Food & Drink

The Sandwich: BBQ Pork and Special Combo What’s on it: Pork and other meats, cilantro, cucumber, carrots, peppers Where to get it: Ba Le Sandwich, 1044 South Federal Boulevard, 303-922-2129 How much: $2.75 each Back away from the pastrami, sir. And step off the turkey and Swiss. It’s time to…

If you subscribe to Cafe Bites, our weekly restaurant newsletter, you already know the news that follows. If you don’t, keep reading (and then e-mail cafe@westword.com to subscribe). Head to the Avery Tap Room, 5763 Arapahoe Avenue in Boulder, at 5 p.m. today to get a taste of Brabant, first…

And we’re not talking Jon Caldara.FoxNews contributor Michelle Malkin is now an unlikely resident of Colorado Springs — not exactly the state’s hot spot for barbecue. So where did she get the whole roasted pig (and rolls) that she brought to the State Capitol yesterday for Caldara and company’s “no…

While employed in my last-ever cooking gig before coming here, I got to know grits pretty well, because I worked the night-shift at an Albuquerque Waffle House and one of my many responsibilities (along with tossing the drunks and cooking the hash browns and cleaning the grease traps) was fixing…

After meeting in France (where they both attended culinary school), Noah Stephens and Emily Welch came back to Denver, where they just opened their own sandwich shop, Vert Kitchen. It’s only open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (and closed on Monday), has no liquor license — due to the…

Since Kevin Taylor’s Prima in Boulder closed in late 2007, its spot at One Boulder Plaza has housed only a “For Lease” sign. But now Tracy Webb, chef/owner of The Rib House, at 1920 South Coffman Street in Longmont, will turn this location into his second Rib House.Webb is from Kansas City…

So, a few weeks ago, I wrote this little piece titled “How to Create a Great Irish Bar.” It wasn’t something I put a lot of thought into. It wasn’t something that groaned under the weight of background research (unless drinking counts as research). Really, it was just a way to…

One of the first big restaurant deals of the new year was the purchase of Aix — by a new partnership comprised of of Keith Arnold and Stephanie Bonin (owners of Duo), and John Broening and Yasmin Lozada-Hissom (chef and pastry chef of Duo, respectively). When the quartet took on…

I feel like Michael Flatley is riverdancing on my head. When 30,000 college kids move back onto campus after winter break, the inevitable respiratory illnesses spread across campus faster than your everyday STD. (Please keep that movie running while reading this–it is the perfect soundtrack.) A nice, throbbing head cold gave me…

Denver Restaurant Week doesn’t start until February 21, but it already looks like a hit, with more than 224 restaurants signed up to participate and over a hundred chefs slated to attend the scheduled February 17 press conference to hype the event.But once Barack Obama’s noon visit to Denver that…

I finally got a chance to try Merle’s, the new American restaurant made out of that most American of businesses, an old shock-alignment place. Merle’s managers pimped their vinegar-based Carolina barbecue when I first talked to them, so I felt obligated to try the pork sandwich, topped with a traditional creamy…

Cocoa Pebbles Post Rating: Three spoons out of four Cereal description: Rice cereal that doesn’t look anything like rice. Instead of retaining a kernel-like shape, as does the stuff that snaps, crackles and pops, Cocoa Pebbles features grain that seems to have been imploded — a process that transforms it…

A couple days after the Second Helping I wrote for Parisi went up — the one in which I reported how I’d accidentally tried to order spaghetti at a real estate office and proved, once again, what a boob I truly am — I got a note from Christine Parisi…

Yesterday’s picture in the Denver Post real estate section of the new Curt Fentress architecture firm headquarters/Watermark sales office, in the historic Chittenden Mansion on West Fourth Avenue just off Broadway, brought back memories of a much earlier attempt to label the Baker neighborhood as one of Denver’s hippest.Close to…

The James Beard Foundation has just released the semifinalists list for its 2009 restaurant and chef awards. And Frank Bonanno — of Mizuna, Luca D’Italia and Osteria Marco (and now Bones, which opened at the very end of December) fame — is one of twenty people up for Outstanding Restaurateur.No…

There’s a sign in the window of the Common Grounds at 1601 17th Street, and it’s not good news. The landlord has put this prime piece of real estate up for lease, and that means LoDo could lose a great local coffeehouse (and a barista who was once on Survivor)…

We recently heard about organic chocolate bars from Shaman Chocolates, and were eager to try out these chocolates for a good cause: 100 percent of the profits go to support the Huichol Indians in the Sierra Madre mountains in central Mexico, and sales of the Fair Trade-certified chocolate have already…

It turns out that Quiznos – the carnivorous, Denver-based chain that gave us subs like the 5 Meat Stack and Prime Rib Cheesesteak, with a double-meat option – has been engaged in behind-the-scenes talks for a year with the most notorious veggie lovers of them all: PETA. (I use the…

When Bar Luxe opened three years ago, it was a sleek Cherry Creek bar, soon to be joined by Euro, a hip Cherry Creek restaurant helmed by Olav Peterson, formerly of Restaurant 1515. But Euro was gone by the end of 2007 (Peterson is now at Bistro One), and Bar…

Tell Dr. Atkins to shove off and stick that paleo diet back in its cave: Local political writer Ari Armstrong’s low-carb, personal-liberty food-stamp diet is the hottest thing since sliced bread (sliced bread bought with food stamps, that is). Turns out our recent account of dining with Armstrong during his…