Interstate Kitchen & Bar might have been designed to invoke a classic roadhouse, but it’s a hip — and clean — rendition. Not so Spanky’s Roadhouse, a faux roadhouse that opened in the University of Denver neighborhood more than twenty years ago — and has the grime to prove it…

On the kind of unseasonably warm winter afternoon that makes people pick up and move to Denver — and makes native Denverites fall in love with the city all over again — a breeze was blowing down Santa Fe Drive, and the garage door of Interstate Kitchen & Bar was…

New Orleans-based Naked Pizza has grown quickly, thanks to a savvy, semi-political social-marketing strategy and even savvier mission, “to transform the nutritional profile of the fast food industry by providing an all-natural pizza,” according to its website. The company started in a Katrina-ravaged area of the Big Easy in 2006…

When David Lee’s Chopsticks China Bistro, in Greenwood Village, was seized by the state at the end of last year for non-payment of taxes, it left a major void in Denver’s culinary scene; Chopsticks was one of the few places that served authentic, homemade xiao long bao — dumplings packed…

If you’re not completely liquored-out after yesterday’s St. Paddy’s Day festivities, it’s shaping up to be a beautiful weekend for a beer tasting. And while Upslope’s already got a pleasant spot for brew touring — the taproom frequently puts out lawn games to entertain imbibers — it’s offering more incentive…

This fall Denver will get its first IKEA, when the massive showroom that hawks value Swedish furniture is slated to finally open its doors in Centennial. And the store seems to be on schedule, because it just started hiring its staff. And because shopping at IKEA is frequently an all-day…

Six years ago, Ryan Hardy took the reins as executive chef at the Little Nell in Aspen, a position he won after stints at San Francisco’s Rubicon and another Aspen restaurant, Rustique. During his tenure there, he garnered awards and James Beard nominations for his menu of seasonal Colorado cuisine,…

When I reviewed the Squeaky Bean nine months ago, I was amused and delighted by what Max MacKissock was dreaming up in his tiny kitchen, playing with classic American dishes and making them into something new and unexpected. A reimagined shepherd’s pie, light enough for a summer evening. Sweetbreads made…

Without exception, during every visit I made to Thai Flavor for this week’s review — and during the lunch I ate at US Thai Cafe for this week’s Second Helping — I overheard at least one table ask for chopsticks. I’d venture a guess that those diners thought they were…

Of the three dozen or so Thai restaurants scattered around the metro area, I can think of only one that rises to the curry occasion as triumphantly as Thai Flavor, and that’s U.S. Thai Cafe in Edgewater. Ma Vue, a Laotian, opened the eatery in 2006, with native Thai chef…

Sarah Amorese fell in love with chocolate when she lived in Amsterdam. “My boss used to bring Belgian chocolates back to the office,” she says. “And my husband — boyfriend at the time — and I did a lot of business trips through Europe. We used to visit every pastry…

Over the course of my life in Denver, I’ve eaten a lot of mediocre Thai food, putting down bowls of curry and plates of pad Thai that were edible — but forgettable — up and down the Front Range. But this winter, after I returned from Southeast Asia, where I’d…

Last night, in the midst of making final preparations to open Caffé, Bobby Stuckey and Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson put together a momentous Monday night wine dinner at Frasca Food and Wine featuring Sasa Radikon, a wine producer from Friuli that makes unique, complex macerated wines — but rarely leaves the vineyard,…

It’s official: after months of construction, oven problems, delays and, finally, stocking, outfitting and training, the third member of the growing Frasca Food and Wine family, Caffè, opened this morning. The sliver of a spot, tucked next to Pizzeria Locale, is filled with quirky artifacts that include paintings of roosters…

A national publication is working on a list of the best pasta spots in the country; we got an e-mail this morning asking for a few of our favorite pasta plates in Denver. Early contenders:…

The best curry I’ve ever tasted was at a pop-up beer garden near the banks of the Mekong River on the border between Thailand and Laos. The proprietors had pieced together a kitchen from a series of elaborate camp stoves, and they used it to feed a huge crowd, waiters…

Last night on America’s Next Great Restaurant, fast-casual restaurateur hopefuls designed their logos, hired chefs and cooked for a crowd of 1,000, competing against each other in a challenge that mimicked a fast-casual lunch rush. And hometown investor Steve Ells, along with cohorts Lorena Garcia, Curtis Stone and Bobby Flay,…

Ryan Hickey has cooked in several restaurants around town, but it was while manning the stoves at Colt & Gray, his current gig, that he really started thinking about perfectly good food that goes to waste in kitchens. “We throw a lot of stuff away because it doesn’t look good…

“This one is really important to me,” says Bobby Stuckey, co-owner of Frasca Food & Wine. “I’ve wanted to get these guys out here since we opened, but I never thought I’d really be able to do it.” He’s talking about Stanko Radikon and his son, Sasa, who make wine…

Six weeks. That’s how long, optimistically, Bryan Dayton expects it will take to rebuild Oak at Fourteenth after fire ravaged the space, causing damage everywhere from the attic to the basement…