There’s nothing quite as irritating as having your flight canceled after you’ve already checked in — especially when it’s not for some semi-understandable reason, like snow flurries or drizzle around DIA or a herpes outbreak at O’Hare. No, this inexplicable cancellation was because of weather on the East Coast the…
People are always trying to bring a taste of somewhere else to whatever place they now call home. Immigrant cuisine, nativist cuisine, fusion cuisine, recipes passed down through generations — they’re all attempts at preserving across time and distance memories that are tied up in food. This is a noble…
I know, I know… this is twice in one week that I’m making fun of the New York Times (see “$115,000 Worth of Pointless Revenge” a few blogs below for my first shot at the Old Gray Lady), but I just couldn’t let this one go without a comment. In…
We’re midway through Denver Restaurant Week, and reports are coming in. Restaurant Kevin Taylor? Full to capacity. Barolo Grill? Booked solid. Luca d’Italia? Ditto. Owner Frank Bonanno (above) has said that he couldn’t find a table for even his mother if she were to wander into Mizuna one night this…
Denver Restaurant Week, Day 2. A report by Amy Haimerl: I have a new culinary love. Not fois grae, not sweetbreads, not chili-infused chocolate or any of the other delicacies I’ve had the good fortune of trying while dining with Jason Sheehan and my other foodie friends. No, this is…
Big-time international restaurant owner Jeffrey Chodorow — who owns a couple dozen name joints in New York, Vegas and elsewhere, but who you may remember as Rocco DiSpirito’s money guy from that unconscionably awful reality show The Restaurant — got his name in the papers again last week. This time,…
If you are where you eat, a lot of people are Benny’s, since the Denver institution is usually packed with fans, including Leslie Fry, who offers this: Benny’s is my all-time favorite Denver restaurant. I have been there with family, friends, boyfriends, blind dates, out-of-towners, foreigners, children, grandparents, co-workers and…
Here’s Kate’s take on the quintessential Denver restaurant: It would have to be My Brother’s Bar at 15th and Platte. My stepdad has been taking me there since I was six and we would play “I Spy” while waiting for our gooey JCBs; he’d sometimes let me have a sip…
Another smart response to “You Are Where You Eat,” this one from Steve Poquette of Parker, touting Mezcal: It should be a restaurant where you would proudly take friends and family from out of town (as opposed to business associates). It should be a restaurant that you feel embodies the…
What does Denver taste like? In Bite Me, I’ve been writing about my hunt for the quintessential Denver restaurant, and readers have served up plenty of food for thought. The following, from Scott, aka “The Mayor,” is particularly choice: There is nothing more Denver than the Executive Lunch at the…
Denver restaurateurs have never been very good at taking the long view, but they’re going to get there eventually. And when they do, the mistakes of the past will seem ridiculous in hindsight. Someday, prospective chefs will be taken on a tour of the failed restaurant playgrounds of Denver’s gullible…
For as long as there has been a Vietnamese restaurant scene in Denver, the heart of that scene has been on South Federal Boulevard. Federal at Mississippi, Federal at Alameda, Federal at all those crooked little residential cross streets, in the cracked-blacktop strip malls, along the arterial sidewalks: For more…
Just so you know, growing up and being forced to grow up are not the same. Growing up is a natural process for women and some men that involves moving away from home, getting productive jobs, marrying and having kids, and stopping all of the immature nonsense you thought was…
To say the PS Lounge is just a dive bar is like saying a limo is just a car, or a lion is just a cat. There’s no question that the PS Lounge is a dive — but the fact is, it might be Denver’s greatest dive. It has everything…
On any day of the week, Sherpa’s is waiting like a familiar, comfortable neighborhood bar — one that just happens to be staffed by sherpas and run by a former Everest guide, and serves momo, thupka, dahl bhat and aloo paratha. It’s a foreign restaurant yet oddly comforting, confined as…
Suddenly, Chi Bistro was being hailed as a restaurant featuring ‘American classics with a flavor of French Indochina’—which ought to have meant Cafe du Monde and cr�me caramel, pho, fish heads and pigs roasted and redolent of gunpowder and Zippo lighter fuel, but didn’t, of course, except for an Asian…
My recent musings about the archetypal Denver restaurant, “You Are Where You Eat,” inspired several people to send in their own tastes of Denver. Here’s the slightly ball-obsessed response from Christine Sipple: Well, you might be right — finding a restaurant that truly speaks to you in this city could…
Okay, so the rumors have been flying about some big shakeups happening at Mel’s in Cherry Creek, and I’m here to tell you that the bad news is true. I just got off the phone with owner Mel Master a few minutes ago, and he told me that Mel’s will,…
This Just In: Late word from Stephen Anson, who is now the ex-owner of Wholly Tomato up on the hill at 9th and Lincoln. On Wednesday, Anson announced that his two-year-old “healthy fast-food restaurant” was closed as of immediately, and that he’d been bought out by the guys from Deli…
Here’s my problem with fusion cuisine: No white cook has ever learned how to properly use galangal. No black cook, either. Or Latino or Spanish or French or what-have-you. Or me. We’ve all tried it — experimented the way others might with smoking weed or light bondage — but none…
What’s your favorite Denver restaurant? Not your favorite restaurant in Denver, but that restaurant (or diner, cafe, bistro, drive-thru) that, for whatever reason, speaks to you about the city you call home. I’ll give you a minute to think. Okay, got one? Good. Now tell me why. Not so easy,…
For those of you interested in ridding your frat party, wedding reception or bar of unwanted guests, the Institute can no longer recommend sounding the fire alarm. When I was in college, though, this was a highly effective method. We’d had to sneak into a frat party because the dirty…
