I love expensive cheeses. The good ones — cave-aged, smeared in ash, riddled with veins of carefully tended mold, rubbed down by nuns and Italian virgins in towns whose names I can barely pronounce, made from the milk of animals whose teats I wouldn’t squeeze on a dare. Cashel Blue,…
Last summer I stumbled across Mike Frislie at the Bugling Bull Trading Post, where he was working the drum grill and smoker out on Highway 67 (1668 North Highway 67 in Sedalia, to be precise) and cooking up burgers, brats and some of the best damn barbecue I’d ever tasted…
Never trust a guy who drinks a Bubble-Lee. Over the years, I’ve adopted a couple of clear-cut rules about guys. They must be willing to suffer through at least one theatrical performance a season and at least pretend to enjoy it. They cannot have more piercings than I do. They…
I am a big fan of Mexican culture. It’s brought us Taco Bell (a legal form of crack), sombreros for any occasion, MTV Spring Break in Cancún and uncounted Girls Gone Wild videos, as well as the Latin Representative to the Institute of Drinking Studies. But some imports from south…
No local discourse on comfort food would be complete without a few words regarding the humble breakfast burrito. And while there are many, many places in town that serve up great breakfast burritos at all hours of the day and night, this week I’m stumping for one that may be…
I hate admitting that I’m wrong. Up to this point in my somewhat spotty career, I would have insisted that certain rules govern a restaurant’s survival. A space that can only be located by satellite photography is never going to make it. A fusion menu that fuses the cuisines of…
So how is it that Tin Star (see review, page 57), a Tex-Mex chain outfit from Dallas, and John Jourde, a first-time restaurateur more comfortable around software reps than line cooks, came together in Colorado to create a place that so impressed me? Good question. Rich Hicks opened the original…
The second I walked into Steak au Poivre, I expected a diminutive man in a white suit to run past me, pointing into the air and screaming “Da plane, da plane!” The ambience of the place is very Fantasy Island, complete with wicker chairs, a big palm in the corner…
We all pine for simpler days, like those in high school when our only real worries were what to wear, who was engaging in heavy petting with whom (or, better yet, actually doing the deed), who you were going to stuff in his locker that day, when you were going…
Although fast-casual Mex is all the rage today — and with good reason, in the case of Tin Star — there was a time not long ago when Denver was inundated with white-tablecloth Mexican joints. But they were still years behind Las Brisas, which opened in 1987 and has real…
We have reservations for dinner — just the two of us, prime time on a Saturday night — but we don’t need them. Three months to the day after the opening of Nine75 — the high-gloss, high-concept, locationally challenged and oh-so-eager-to-please cafe/bistro that took over the former home of the…
On my visits to Nine75 (see review), I pretty much avoided the desserts — and not because I was watching my trim and girlish figure. No, I skipped the massive slabs of peanut butter-chocolate cake and individual apple mini-pies (dressed with mint leaves) because I knew that the pastry department…
Shake it like you got it. Herman’s Hideaway was the first live-music venue I got into with a fake ID. As a Denver teen who hadn’t traveled much, I imagined that it was our version of New York’s legendary CBGB, the thoroughly hip and cool place to see up-and-coming bands…
Planning a wedding is a big job for a bride and her family. They have to decide on the service, the flowers, the wedding-party members, the date, the reception hall, the menu, the availability of alcohol, the invitations, the tuxedos, the bridesmaid dresses that will never be worn again, the…
During the first months of Mao’s existence, developer-turned-restaurateur Jim Sullivan (yeah, the same Sullivan behind Nine75, reviewed this week) probably took more heat than any other owner in town has taken for the opening of anything. Restaurants, check-cashing services, massage parlors. Anything. I mean, the guy plopped a Chinese restaurant…
One of the reasons I’m staying married to Laura for the rest of my life: She’s got a real good eye for hot dogs. And it’s not just hot dogs, either. She can suss out a decent Mexican spot from a block away, will know — with just a glance…
Following service this past Saturday, Adega suddenly went dark. It came as a helluva shock. I mean, this was Adega. No place in the city had gotten better reviews locally or more love from the national press than this hip outpost at the corner of 17th and Wynkoop streets. Chef/partner…
There was this one time, at band camp…. John Burr has had a lot of big ideas. In 1993 he established Soundstructure Studios, providing spaces where acts can rehearse at full tilt without hearing the music of the band next door or subjecting their neighbors to songs that might make…
We here at the Institute of Drinking Studies got into journalism for the same reason as Woodward and Bernstein, George Will and Woody Paige: to get girls. We’re still big fans of hard-hitting reportage, and when we see something like the piece 20/20 did a while back — an entire…
Chicken-fried steak, chicken-fried steak, chicken-fried steak, gyros. All through lunch and well into the afternoon, this is what customers keep asking for at Diana’s Greek Market and Deli. Three out of five orders (and sometimes five out of every five) are for pounded, breaded and deep-fried beef, slathered in peppery…
I’m not going to order lobster anymore. Or perhaps I’ll just limit myself to lobster once a year. Twice, tops. One of the quirks of this very strange job is that every food-related luxury, every delicacy, every rare and wonderful thing is now available to me pretty much all the…
After my disastrous meals at Del Mar Crab House (see review), I started feeling nostalgic for the simple, rookie mistakes of Go Fish Grille, a seafood restaurant that I’d given a mixed review back in December. In comparison to the terrible, terrible things done to my dinner at Del Mar,…
