If Denver were a starving Third World country, Noel Cunningham would be its Mother Teresa. At Strings, his eleven-year-old restaurant, he does his bit to feed the masses–at least, the relatively upscale masses. But Noel Cunningham’s generosity extends far beyond that. The longtime restaurateur helped create the decade-old Share Our…

“Would it be all right with you if I killed you and ate you?” Had this been the first line of the letter, I might have been alarmed. But since it was the closing line, a rhetorical question that ended a diatribe documenting my obvious disdain for animal life, written…

Ch-ch-ch-changes: Some restaurant maneuvers are executed so quietly you hardly know they happened, like last year’s “business divorce” of longtime partners Noel Cunningham and Pasquale Minicuci that resulted in Cunningham’s getting custody of Strings, at 1700 Humboldt Street, and Minicuci retaining Ciao! Baby, at 7400 East Hampden Avenue. Minicuci hired…

“It would be an exaggeration to say that modern Mexican cooking is Aztec cooking plus pigs,” notes Mexican-food expert Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz, “but the statement is not far out of line.” That’s because, despite pork’s important role in so many contemporary Mexican dishes, the pig had to be dragged–kicking and…

Chile reception: More downhome Mexican food is where the hearth is, but darned if I can tell you much more than that after two visits to La Fogata, at 5670 East Evans. The name translates to “the fireplace,” but I’m the one who’s hot over a zillion unreturned phone calls…

Some restaurateurs lament the time they spend training employees, only to watch them take that experience and use it elsewhere. But not Blair Taylor, owner of Barolo Grill. He’s seen several good people come and go on to other endeavors–and each time, he acts like a pleased father when they…

Pizza the action: After my recent review of pizza places (“Pizza Mind,” April 10)–one of which, Enzo’s End, at 3424 East Colfax Avenue, is now on my list of favorites–several people called to say I should try Oblio’s Pizzeria, at 6155 East 22nd Avenue. And after visiting this charming Park…

Mouth of the south: Suddenly, Parker and its small-town neighbors are hot restaurant locales. In addition to the spots reviewed above, the newcomers include Bandanas Cafe at the Bullpen, at 19552 East Mainstreet in Parker. (It’s next door to the Warhorse Inn, which, until recently, was one of the town’s…

After Carmen Jennings and Jean-Paul Beining sold Soren’s, their successful Cherry Creek restaurant, a couple of months ago, they opened a new place: Carmen and Jean-Paul’s Franktown Grill in Franktown. The obvious question, of course, is: Why? In case you’re not familiar with the bustling metropolis of Franktown, it’s a…

While the rest of the country was making its way to Denver for the Oklahoma City bombing trial, two boys from another Midwestern metropolis slipped quietly into town to open a restaurant. Paul Khoury and Bill Crooks already had six successful eateries in their hometown of Kansas City and another…

Best guesses: As I eat my way through another couple hundred recommendations for Westword’s Best of Denver 1997, coming your way June 26, I am once again forced to swallow some of the worst meals imaginable. Case in point: my lunch at Mad Platter, 5950 South Platte Canyon Road, Littleton,…

Weary of wearing a suit and fed up with Denver’s lousy pizza, Charlie Puma stopped selling commercial real estate and traveled to Italy to learn how to make a good pie. Hey, if you want something done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself. So now Puma’s doing Enzo’s…

Food in the news: First a LoDo bar tour spilled out in testimony during last month’s Peter Schmitz trial. (Schmitz partied at Enoteca LoDo, among other bars, after the not-guilty verdict came in.) Then Stephen Jones, attorney for Tim McVeigh, threw ravioli into the mix while criticizing an article by…

India’s Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal for his wife–sorry, for his favorite wife–in the mid-1600s. But while the ornate mausoleum in Agra has since become the ultimate symbol of opulence, in Persian the words “Taj Mahal” simply mean “the best of buildings.” Denver’s Taj Mahal, however, may be in…

When Coors Field set up residence by LoDo, the area came down with a bad case of baseball fever–as evidenced by an outbreak of sandwich-serving sports hangouts and frat-boy brewpubs. Several years later, these symptoms show little sign of abating. Considering the sheer number of eateries that have opened in…

My two cents’ worth: Ever since Denver’s Best Restaurants, by Susan Permut, came out this past fall, local critics have been offering their own Top Ten lists. But as one caller pointed out on my voicemail, these lists are nearly identical and consist almost exclusively of high-end joints. Please, she…

High steaks: Steak places are stampeding into town faster than cattle getting a whiff of water. Of Denver’s many meat-eaters, the truly fickle have already moved on to Del Frisco’s (8100 East Orchard Road, Greenwood Village), but does Del Frisco’s have that wide-eyed comic-strip boy Dondi hanging from a wall?…

A half-foot high, the tower of alternating raw onion and underripe tomato slices was dripping with balsamic vinegar. The first bite was like doing a shot of vinegar. The second bite was like doing a second shot of vinegar. There was no third bite. Until that salad, every dish I’d…

To see or not to see: The joint was jumping last Monday on the opening day of Peter Schmitz’s vehicular-homicide trial. No, not the courthouse, although there was plenty of action there, too. At lunchtime the new power place to be is Thuy-Hoa’s Bar & Grill, the Vietnamese restaurant that…

Some chefs have such distinctive styles that you can tell when they’ve got their hands on a certain restaurant–they leave their fingerprints all over the place. Still, Oodles was the last place I expected to encounter a familiar face. This noodle joint is the umpteenth restaurant in a fairly enviable…

Fine dining is out, family dining is in. Horseradish mashed potatoes are out, expensive steaks are in. Iceberg-lettuce salads are out, soups are in. Most food fads fly, then flounder like a hooked trout. So who would would have thought that more than a dozen years after the eat-it-raw craze…

Beer today, gone tomorrow: On Saturday the three finalists in the Wynkoop Brewing Company-sponsored “Beerdrinker of the Year” contest came to town for a grueling round of questions by a panel of bewigged and wigged-out judges. And the winner (who receives untold fame and, more important, a year’s supply of…