From the outside, Pesce Fresco looks like just another strip-mall Italian joint shoved between nail salons and auto-parts stores. Even inside, it looks like so many similarly themed, similarly imagined restaurants: mustard-yellow walls and dark upholstery comforting in their commonness; reproduction Taittinger prints and posters advertising things that once were…
As if I don’t already have enough chef Troy Guard/Sullivan Group stuff kicking around in print, here’s another tidbit. In a recent conversation, spin mistress Leigh Sullivan let it slip that she’d just been on the phone checking on dance lessons for Troy, her husband.. “Seriously? Dance lessons? What for?”…
Word came down from Washington, D.C., last week: No more horse slaughterhouses in the United States. To which most people responded, “Are there horse slaughterhouses in the United States?” Yes, there are. Three of them. All owned by foreign companies that are slaughtering tens of thousands of horses a year…
Life is full of small pleasures and little joys. Sometimes, they’re all you get. The bad stuff is big, often overwhelming, frequently spinning madly out of control. Focus on it and you’d think the whole universe is going to hell. What with wars and disasters, tragedies both personal and global,…
There are a lot of very cool things about living in Denver. The availability of cheap tacos and Mexican Coca-Cola (see my review of El Coyotito #3). The ready access to excellent sushi and cheeseburgers and pho and menudo and kitfo and Chinese dumplings and tandoori — sometimes all within…
When I walk into a bar, I always ask the bartender for his or her specialty drink. This is the equivalent of asking a waiter to suggest the best thing on the menu, and most of the time, the tactic results in a very good cocktail. At a divier locale,…
The next round of Nobel Peace Prizes may finally be money for the Institute of Drinking Studies. Nearly every Saturday and Sunday morning, we find ourselves wishing to hasten the end of the world — which obviously is nigh, if you read those Left Behind novels or live in northern…
El Coyotito #3 (see review) is a real Mexican restaurant — all tacos and menudo, sopas de mariscos and sad accordion music on the juke. Lola, on the other hand, is a very fake Mexican restaurant that, in being fake, has earned the freedom to be so much more. In…
At first, the most surprising thing about Tables is the lines. Big lines that sometimes reach to the door, stretch past it and spill onto the patio, lines that break and become clusters of neighbors squeezed too tightly around four-top cafe tables, gatherings of friends on the sidewalk and nearby…
They’re already setting up the road signs, laying out the hurricane fence, rolling in the trailers and cordoning off huge swaths of Civic Center Park in anticipation of this year’s Taste of Colorado. And yeah, yeah — I know there’ll be music and art and culture and people selling custom…
When was the last time you had one of those days that made you wish you’d never been born? You know the kind of day I’m talking about. You get up early because you can’t be late for work. Despite waking up with a crick in your neck so bad…
Tables (see review) is a great neighborhood restaurant — one of those places you dream of finding when you move to a new neighborhood and remember long after leaving. But if Tables is the fantasy-come-almost-true, the Cherry Tomato is indicative of the reality — the kind of spot you usually…
Lung cancer has never been sexier. I’m sitting on the patio at Sketch Food and Wine — lounging on the patio, actually, which is surprising, because I’m just not built for lounging. Fellas tuned high like me don’t lounge well. Twitchy men, men always on the make for something, men…
Larimer Square is hot — not just as a fine-dining center, but also as a source of great restaurant gossip. And even in these scorching summer months, when almost everyone in white tries to put their heads down and survive, there’s been plenty of action behind the swinging doors. Take,…
Every time I walk into Cuba Cuba, I can’t help but think of Matthew McConaughey. Naked. While I realize the Failure to Launch star’s nude bongo incident was back in 1999, I know he would love the bongo tables in the tiny bar at Cuba Cuba. Actually, I’m pretty sure…
When a guy wants to enjoy a productive relationship with a woman (meaning sex with some regularity), he sometimes has to do things he normally wouldn’t do. Things like going to a shopping mall for a non-specific purpose, or watching a Lifetime movie that leaves you feeling like you need…
Wine bars come and wine bars go. Like Sketch (see review, page 53), they often enter the scene with a splash — but then, crippled by the double demands of being excellent in both the kitchen and the cellar, too often vanish almost as quickly. For more than ten years,…
Halfway through my lunch at Islamorada Fish Company, it occurs to me that this is the worst meal I’ve had in five years. I’ve eaten a lot of breakfasts and lunches and dinners out in that time. And I’ve had a lot of bad ones. I’ve been disappointed, nauseated, poisoned,…
United Airlines and Trader Vic’s recently announced a partnership deal in which Vic — or at least Vic’s minions — will provide the airline with both flight-ready Polynesian cuisine and mai-tai cocktails. Passengers flying first class on all flights to and from Hawaii will be offered complimentary frou-frou drinks, garden…
When most people hear the start of “We Three Kings,” they think of those Oriental kings bearing gifts from afar. Until recently, when I thought of three kings, they were Elvis, Martin Luther and Burger. But after a visit to 3 Kings Tavern, I now know they’re co-owners Jim Norris,…
Although I hate mass-market American “beer” — aka the root of all evil — there are times when drinking anything else would be wrong. And camping accounts for five of the top ten times when it’s absolutely correct to drink this swill. The first time is guy camping, when you…
I’m all for consistency in restaurants, and grouse loudly (and too long, some might say) about restaurants where the organic squab in styrofoam demi is delightful one night and too dry the next. The Kitchen does not have a problem with consistency. Last week, it was almost exactly the same…
