Cafe Society’s top ten posts of 2012…so far

Best burgers, best pizzas, best new restaurants (and best restaurant patios), plus a gallery of miniature football stadiums made of meat, a guide on how to survive Casa Bonita and a few ranty lists on what servers (or diners) do to piss off each other in restaurants. Yes, it’s our…

Giovanni’s Italian Cafe closes in Lakewood

Giovanni’s Italian Cafe — a family-owned combination Italian bakery, panani, pasta and pizza joint that had relocated to 3355 South Yarrow Street in Lakewood after a fire at its original location in 2008, then moved on to 9134 West Sixth Avenue — has closed that spot, too. The phone –…

Video: Ace Eat Serve adds recycled pallet wall

Construction of Ace — a new ping-pong hall, restaurant and bar that the Steuben’s and Vesta Dipping Grill partners hope to open by the end of summer — has been moving along steadily, thanks to Xan Creative, the design firm tasked with renovating the old Storz Garage space next door…

Top five chain-restaurant burgers — completely naked!

A great burger needs to stand on its own, a Westword reader noted last week in response to my review of Red Robin’s Burger Works, a new concept that the Colorado-based chain tried out at the Shops at Northfield Stapleton before rolling it outside Colorado state lines. That means the…

Reader: Colorado microbrews engender good will

Hurry to Denver Beer Co. if you want to get a taste of Clown Question, Bro, a Canadian lager-style beer that DBC brewed after the Washington Nationals’ Bryce Harper called a query regarding his favorite beer “a clown question.” But the rookie phenom took the homage in stride, and even…

Breckenridge Brewery hopes to expand the law and its business

Breckenridge Brewery is running out of time. Two years ago, the brewpub was making 31,000 barrels of beer annually — which was more than it had produced in two decades of Colorado history. But by the end of 2012, thanks to the explosive growth of the craft-beer industry nationwide and…

Bye, bye xiao long bao: Tao Tao Noodle Bar goes dark

I’m not happy, and if she were still here, outgoing Westword restaurant critic Laura Shunk wouldn’t be happy either. And if you, like us, bowed in gratitude to the xiao long bao (named Best of Denver in 2012) at Tao Tao Noodle Bar, an excellent Chinese joint in Aurora that…

Guess where I’m eating chicken wings and celery sticks?

There are people who can’t bear to think of a world without chicken wings. I’ve never been, nor will I ever be, a chicken wing worshiper, but on the rare occasion that I get a jonesing for sauce-slathered cluck, you’ll find me here at this joint, where the wings fly…

Reader: Squeaky Bean does it right!

A little over a year after it left LoDo — and after a very long week in which its liquor license got caught in a state snafu — the Squeaky Bean finally opened in its new, much larger home last week…