is serious business in Japan. In that movie, a truck driver, Goro, who…
Q: Does anyone in town do a good cioppino? A: The California origins of this Italian-inspired fish stew are murkier than the San Francisco Bay. The late Craig Claiborne of the New York Times suggested the name came from an Italian colloquialism that means “chopped fine”; another explanation involves an…
