Want more bang for your dining buck? Forget those theme-park “concepts” and million-dollar designs, the 350-seat restaurants that serve the same food you’ll find in any other 350-seat restaurant. Instead, take aim at a neighborhood joint with character and innovative eats. Bang! shoots a big hole in the theory that…

Noodlin’ around: Rhonda L. Damraur, whose letter to the editor appears on page 6 of this issue, works at Basil Pasta Bar–and no one’s going to say she’s not a loyal employee. Damraur wrote to complain about my review of the place at 30 South Broadway (“Oodles of Noodles,” January…

When the food is spectacular, bad service can be forgiven and forgotten–once. Maybe twice. But three strikes and you’re out, baby, because few diners have either the time or the patience to spend two hours on a meal that should take one, no matter how good the food is. And…

Begin again: Finnegan’s in the Adam’s Mark Hotel, 1550 Court Place, is now closed, bringing the number of food-serving Irish pubs in the area down to two (that I know of)–Nallen’s Irish Pub, at 1429 Market Street, and Clancy’s Irish Pub, at 10117 West 37th Place in Wheat Ridge. When…

Hopping mad: There’s a right way to do a brewpub (see above) and a wrong way. Anyone interested in the latter should drop by the year-old Hops Grill and Bar Restaurant, at 149 Steele. The only nice thing I can say about this link in a Tampa-based chain is that…

The Pilgrims may have landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 simply because they’d thrown one too many keggers on the Mayflower and their beer supply was low. Hey, they may have been Puritans, but they had their priorities straight. “For we could not now take time for further search or…

Fighting fire with fire: Sally Rock and Dale Goin have had more than their share of ups and downs with the space at 1585 South Pearl originally occupied by their Philadelphia Filly–several attempts to sell the restaurant or have someone else take it over have fallen through, and the group…

In the dog-mangia-dog world of Italian restaurants, local eateries must work hard to create something that sets them apart. No longer is specializing in the food of Northern Italy or offering a wine roster of small regional vineyards enough, because someone else has already thought of it. “We noticed that…

So we went to the cafe named for the famous writer known for his terse, staccato sentences and we marveled at the credible reproduction of a Key West restaurant down to the exposed bricks and breezy marina decor and we ate the food and it was bland. As the menu…

Bone of contention: Sam Taylor, former proprietor of Sam Taylor’s Bar-B-Q at City Park and maker of the best ribs in Denver, came under fire this past year for alleged non-payment of commissions to the city through the restaurant–an amount Denver auditor Don Mares tallies at $50,000. Taylor claims it…

If at second you don’t succeed: The coffeehouse biz can be a real grind, and no one knows that better than the Art of Coffee. For the second time in two years, this LoDo meeting place has closed its doors at 1836 Blake Street, and this time, it sounds like…

From the Fifties coffee shop where a sandwich, a piece of pie and a cup of joe was the standard order, to the smoky Sixties coffeehouse where you could wave your clove cigarettes in time with the bad Kerouac, to the gleaming chain-owned coffee emporiums of the Nineties, food and…

We were halfway through our entrees when we realized what we’d been doing since the start of the meal. Here we were at Little Nell, the Aspen restaurant voted by Gourmet readers as one of the 25 Top Tables in the United States this fall, and all we could do…

Tools of the trade: Like those of most foodies, my kitchen drawers need to be opened with a certain amount of care and apprehension. An aggressive yank will only serve to intensify the orgy of kitchen gadgets under way inside. Oh, it’s ugly: The lemon zester’s mixed up with the…

Having a potentially fatal food allergy and trying a new restaurant is a little like jumping into a one-night stand of unprotected sex: You have to have faith that someone you know nothing about is telling you the truth. My poison: dill in any form. Since it shuts down my…

Out with the old, in with the new: Is the restaurant scene hopping, or what? In just one week in December, six new restaurants opened. (A seventh, Del Frisco, a southeast Denver steak place, postponed its debut scheduled for that same week until January.) The newcomers: Cucina Cucina, Bella Ristorante…

Over the past year I’ve eaten the food of more than 200 restaurants, including 32 Italian spots, 15 Chinese, 5 steak, 4 French, 2 fusion and 1 Japanese/Salvadoran. Some meals stuck with me longer than others–the Japanese/ Salvadoran dinner, for one–and some provided memories that will stick with me for…

Here’s a good New Year’s resolution for public-relations people: Stop sending so much junk mail along with press releases. Every two weeks I recycle at least forty pounds (that’s not an exaggeration, because I can barely carry it out to the curb) of paper, the majority of which is excess…

The holidays cry out for traditional activities, so this year a few harried wives and mothers in my neighborhood collaborated to start what we hope becomes an annual “Girls’ Night Out.” The original intention was to hire a limo–that way no one would get stuck as the designated driver–and go…

Read-letter daze: In response to a statement I made that Parker lacks “decent pizza” (Mouthing Off, November 21), the owner of a Parker pizzeria wrote to ask if I’d eaten at her Mak’s Pizza, Subs & Ice Cream, at 10841 South Parker Road. “If you have not been to Mak’s,”…

Before I left on a trip to New York many years ago, I called an old college buddy who’d grown up there and asked him for restaurant recommendations. He gave me about ten names, including an eatery on the edge of Chinatown that he said served some of the best…