When Chris Dailey took over the old Ruby’s Diner spot in Boulder’s Twenty-Ninth Street development, he planned to turn the space into his own diner in just a few short months. StarLite Diner & Lounge, he announced last year, would be ready by March 2012. Close: It opened today…
Since opening PDT behind a telephone booth in a hot dog joint in the East Village of New York City, bartender Jim Meehan has become one of the most recognized faces in the industry, inspiring drinkers and fellow bartenders alike to drink better cocktails. And like many bartenders of his…
When I was living in New York, I constantly craved Mexican food — which, aside from upscale Tex-Mex, was about as easy to find on the East Coast as a pro-choicer at a Tea Party convention. Real Mexican food isn’t all that common in Denver, either; despite the abundance of…
When the Format broke up in 2008, frontman Nate Ruess regrouped and formed Fun. with the help of Andrew Dost and Jack Antonoff, venturing firmly into the realm of pop rock with the act’s debut album, Aim and Ignite. That release garnered acclaim, but the group really hit the big…
Despite the volume of beer being pumped out of this state’s kettles, breweries keep opening at a breakneck pace. We’re just fine with that, especially when those breweries come with taprooms, because taprooms are a really good way to daytime drink and somehow seem less alcoholic than if you were…
At the end of last year, we published our list of the ten best restaurants that had opened in 2011 — as we saw them at the time. Over the next few months, though, as we prepared for the Best of Denver 2012, we had a chance to really digest…
About three hundred restaurants opened in the metro area in 2011, and many of them were very good restaurants indeed. There’s no question that the bar has been raised in Denver — and things are only going to get better from here. But as we considered the contenders for the…
The sun set on Boulder’s 8island Hawaiian BBQ around the new year, and the city lost one of the only places you could find a Hawaiian plate lunch. We haven’t heard from former 8island owner Michael Iuchi since he shuttered the joint, but the address, at least, has gotten new…
We might all be Manhattan and martini connoisseurs now, but not even ten years ago, properly made classic cocktails were a lot more difficult to find not just in Denver, but in any city. And cocktail bars — at least the trendy cocktail bars that keep proliferating today — were…
Three and a half years ago, husband-and-wife team Peter and Delinda Fatianow opened Indulge Wine Bar in Highlands Ranch, bringing the southern suburbs a tapas-focused spot with a massive by-the-glass list — and a stellar patio, featuring couches, fire pits, and sweeping views of the Front Range. And now, the…
The last meal I had at Ambria was stunning. From the crisp, goat-cheese-and-almond-studded raw carrot salad to roasted beets pooled with celery root pesto to a well-cooked ribeye, it was one of the few meals I had all year that was truly close to perfect. By the time I’d scraped…
The chain of Rio Grande Mexican restaurants has been hard at work re-tooling the kitchens across the company, and, as I wrote in my review a few weeks ago, the downtown restaurant, at least, has been successful, even if it still has some work to do. That LoDo location is…
On March 13, Say Anything, the indie rock band that came of age in the 2000s, released its fifth album, Anarchy, My Dear. The band soon launched its tour, which will hit the Mile High City this Friday, March 30, at the Summit Music Hall. In advance of the show,…
Matt and Rosemary Lopez have owned Taza de Cafe on 44th Avenue for six years, where they’ve hawked a variety of coffee-based treats — including a horchatte, a latte made with horchata. Two years ago, they started thinking about adding another business to their portfolio, and they began looking around…
Green chile-heads, I’ve noticed, divide into a couple of camps when it comes to debating who makes this city’s best version of a food that graces just about every Mexican restaurant’s menu in town: half swear by the Colorado-style gravy-like green; the others won’t touch it if it’s not in…
Despite the proliferation of restaurants in the Lower Highland neighborhood over the last couple of years, the area still isn’t quite ready to call Uncle. In fact, we keep getting word of new projects going into the area, including a restaurant actually called Uncle…
HDNet’s Drinking Made Easy hosts Zane Lamprey and Steve McKenna spend their days traveling across the country and drinking on camera, using their show as a medium to showcase the local drinking culture of towns from all over the map. On next week’s episode — which airs Wednesday, April 4…
Centro Latin Kitchen chef Ian Clark was on a bus from Sayulita, Mexico, over the holidays when he got a phone call from work. “Someone in the company asked me if I wanted to go back down to Mexico,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Sure, why not?'” A few weeks later,…
A serious bartending scene in Denver has culminated in dozens of cocktail contests, many of which propel our local bar men and women to a national spotlight, where they go up against the country’s best. And tonight, one of the biggest contests of 2012 is going down at Green Russell:…
Changes have been at the works at Pizzeria Basta, the Boulder-based restaurant that has served Napolitano-inspired — but American-sourced — pizzas paired to a wine and beer list for the past two years. A couple of months ago, chef/owner Kelly Whitaker rolled out a menu of housemade pastas to supplement…
Just about every culture in the world makes some kind of savory stuffed pastry, and in South America, it’s the empanada that’s king. No two countries make the same type of hot pocket; whether an empanada is deep-fried or baked and what it’s stuffed with is a clear market of…
I wanted to weep tears of joy when I bit into my first empanada at Maria Empanada, the restaurant that’s the subject of this week’s review. I ate empanadas on a daily basis while living in Buenos Aires, but I hadn’t had a real addiction-worthy version of the treat in…
