Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. The minute I set foot in the Donkey Den, I thought about the old joke where Saint Peter lets a man try both Heaven and Hell in order to decide where he’d prefer to spend eternity. He goes to Heaven first, and…
We here at the Institute of Drinking Studies have determined that good bars are more a state of mind than a physical place. Good bars share similar attributes: not just plentiful booze, but an atmosphere that suits your mood and purpose on a particular night. If you’re looking for serious…
I have only one problem with Japon: the wasabi. It tastes chalky, pasty and dry, and its texture affects me like nails on a chalkboard. And since I’ve been known to order tekka maki to go just as an excuse to eat wasabi off my finger, a sushi bar’s wasabi…
In this cash-and-carry world, nothing is inviolate and everything is for sale. Even memory. Especially memory. There’s good money to be made in strip-mining nostalgia, and for those who find a ripe vein — like the folks at Wynkoop Holdings, who moved their heavy gear into northwest Denver this year…
While Gaetano’s (see review) makes a Mafia Disneyland out of this town’s Italian heritage, Patsy’s, another northwest Denver institution a few blocks away, at 3651 Navajo Street, continues to make history — and great homemade pasta. Patsy’s doesn’t have any Mob stories (that I know of), but it did have…
Welcome to the newest dive in town. When we entered the bar at the new Downtown Aquarium (formerly the barless Colorado’s Ocean Journey), my friend oohed and aahed. “Gosh, it looks just like a grotto,” she said. Yes, but more like the Disneyland grotto on the Pirates of the Caribbean…
There are signs I may be getting old — although I like to attribute them to things like global warming and international terrorism. Gray hairs pop up in odd places; I spend as much time peeing as I do drinking beer; hangovers last at least 48 hours; and I haven’t…
While I’m not crazy about what the folks from the “Wynkoop Family of Restaurants” have done with Gaetano’s (see page 52), they’ve done just fine by the Cherry Cricket. Maybe that’s because rather than having a downright cinematic past like Gaetano’s — where dinner was served to gangsters and gun-runners,…
Walking into Sapa, the first thing you see are the green, green hills of home. Before that, it’s just a box — a nice box, fronted with a curving path leading to the door, lots of French windows and a nice patio wrapping around one corner, but a box, nonetheless…
Just in time for those record-setting temperatures, local pastry man John Hinman has opened the Gelato Spot at 1439 South Pearl Street, the former home of the Paris Flea Market. Hinman’s turned the odd little space into an Italian garden complete with patio seating and a shady gazebo. It’s the…
Dylan’s Ass Deluxe 30 South Broadway 303-722-1550 I don’t really understand why, but I just adore Deluxe. Does it have the best bar in town? Not even close — in fact, the bar lacks both depth and breadth. Best food? I’m a huge fan, but I’m no professional food critic…
You should never have to wait for some things: for sex in a pornographic film claiming to have a plot and “acting”; for beer in a bar; for red lights; for people to move out of the left lane on the highway; for delivered pizza; for the football season to…
10920 South Parker Road, Parker 720-851-8559 The two restaurants in the mini-empire of Yume Tran and Jeff Nghiem are almost exact opposites. Where Sapa is sprawling, Indochine is tiny. Sapa is meditative, Indochine is cozy. And while Sapa’s interior is cool and green, Indochine is all black lacquer and tapestries…
When I moved “out West,” I never thought I’d make it. Not really. Not way down deep, where a boy’s roots grow. When I first came here with thoughts of commitment — as opposed to the little visits I’d made in the past, tooling around Santa Fe and Boulder and…
When I get to thinking about diners, as I did in this week’s review of Sam’s #3 , I start making lists. Best of this, greatest that — it’s my Nick Hornby High Fidelity obsession shining through. And while his scruffy obsessives did their thing mostly with records and songs…
Six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Sometimes Denver seems so small that the concept of six degrees of separation feels vastly overstated. (Say, like when I discover that Patrick Osborn, this paper’s Drunk of the Week, was drinking in the very same place I was, as happened this past week.) When…
Make no mistake: To drink at Institute levels without being arrested or causing harm to yourself, others or international relations, you must train. I am not going to reveal our official regimen here, but suffice it to say that unaccomplished drinkers need to know their limits. This job is not…
For many years, Sam’s #3 on Havana Street kept Sam Armatas’s dream alive. When it opened in Aurora in 1969, it was the last Sam’s left — and now, 36 years later, it’s not only going strong, but it has been joined by a new, improved Sam’s #3 downtown. But…
Sitting in the calm, cool darkness, bathed in the blue submarine glow of the television, I see them coming. Infomercials, spreading like kudzu across the stations, filling those weird hours between 3 a.m. and dawn. Paid programming: the last refuge of the terminally insomniac. Get rock-hard abs with rubber bands…
If 240 Union (see review) is a model for how a restaurant makes it into middle age, then Steak au Poivre (in the old, subterranean Manhattan Grill space at 231 Milwaukee Street) exemplifies why so few places reach an age where they can be called “venerable.” “This is the toughest…
For some pathetic reason, every time I go to a great happy hour I encounter an unhappy old flame. So far, the only spot that’s escaped this curse is McCormick’s in the corner of the Oxford Hotel — and its happy-hour deal is so good that I’d be willing to…
Corporate America seems intent on demeaning society. I discovered this recently while paging through Cosmo to a) find out what a pig I am, b) see guy “sex secrets” revealed to women who must have been raised in a convent or closet, and c) reaffirm that women, despite their protestations…
