A century ago, Mattie Silks was Denver’s most notorious madam. And so I approached my first meal at the restaurant that occupies her expensively refurbished Victorian brothel, Mattie’s House of Mirrors, with some trepidation. Like its namesake, was this establishment out to screw us? After all, in keeping with Silks’s…
Noodlin’ around: One indicator of an excellent chef is his ability to take simple ingredients and combine them in a way that makes the most of their attributes. At Mattie’s House of Mirrors (see review above), one of the most flavorful and well-proportioned dishes is the capellini with four tomatoes,…
Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah: The food served on the Great Northern Railway was very different from the food served at its namesake in Denver, the Great Northern Tavern (see review above). The railroad received so many requests for its recipes that it put out a thirty-page booklet called…
Have a successful eatery? Hey, open another one. No matter that you can’t clone the location, the chef or the waitstaff, much less yourself. If your concept works in one place, it’s bound to work everywhere, right? Wrong. Very wrong. The original Great Northern Tavern is in Keystone, where residents…
Made in America: The Manor House (reviewed above) would be wise to skip the fusion and instead focus on classic American cooking–and I’m not talking dry turkey and mashed potatoes from a box (have you polished off your leftovers yet?). For some great American recipes, check out the U.S.A. Cookbook…
At a place named The Manor House, you expect to eat something grand. Especially when the restaurant is housed in a true manor house, a 1914 American-Georgian-Southern-style mansion nestled snugly against the stately, shrub-lumpy bosom of the Ken Caryl Valley. This was once the centerpiece of a 28,000-acre estate owned…
Say cheese: If there’s a food in the world that I love more than cheese, I don’t know what it could be. Yes, foie gras is fabulous and truffles are divine, but I can’t afford to eat them every day–and I’m not sure I’d want to. Cheese, however, I ingest…
I’m now at the point where I let food magazines–Saveur, Food & Wine, Gourmet–pile up in the corner, unopened. Because if I grab one and start digesting those stories about fabulous food in other cities, I bawl like a baby. Read it and weep: In New York, Jean Georges is…
Chicken feed: One of my favorite dishes at Pagliacci’s was the chicken cacciatore. Alla cacciatora means “cooked in the hunter’s style”; in the Italy of old, the dish was most often made with rabbit and whatever proportions of tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and onions the family’s nonna favored. No matter…
More than fifty years ago, Sicilian immigrant Frank Grandinetti opened Pagliacci’s in what was then an Italian neighborhood in northwest Denver. “The restaurant was born out of this love between Frank and his wife, Thelma,” says Rose Ann Langston, the Grandinettis’ niece and Pagliacci’s current owner and manager. “In fact,…
The food chain that matters is not about who’s eating whom, but who’s cooking what–and where. The right chef, one with training and firsthand knowledge of the country where the cuisine originated, can make all the difference at a restaurant. So, of course, can the wrong chef. At Samurai, once…
Pan-fried Asian: Getting a recipe from Isamu “Sam” Furuichi, who has taken over the kitchen at Samurai (see review above), turned out to be a tough task. Not only does Furuichi speak little English, but Samurai refused to share its recipes, and Furuichi’s co-workers said they were too busy to…
What’s cooking: The best cooking schools don’t just teach you how to cook; they teach you what to cook. They expose you to new recipes–recipes you might have missed in a cookbook or passed over because you thought they were too difficult. If you take a workshop on shrimp, for…
It was a little like a triple-bypass operation performed by third-graders using foot-long scissors. But teaching a knife-skills class to a group of adults who’d obviously been using dull steak knives for slicing and dicing all their lives didn’t faze chef Conni Gallo, not even when a blade slipped through…
Chile weather: Since the Wynkoop Brewing Co. opened at 1634 18th Street ten years ago this month, Colorado’s microbrewery business has boomed to the point that the state now has more brewpubs per capita than any other. Wynkoop, which led the way, should be pouring its Tin Pig Anniversary Ale…
I’m still in a daze over Heavenly Daze, Denver’s latest brewpub, and it’s not because my meals there were a slice of heaven. No, I’m dazed and confused as to why an eatery would spend so much money filling a massive warehouse with a mass-production brewery and an eating area…
Noodling around: If the only carbonara you’ve tried has involved ham and peas, Theo Roe’s Dazzle recipe is sure to do just that. One indisputable ingredient for good carbonara is concentration, and for that, the instructions of Patricia Wells in Patricia Wells at Home in Provence remain a constant: “Despite…
I first encountered Theo Roe’s cooking at Pinots, a restaurant that seemed to have everything going for it, not the least of which was a talented chef. Still, the place closed down in August 1997 at the ripe old age of nine months. “It was just a combination of things…
When the kitchen cooperates, 29 Mile Cantina (reviewed above) puts out some tasty fare, especially the Santa Monica chicken, which co-owner Laura Brody named after the last stop on Route 66 before you hit the Pacific. When I made this dish at home, I pounded the chicken breasts a bit…
So I was all, where’s my food? And the server was all, it’s totally coming soon, and I was all, well, it had better get here or I’m walking out, and the server was all, I’m so sorry, but there’s, like, a problem in the kitchen. These days, it seems…
Since Japan has been infested with American fast-food chains since the late Sixties, it’s only fair that we’d get a few Japanese fast-food outlets three decades later. Certainly, things could be worse: The modest spots serving quick, cheap Japanese fare that have popped up in Denver are individually owned, unlike…
Soy to the world: If you believe the hype, soybeans could be the next Prozac. This versatile little legume–which is available as a fresh bean, coagulated into tofu, fermented into tempeh and miso, pressed into milk and salted into sauce–reportedly may help in preventing cancer, lowering cholesterol, reducing heart disease,…
