Food & Drink

I love recycling. Not the go-green, be-nice-to-the-planet kind, or the separating-your-trash kind. Those are all well and good, but what I really love is restaurant recycling. Whole restaurant recycling. Like when some owner without much money takes on a hastily abandoned space and sets up shop without bothering to do…

I had lunch plans that were made weeks ago.  I had a time and a date, a big group of friends, a table waiting out on the patio.  What I didn’t have?  Any idea that today was the day the Denver Post was going to drop the love on my new favorite…

This one could be tough — but the wall o’ tequila, tilework and beers on the tap-handles might be enough to give it away to regulars. For everyone else, here’s a clue: This plac used to be a serious dive bar. It was so dive-y, in fact, that someone had to buy…

Yesterday, I told you all about Max Mackissock’s sooner-than-expected departure from Primebar, the restaurant at 1515 Arapahoe Street that opens to the public on Friday night. What I didn’t tell you is this: Come May 28, Mackissock will be the new exec chef at The Squeaky Bean, which opens Monday…

Johnny Ballen, owner of The Squeaky Bean, which opens Monday morning at 3301 Tejon Street in the former Mondo Cafe space, finds it amusing that everyone seems to think his new spot is a java joint. “I’m having fun with all the guesswork,” he told me yesterday over Squeaky spritzes,…

The sandwich: Our Famous Reuben What’s on it: Corn beef, Swiss cheese, homemade sauerkraut, Dijon mustard and Thousand Island dressing on rye. Potato salad on the side. Where to get it: Black Forest Deli (9535 West 58th Avenue, Arvada, 303-425-0265) How much: $7 Arvada was small once, and the Black…

Four to six weeks from now, I bet you’ll be hungry. And I bet you’ll want a hot dog. After all, it will be the middle of summer — what could be better than a hot dog in the middle of summer?A free hot dog, of course.Here’s how to get…

It’s too late to grab the free pizza that Zpizza was handing out last night, but you can buy a pie today, when Zpizza officially opens for business at 4940 South Yosemite in Greenwood Village. Lori Midson got a taste of the chain when she was in California a couple…

Early last month, I told you that Max Mackissock, the former exec chef at Vita who’d most recently been putting time in at Cafe Options, had just landed the top job at Primebar, the soon-to-be  hot spot at 1515 Arapahoe Street, in the former Palomino space, that’s previewing its menu…

Barbecue has a history and a long association with blues music and jazz music and roof-shakin’, foot-stompin’, Southern-tinted rock-and-roll music. It has a sweet Sunday morning side — all gospel hymns and stately women in enormous hats — and it has a dark and dirty Saturday night side as well…

As I reported here last week, Park Burger, this week’s obsession for us Westword food freaks, was skedded to open last Friday, at precisely 5 p.m., but any of you who attached your watch to your eyeballs so that you could be first in line now knows that 5 p.m…

Last Thursday, a pizza and a calzone mysteriously appeared in the office, addressed to me.  Because I wasn’t actually in the office at the time, said grub was immediately devoured by a variety of salespeople, editors and one very hungry music critic — trusting souls that they are — and…

As you may have noticed, Denver is getting into the urban homesteading movement in a big way. Homeowners are replacing sod with vegetable beds and building chicken coops by their garages. Power players are turning prime downtown real estate into miniature farms and citizens are fighting for their right to…

On Saturday, El Camino could have been Swimclub 32 all over again when a parade in honor of Seamen on Hooker — an annual, nautically themed neighborhood party on the 2900-3100 blocks of Hooker Street — parked in front of the restaurant at 3628 West 32nd Avenue for a refreshing…

You can’t get Cheli’s chili in Chicago anymore — the Cheli’s Chili Bar there closed when Chris Chelios was traded to the Detroit Red Wings. You can get it in Michigan, of course; the hockey player has three Cheli’s Chili Bar restaurants around Detroit. And now you can get it…

Drove by the Denver Pizza Company last night, the pie palace at 309 West 11th Avenue reputedly owned by Mark Huebner, a self-described “pizza entrepreneur” and our homeboy contestant on The Bachelorette, whose season premiere aired last night on ABC. (Huebner will be around for the next prickly rose ceremony,…

Let’s talk burgers. At Westword, we have no problem spending hours deconstructing the mechanics of ground beef, a bun and then who-knows-what-else. Which means we’ll probably be discussing Park Burger for quite some time. I strolled into the neighborhood joint last night with Westword web editor Joe Tone, who fell…

During a weekend scouting mission for new restaurants, I’m pretty sure I scared the shit out of Andy Koncsik. He’s the guy who, along with his wife, Estela, is opening La Brisa Mexican Restaurant in the former Cafe Etoile space at 375 South Pearl Street. And I don’t blame him…

I’m a huge fan of Lost. Have been since episode 1, will be until the day it rolls the final credits.  And like all Lost fans, I am currently going through the first, worst stages of withdrawal now that this season’s final episode has aired and I’m staring at something…