Food & Drink

Those of you who have had this cheeseburger will know exactly where I ate it. As for the rest of you, shame! Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to the week’s Guess Where posts is entered into a pool — and…

Last week, I posted a letter from Christian Spinello, a guy who lives in Lyons and cures his own salumi at home. His missive, which is lengthy, inquisitive and pointed, was directed at Mark DeNittis, an owner of Il Mondo Vecchio, the artisan salumeria and manufacturing plant that he started…

First thing’s first: Patxi’s is pronounced “pah-cheese” (‘t’ before ‘x’), and its name, which is Basque, also happens to be the first name of co-owner Patxi Azpiroz, who opens his namesake restaurant — a shrine to pizza — late this afternoon at Cherry Hills at Kent Place, a new mixed-use…

So far, much of the talk about the Pasquini’s Pizzeria that opened on East 17th Avenue in early November has focused on the new paint-job outside. Today, the discussion will move indoors, when Pasquini’s applies to the city for a cabaret license, which would allow the venue to offer live…

On Friday, Il Mondo Vecchio sold its final sausages. Since opening in 2009, the salumeria has garnered all kinds of praise for its cured meats, but in August the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it had a beef with the business’s salmonella testing procedures and issued an ultimatum that co-founder…

Cafe Society served four Guess Where? contests last week, ranging from a Russian Imperial Stout, aged in whiskey barrels, from Dry Dock Brewery, to pails of peanuts from Texas Roadhouse (yee-haw!), to a cup of tom kha talay, a Thai seafood soup that arrived mostly absent of seafood…

Yes, you can make a vegan pumpkin pie — but this spice bread is a lot lower in fat and calories, it’s just as tasty and it contains chocolate. Adapted from The Joy of Vegan Baking for altitude, this is what we’ll be using for our vegan Thanksgiving dessert this…

Since Peyton Manning doesn’t work fulltime as a Papa John’s spokesman, CEO John Schnatter doesn’t have to cover the quarterback’s health insurance (which has to be hefty). And he’d like to make sure that as many Papa John’s employees as possible work under thirty hours a week, so that the…

Lotus Concepts is raising the roof — literally — on the Victorian building at 2015 Market Street that for decades held Mori Japanese Restaurant. But Mori closed abruptly four years ago, and club king Francois Safieddine bought the spot from the Nisei Veterans Heritage Foundation for a reported $900,000 in…

The dining room (and bar) was a circus, peanuts (and off-key staff renditions of “Happy Birthday”) included. Only things missing were the elephants and Cracker Jacks. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to the week’s Guess Where posts is entered into…

Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter has been outspoken about cutting employee hours to less than thirty hours per week so that he doesn’t have to pay their health insurance costs — as mandated Affordable Health Care Act — or Obamacare; he has cited concerns over the estimated $5 to 8…

Earlier this month, I broke the news that Il Mondo Vecchio, Mark DeNittis’s artisan sausage plant, would cease production at the end of November. And within minutes of the announcement, you could hear the collective sighs of despair all over the state — and beyond. When I interviewed DeNittis, he…

Pete Marczyk and Barbara Macfarlane do not leave their work behind when they leave Marczyk Fine Foods and head for their great old Denver house with the big, new kitchen. They often bring some of their market’s choicest ingredients home with them and cook up a feast. “I found this…

Vail’s Sweet Basil restaurant produces some beautiful dishes, like their signature cauliflower and black truffle bisque, crispy veal sweetbreads and Greek yogurt cheesecake with honey-poached blueberries. And on November 20, owners Kevin Clair and Matt Morgan, with executive chef Paul Anders, will spill their sweet, savory and spicy secrets in…

Zest Cafe opened last month at 2740 South Wadsworth Boulevard, and owner Andrew Krull and his crew have been serving up organic, locally-sourced cafe fare to an appreciative crowds ever since. “We make everything from scratch, including the bread,” Krull says, “and we have an amazing baker with thirty years…

Chef/owner Ryan Leinonen says that a rare flower, the blue trillium, was the inspiration for the restaurant that he opened last year in the Ballpark neighborhood, Trillium. But a flawless meal here is also a rare thing, as Gretchen Kurtz discovered when she reviewed the place this week. See also:…

We came. We saw. We tweeted. Last night, Westword hosted the third annual Denver Web Awards, our celebration of Denver’s greatest digital minds. In September, we put out a call for you, dear readers, to nominate your favorite online projects, and a team at Westword spent more than a month…