Guess where I’m eating?

Long before other Denver restaurants started offering pico de gallo — or naming themselves Pico De Gallo — this Mexican eatery was making fans with its “special” salsa. Among the fans eating there Sunday night: former mayor Wellington Webb and some of his extended family and, just a table away,…

Raise a glass to two charitable efforts this week

The Wynkoop Brewing Company, 1634 18th Street, kicks off its “Will Drink Beer for Food” drive today. From now through December 20, when you order the Metro Care Ring special, the Wynkoop will donate $1 for each purchased draft beer, sampler tray and Rail Yard Ale sixpack to the charity…

Wake-Up Call: LoDo gets lit!

Every December, my parents would pack the family into the station wagon and head to downtown Chicago, where we’d look at the displays in the department-store windows and all the Christmas lights that glowed brighter than the tail-lights in the traffic jam around us. Downtown department stores have gone the…

A busy weekend for KJ’s Coffee Bar

Kenny and Kristin Johnson, the owners of KJ’s Coffee Bar, have a date with the Denver Department of Excise and License at 1:30 p.m. today, a hearing where they’ll ask that their liquor license be changed to a cabaret license, so that they can present live music on a regular…

Walnut Room Pizzeria has liquor-license hearing today

The Walnut Room brought new life — and cash — to NoDo, the area northeast of Coors Field. But for its next venture, it’s taking on an area that’s already ground zero for hipsters: Broadway. And at 9 a.m. today, Walnut owner John Burr will be at the Denver Department…

Guy Fieri: A reader review

Eric, who won the tickets to see Guy Fieri at the Paramount Wednesday night, posted this comment about the show — which we’ve pulled up so that everyone else knows what they missed: “Thanks so much for the tickets to see the Culinary Road Show. The best word I can…

Wake-Up Call: DIA plays Scrooge

Denver International Airport has the money to start planning a transformation of the Jeppesen Terminal into a massive mall (and move security screening to the perimeter) — but it’s put the Scrooge to its annual holiday entertainment, blaming budget constraints for the $50,000 cut. For twenty years, the International Performance…

Everybody into the pool! ZanZBar Billiards opens on Larimer

The Three Door Bistro project at 2049 Larimer Street is officially dead, but across the street at 2046 Larimer, ZanZBar Billiards finally opened on December 1. Ami Benari, who also owns Tarantula Billiards (1456 Champa Street), spent ten months renovating the former Market Central space into a pool hall/bar/restaurant. Right…

Jason Sheehan makes Time‘s top ten list

Time magazine is out with the Top 10 of Everything in 2009 — and Jason Sheehan’s Cooking Dirty makes the list of the top ten non-fiction books of the year, coming in at #9. Here’s what Time says about Sheehan’s book in its round-up: “It’s a paradox of the post-Bourdain…

Wake-Up Call: No Kumbaya moment at Pinon Canyon

Last month’s Kumbaya moment, which featured most of Colorado’s top GOPs uniting behind gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis and the Republican Party’s Platform for Prosperity, did not resound in southeastern Colorado. They’re singing a different song near Pinon Canyon, a stunning swathe of ranchland east of Trinidad, because the platform is…

Guess where I’m eating?

Liver lovers are an exclusive bunch. And as a lunch special on a cold winter’s day, this steaming plate of organ meat smothered with onions and jalapenos had half of our table swooning — and the other half cringing.Can you guess where I was eating?Special bonus: Every Friday, anyone who…

Diamond Cabaret gets a new menu, courtesy CY Steak

How cold was it last night? So cold that Barry Fey was wearing long pants. But the dining room at CY Steak, the revamped steakhouse attached to the Diamond Cabaret at 1222 Glenarm Place, warmed up fast — and not just because of the evening-gowned (at the start) girls dancing…

Congress Park will get its Tavern

The call came yesterday: The Denver Department of Excise and License has approved the liquor license for the Tavern Hospitality Group’s project at the Lowenstein, in the space that had been occupied by Neighborhood Flix. THG’s Frank Schultz had gone through a series of neighborhood meetings before the postponed hearing…

Wake-Up Call: Senator Chris Romer submits a bill for pot!

State senator Chris Romer could have used some medical marijuana last night, to soothe the headache of dealing with all of yesterday’s complaints over his just-released, 63-page bill to regulate the industry. Among its provisions: creating a state licensing authority to handle licenses for both clinics and growers and setting…

Rooster & Moon Coffee Pub now pouring

The first VFW post in the country was founded in Denver in 1899, in a building in the Golden Triangle. A century later, VFW Post #1 moved around the corner to 955 Bannock Street — and attempted to recall its glory days by calling the bar Stewart’s 1899 Saloon. It…

The Egg Shell is on the move

After 25 years in its current location at 300 Josephine Street, the Cherry Creek Egg Shell will be moving this month to the former home of Mel’s, at 235 Fillmore Street. “The new, improved Egg Shell will feature an outside patio with heat lamps and a full bar,” its website…

Guess where I’m drinking?

Nothing says holiday party like a tall Bloody Mary the morning after.And this one even supplies some much-needed protein and vitamins, to help you bounce back in time to enjoy all the parties ahead. Can you guess where I was drinking? Special bonus: Every Friday, anyone who gave the first…

Give PeaceJam a chance: Buy a guitar

The five hand-painted guitars signed by ten Nobel Peace Prize winners that will be auctioned off on eBay today are truly for the man who has everything — although “that’s not true until they buy one of the guitars!,” points out Ivan Suvanjieff, the founder of PeaceJam, the organization that…

Wake-Up Call: Holiday parties go to pot

At holiday parties this weekend, everyone was talking about pot. I haven’t been asked about marijuana this much since my first day of college in 1972, when I wore a hippie-print dress and my dormmates assumed I could hook them up. People were talking about the booming business in medical…