Food & Drink

¡Hola! It’s fun-day Friday, and with any luck, my weekend will include one of these: a gigantic michelada specked with salt and pepper, tart with lime, jolted with hot sauce and rimmed with salt. Can you guess where I’m drinking? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to…

More than two dozen restaurants made their debut in February, including the long-anticipated Old Major. But Pig & Block Charcuterie wasn’t around to greet its new neighbor (or benefit from some of those customers); it closed last month. Keep reading for all the openings and closings on the Denver dining…

Later this morning we’ll post our Restaurant Roll Call for February, a compendium of all the openings and closings on the Denver dining scene last month. One of those openings? Moontower Tacos, which opened a week ago in the former Thai Mango space at Sixth and Grant. Owner Brent Thrash…

Mutiny Now!, an institution on Broadway, was sold last month by Jack Jensen to Jim Norris, Joe Ramirez and Matt Megyesi, and officially reopens today as the Mutiny Information Cafe. One of of the first orders of business? Adding Pablo’s Coffee. “Its the best coffee in the world,” Norris says…

Denver International Airport is continuing to upgrade its food offerings. This week City Wok opened on the B concourse mezzanine, giving DIA travelers a healthy, made-to-order dining option. Although most of the restaurants that will open at the airport this year boast local owners, City Wok is based out of…

100% de Agave, a new Mexican joint created by one of the owners of Three Margaritas, will open tomorrow in the former home of Japoix (and, before that, Nine75) at 975 Lincoln Street in the Beauvallon. Westword’s Danielle Lirette stopped by for a sneak peak at the space. See also:…

Yesterday we caught up with Steve Progar, who’s moved from Abusci’s to the Hideaway Steakhouse, which opened two years ago next month in Westminster. That Hideaway is not to be confused with Hideaway Kitchen & Bar. But it often is, says Dante Tripi, now the chef at Hideway Kitchen &…

Bob and Rosario Van Diest take pride in serving a little-known but authentic Peruvian dish, pollo a la brasa, at La Polleria, which I review this week. Here’s another dish they are eager to tell people about: papas a la huancaina (potatoes huancaina style). Often served at parties with baby…

Barrel-aged cocktails are here, there and everywhere, in bars, restaurants, wineries and tap houses. But this orange essence-rimmed barrel-aged drink, by virtue of its name alone — Satan’s (Curled) Whiskers — grabbed my attention…and was drained in seconds flat. Can you guess where I’m drinking? Special bonus: Anyone who gives…

Not every work environment has cocktails on-site, but if your office is at Galvanize, that’s one of the amenities. Galvanize, the startup-tech common workspace in the Golden Triangle, has Gather to thank for that. Gather, the on-site cafe overseen by ChoLon chef-owner Lon Symensma, is mixing up cocktails inspired by…

Patxi Azpiroz Patxi’s Pizza 3455 South University Boulevard, Englewood; 303-783-2000 185 Steele Street; 303-331-1000 www.patxispizza.com This is part two of my interview with Patxi Azpiroz, exec chef/owner of Patxi’s Pizza; part one of our conversation ran yesterday. Favorite Denver restaurant(s) other than your own: I’m still exploring and trying all…

New restaurant and food concepts are conceived in all sorts of ways. Most owners and chefs spend months, years, even decades, slaving over the perfect idea, scribbling their dreams on napkins, their own bathroom walls, on coasters at the bar. But in the case of Chris Newell and his girlfriend…

When Patzi Azpiroz decided he wanted to introduce authentic deep-dish, Chicago-style pizza in California, he spent two years experimenting with recipes in his San Francisco kitchen. Today there are a half-dozen Patxi’s Pizza outlets in California, and this fall Azpiroz and his partner, Bill Freeman, opened the first Colorado Patxi’s…

Roast-chicken fanatics tout experiencing the bird with bread salad at San Francisco’s Zuni Cafe the way others talk about climbing the Eiffel Tower or bagging a peak. Some buy the restaurant’s cookbook and start on the recipe two days in advance, drying, salting and stuffing herbs under the skin in…

Steve Progar posted this note on Facebook earlier today: “After a successful 12 years in partnership at Abrusci’s, I’ve taken on a new challenge at the Hideaway Steakhouse. Great place, great food, great people! Hope to see you all come in! Thanks for all the memories at Abrusci’s!” But if…

Last week, we revealed Cafe Society’s choices for Denver’s Ten Best New Restaurants to open in 2012: Amerigo, Squeaky Bean, The Populist, Central Bistro & Bar, True Food Kitchen, Taita Peruvian Cuisine & Bar, The Universal, Pho Lee, Uncle and The Kitchen Denver. At the time, one of the restaurants,…

In most cases, anything with the name “prego” in its title conjures up weird food aversions and compulsions of fourteen years ago, when I was, in fact, “prego” with a fat fetus who’s now a skinny teenager that insists on wearing shorts, even when there’s a foot of the snow…