I can still miss it something awful, but there are now times when I’m glad I’m no longer a chef. When it’s 103 degrees on a Friday afternoon and I remember deep in my blood and bones the crushing, slaughtering heat of summers spent working the line, I don’t miss…
When the people behind Aji (see review) decided they wanted a second restaurant — or, in the case of Sara and Lenny Martinelli, a fifth — they didn’t have to look any farther than right next door. Leaf — an organic, seasonal, global vegan and vegetarian concept offering everything from…
Progress is not always a good thing. I liked it better when draft beer only came from a keg, not a bottle or can. I remember when telephones were heavy, two-piece objects that could inflict severe closed-head injuries, not miniature electronic earpieces that people apparently think make them look cool…
What kills me about Opal is that it’s not necessarily a bad restaurant; it’s just so much less of a great restaurant than it once was. When I started this job four years ago — when chef Duy Pham was making his first passing glances at genius in its kitchen…
We’d already ordered drinks, Laura and I, and were just settling into the purple banquette behind a scratched black cafe table at Prima, Kevin Taylor’s most recent revision at Hotel Teatro. This isn’t the first restaurant Taylor has had in this space. Until last year it was jou jou, a…
There’s Restaurant Kevin Taylor at Hotel Teatro (see Second Helping), Kevin Taylor at the Ellie, Kevin Taylor’s Rouge at the Teller House, Prima here in Denver (see review), Prima in Boulder, and catering operations working out of at least three of those locations. Can Taylor possibly do anything else? Why,…
Welcome to www.matchmycocktail.com. Uncommitted drinker who loves to laugh and imbibe looking for unconventional cocktail at new hotspot of chef Alex Gurevich, also of Café Bisque. Turn-ons: big glass containers filled with rum and vodka infused with ginger, coconut, honey and citrus. My perfect first rendezvous would include delectable drinks…
Suburban life is tough these days. Although we were hooligans growing up, the only things that could get us in trouble hadn’t changed much since our parents were young. So the run-ins with booze, sex, dangerous/moronic driving, gateway drugs, mild vandalism (no mailbox within a ten-mile radius of our neighborhood…
Toby, my waiter at Restaurant Kevin Taylor, is very excited. When he hands me the menu, the look on his face is one of barely contained joy. He waits while I look over the first page — beaming, fairly spilling over with enthusiasm. I’ve already told him I haven’t been…
Not every country under the sun deserves its own pizza, but don’t tell that to John Pool. In his mind, there’s no land too far-flung, no cuisine too unusual, no food tradition that can’t be boiled down to three or four or five key ingredients, blanketed with melted cheese and…
Larry Herz is adamant. “No,” he says. “No. You gotta go back and check what I said. Read your column. I said, ‘I will never open a restaurant again.'” And damn it if he isn’t right: That’s exactly what he said when we talked six months ago (“Herz Tries Harder,”…
Party like my grandma! When I asked my mother if she wanted to try Steuben’s, she wondered aloud, “Why does that name sound so familiar to me?” And when we walked into this new restaurant on 17th Avenue, it came to her: When my mom was a little girl growing…
The Food and Drug Administration should start requiring warning labels, or at least ingredient lists, on all margaritas. This would undoubtedly decrease work days lost, liver-transplant rates for those of us not lucky enough to be upstanding Americans like David Crosby or Larry Hagman, and the volume of next-day bleating…
Two-Fisted Mario’s must drive John Pool nuts. Here he’s doing his international thing, throwing down the masala pizzas and the lobster pizzas and the freaky rattlesnake pizzas — but at 9 p.m. on a Friday night, there’s no one at Pizzeria Mundo (see review). Meanwhile, just around the corner, Two-Fisted…
His Presidential-ness George Bush is scheduled to visit our fair city tomorrow. What the fuck is Dubya doing darkening our collective doorsteps this time? Why, politickin’, of course. He’ll be in town for a $1000-a-plate lunch in the Cherry Hills home of Charlie Gallagher (of the private equity firm Gallagher…
For barbecue fanatics, summer is like one lengthy treasure hunt, a months-long stretch when, every weekend, the faithful can pile into their cars and strike out for the mountains or the plains in search of the next find. As with all great adventures, most of us have no idea where…
Unlike Cabin Creek Smokehouse BBQ (see review, page 53), Yazoo Barbecue Company is not the kind of place you have to scout out. This white-cement bunker — occasionally wreathed in smoke, partially walled in by a chain-link fence — is right in the heart of downtown at 2150 Broadway, just…
I’ll have the bread pudding — hold the bread. A male friend of mine recently told me that, knowing what he knows about men, he’d eat only two Ritz crackers a day if he were a woman. During lunch at Bambino’s with a girlfriend, we took his misogynistic advice to…
We were ready for some simple fun after a month of international rivalries during which we’d suffered through: more than 1.2 trillion scoreless minutes; 6,752 totally wrong goalie guesses on penalty kicks; 800,967 unnecessary instances of a goalie leaving his feet for an easy save or an obvious wide shot;…
There was a time when this barbecue joint was one of the best in the city, back when it was known as Chapter One BBQ and Grill (“Two for the Road,” October 6, 2005). But sometime earlier this year, original owners Bonnie and Jerome Sims moved on, a big “Two”…
I’ve said a lot of nasty things about chain restaurants. I’ve advocated a boycott of Applebee’s (because of my horror of Riblets), asked both God and Santa Claus to rain fire down on Olive Garden franchises, given away KFC fried chicken to homeless people, savaged McDonald’s on any number of…
I have fairly low expectations of the business of running restaurants — understanding all too well the lowest-common-denominator math involved in the profitable operation of a multi-unit empire. I’ve read Fast Food Nation and the Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’ve managed the kitchens of chain outlets and worked in industrial production (those…
