Rebecca Weitzman, chef at the fantastic Cafe Star (3201 East Colfax Avenue) and supreme overseer of the fine-dining portion of Colfax’s restaurant revolution, has just announced that she’s quitting our little corner of paradise at the end of the month. She’s heading for New York City — still the hot…
I have a very simple policy about eating meals while drinking: I don’t. Not, at least, when my goals for the night include over-inebriation. Snacks and appetizers? Fine. But big, juicy bacon cheeseburgers with jalapeño cream cheese and a side of fries? Sweet Christ, never while boozing, and never, ever…
I’m a sucker for fish, which I like watching (tank), catching (fly) and eating (raw). But I don’t eat what I catch, nor do I enjoy seeing fish that I’ll soon be served being taken out of a tank. As with beef — I don’t adopt the cows I’ll later…
Some days I want to eat chicken feet. I want tripe and trotters, crispy fried intestine and all the assorted culinary weirdness that makes the world go ’round. I would be just as bored with cheeseburgers every day as someone living in, say, Addis Ababa would be with nothing but…
I’ve never gotten over my instinctive dislike of traditional holidays, and instead make up my own — personal, private mileposts on the calendar with their own rituals and rites of observation, celebrated mostly alone. One such holiday landed on the Thursday right before Labor Day weekend: New Phone Book Day…
An ode, a lament: That’s what it says on the menu, on the wall, on the chalkboards and on the website that City, O’ City shares with WaterCourse Foods, the restaurant that used to be in this Capitol Hill space. An ode, a lament — to Denver and its people,…
It was real easy to find Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs. Even if I didn’t know where it was, even if I hadn’t been there plenty of times before, even if I hadn’t had the slightest clue, it would’ve been easy to find. All I had to do was look for…
The Photo Atlas is already into its second or third song by the time I get to the Marquis Theater (2009 Larimer Street). Adam Lancaster, who runs Morning After Records, the band’s label, meets me out front. We head straight for the bar and order two of the club’s signature…
Ooh la la! When I first moved back to Denver from New York, I spent a lot of time at Bistro Adde Brewster’s, the Cherry Creek hot spot run by Adde Bjorkland and Duey Kratzer, now the proprietor of Mondo Vino. I had too many exceedingly wild nights there and…
Since I just reviewed city-o-city, which opened early this year in the original home of WaterCourse Foods, it seemed an appropriate time to check out what the new WaterCourse has to offer. First things first: The restaurant, which took over the space formerly occupied by the New York on 17th…
When I walked through the door of City, O’ City the first time, late in the evening on a Saturday when the joint was in full hipster-utopian swing, I thought only of how immediately comfortable I found its spare décor, widely-spaced tables, high-backed booths and long bar; how buzzing and…
I love cheeseburgers. Seriously, madly, deeply. I love foie gras, too. I love maguro sushi. I love whole fish with their eyes rolled back, seared crisp and served under a blanket of dark, thick oyster sauce, and I love bacalao and blood sausage and agnolotti with sage and butternut squash…
Buffalo, New York, sometime in the mid-’90s. I was briefly between jobs — having just told one owner (of a ginormous Irish restaurant/pub/banquet hall/ hotel operation) that he could go fuck himself and his nine dollars an hour if he thought I was going to run his entire floundering food…
We almost take the scooter from my place to Highland. But then Sean has last-minute reservations about riding without a helmet, and regardless of how engaged-to-a-beautiful-girl he is and how comfortable and happy I am with my hetero relationship, there’s still a certain amount of awkwardness when two dudes share…
As I walked toward Sengers on the Fax, a homeless person who’d strategically placed himself near the entrance asked if I could “help out.” After living in New York for years and finally figuring out that “help out” means “give me money for drugs and booze,” I came up with…
As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one truly great cheeseburger in the area, and that’s the double served at Bud’s Bar in Sedalia. Bud’s has done everything possible to make me dislike the place — from overcharging me to refusing takeout orders to being too full for me to…
Open since 1974, the Wazee Supper Club predates all the hipness, all the gentrification, all the retro this-and-that of LoDo. Founders Angelo and Jim Karagas actually opened their first spot, My Brother’s Bar, in 1969, nine blocks further down 15th, in a neighborhood known more for the rattle in the…
In the current issue, I published Matthew Brandon’s spirited defense of Texas barbecue, and elaborated on my own obsession. Here’s his reply: I didn’t expect little ol’ me to be quoted in your column. You acquitted yourself just fine, though. One thing I didn’t get a chance to cover in…
Stop giving him pork chops!” The woman is hissing, eyes flashing, using her mom voice on her husband, one arm thrown protectively over the top of the car seat set beside her on the banquette seat two tables down at Cucina Colore. “I’m not giving him pork chops. I’m giving…
Last week I took a run out to the Montecito at 5970 South Holly Street in Greenwood Village, which is right next to Annabel’s, the other new joint owned by Mel and Jane Master. Chef Adam Mali has handed over day-to-day ops at the original Montecito, at 1120 East Sixth…
I’m pretty well sauced on Guinness by the time Sean and I get to Charlie Brown’s Bar & Grill (980 Grant Street). The eighty-odd-year-old bar tucked into the Colburn Hotel & Apartments — a famed ’40s hangout of Beat hipsters Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg — is packed,…
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing simple, straightforward neighborhood Italian food. In fact, doing just that is a noble tradition that extends further back in this country’s history than does the impulse to slap down a bunch of white tablecloths, boot Dean and Louis Prima off the radio in favor…
