It’s been many, many months since floor leaks forced the closure of Samba Room in Larimer Square, but as late as December of 2010, the company, along with Larimer Associates, the group that owns the space, were optimistic that the place would eventually reopen. It wasn’t to be. E Brands,…

My recent review of Carmine’s on Penn, wherein I wrote about being egregiously upsold by a server who’d initially gained my trust, garnered this question from reader Matt: I was just hired as a server a few nights a week, and I’ve never done it before. I wondered if you…

In his effort to win, well, everything, Charlie Sheen claims he’s trying to be the first person to appear on every television network. Which, we guess, includes Funny or Die, because that’s the website that’s hosting his cooking show, Charlie Sheen’s Winning Recipes…

My review of Ototo Food and Wine Bar was originally slated to run on Thursday, March 3. I’d eaten three meals at the place, written the review and signed off on what I thought was the final version — and then on Saturday, February 26, two days before that issue…

As we were finishing dinner at Ototo Food and Wine Bar, a waiter who’d had my table twice before stopped by to say hello. A true, lifelong professional who’d never planned on having any career other than this one, he’d passionately delivered information about food and wine along with my…

Part of the Pearl Street Mall has been evacuated after fire broke out this morning at Oak at Fourteenth, the recently opened restaurant owned by bartender Bryan Dayton, chef Steve Redzikowski and general manager Annie Polk. Flames burst out in the attic, a space between the ceiling of the restaurant…

We’ve been eating our share of prix fixe menus over the last week, partaking in our share of Denver Restaurant Week (or Denver Restaurant Half Month, as TAG chef de cuisine Jensen Cummings calls it). And while some of what we’ve eaten has been entirely underwhelming — and has made…

Toshi and Yasu Kizaki have been serving Pearl Street for two decades, first with Sushi Den, which they opened in its current home twenty years ago, and then again with Izakaya Den, which first started serving dinner in 2007. Both of those spots pack crowds into cavernous spaces every day…

When Stan Geels opened Stella’s Coffeehaus in the front room of a Pearl Street bungalow in 1991, some of his neighbors told him that the place wouldn’t last six months. “It was a boom-and-bust street,” Geels remembers. “But I liked the neighborhood, so I didn’t hesitate. When we opened, I…

For the past 28 years, Juanita’s has been a Pearl Street mainstay, holding on to its sliver of storefront space that led to a well-worn front dining room and back lounge, even as other establishments turned over for newer, trendier concepts on either side of it. But on March 1,…

2011 promises to be a big year for hometown restaurateur Steve Ells. While his Denver-based Chipotle keeps expanding, Ells also has a new fast-casual Asian concept (possibly called ShopHouse) in the works, which is opening somewhere in the states — most likely in Washington, D.C. And come May 1, he’ll…

A year and a half after Francine Gindi opened the Gindi Cafe in the Peloton in Boulder, it was time to make some changes. “Things were a little scattered. We wanted to hone in on what was working well and make it better,” explains Jayson Debellis, former coffee roaster and…

MJ Sadeth has spent over twenty years in the restaurant business; she once owned House of Kabob, Shiraz and the now-defunct Saffron, restaurants she sold four years ago. So when she started building Eggs and More in Greenwood Village, she drew on what she’d learned over the course of two…

When The Kitchen opened in Boulder seven years ago, it was a concept based on the idea of community feeding community, sourcing from local and sustainable producers and acknowledging their work while turning out bistro fare in a true neighborhood restaurant. In short, it was farm-to-table before farm-to-table was a…

When Ozo expanded into downtown Boulder, opening a shop on the West End of Pearl Street, it also added a new feature for coffee lovers: a brew bar, which gives Ozo the capability of brewing to order three ways. To build the buzz around that — and also educate interested…

The 1500 block of Blake Street is one of the most restaurant-centric spots in the city, and although one of those restaurants — Marrakesh, at 1530 Blake — just closed, it will soon be replaced by TD’s Dogs. Todd Regan calls his concept “all-American food,” which means TD’s Dogs will…

“It’s gonna be Mexican, but not Mexican.” So says Jorge Pingarron, who’s opening El Olvido in the former Hades Bar & Grill (and South Broadway Grill, and El Ranchito, and, long ago, Mr. Steak) spot on South Broadway. And what he means by “not Mexican” is that he’s not going…

I love the dizzying pace at which restaurants open in this city, bringing us new culinary visions and new gastronomic possibilities from new (and sometimes not-so-new) chefs. But there are times when nothing beats a good old neighborhood joint, a place that’s settled into its surroundings over the years, an…

In the past two weeks, our culinary escapades have taken us to two gas stations: first, to Pho Bowl, which recently opened in a Conoco in Denver. Then, this past weekend, we checked out La Choza, a taco trailer that’s practically attached to a Sinclair on the Diagonal Highway in…

When Allyson Tran opened her first pho joint, Vina Pho & Grill, in Edgewater in 2009, she’d really been looking for a spot in Boulder. “I always wanted to go to Boulder,” she says. “My first plan was to open there, but we couldn’t find a location.” Now she’s finally…