Ask the readers: What’s a restaurant screw-up worth?

On Saturday I went to a new restaurant — one that has been receiving good word of mouth — to enjoy the beautiful weather, sip a cocktail on the patio, and eat brunch. The meal started out well: The gentleman who seated us (maybe a manager) suggested a few cocktails…

Tonight: Frasca chef competes on Top Chef: Masters

If you’ve been following Top Chef: Masters, the Top Chef spinoff that airs every Wednesday night on Bravo, then you know that Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson, exec chef at Boulder’s Frasca Food & Wine (1738 Pearl Street), is a contestant on the show, wielding knives alongside fellow kitchen wizards Rick Bayless, Hubert…

Getting a taste of the dirty south at Buchi Cafe Cubano

There is virtually nothing to this small storefront space in northwest Denver, which is as it should be. A patio out front, soft yellow walls, a couple of framed prints of things Cubano, a counter, a few tables, a coffee machine, a small kitchen tucked away in a closet in…

Live nude girls (well, almost…)

Want to know one of the things I love about Jonesy’s EatBar?  It serves amazing bowls of perfect french fries with a bacon-studded macaroni and cheese bechamel. Want to know one of the other reasons I love it?  Owner Leigh Jones’s staff is willing to get (almost) naked for a good…

Big Hoss finally reopens

On its answering machine, Big Hoss Bar-B-Q still refers to the mishap that closed the restaurant as a “minor kitchen fire,” but recovering from the late June incident has turned into a major pain. Initially, Big Hoss had hoped to reopen by July 4, then by July 6 (the date…

Steuben’s high on Mile High Music Festival

Last year, Steuben’s served over 2,000 burgers and sandwiches at the Mile High Music Festival, and it’s signed on again for this year’s fest July 18-19– partnering with the Colorado Restaurant Association Education Foundation to raise money for young adults wanting to join the food-service and hospitality industry. CRAEF volunteers…

Civic Center Eats: Crepes at the Cowboy Cart

Dana Hill and bunch of his college buddies run a crepe stand out of wooden box they call the Cowboy Cart. But this box has a serious culinary pedigree. For Hill and his friends, college was Johnson & Wales’s College of Culinary Arts. And the Cart is a custom kitchen…

Update: Free food at tonight’s free screening of Food

As mentioned here yesterday, Chipotle is underwriting a screening of Food, Inc. tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Chez Artiste Theater at 2800 South Colorado Boulevard. The first 280 or so people in line all get in free. But wait, there’s more!  Before the screening, you’ll get a free lecture…

Ask the Critic: Ready for their close-up

Wow.  Last week’s Ask the Critic question (which had to deal with worst meals and devolved fairly quickly into a toes-to-top indictment of Denver’s FOH crews) certainly had you folks up in arms. This week, though, I’m taking things in a different direction, one less about food and restaurants in…

Guess where I’m eating?

Last week, I professed my love for white trash enchiladas. Last night, I sat at the bar of a metro area stalwart with a new name and concept and swelled my belly with white trash au gratin potatoes, which, as you can see from the above photo, are unassailable food…

The Market Report, July 11

After a few weeks away, I returned to the Boulder Farmers’ Market this past Saturday. It looked like a template for any respectable supermarket’s produce section: loads of kale, turnips, radishes, lettuces, garlic, green garlic, garlic scapes, assorted onions, tomatoes, peppers, bok choy and, oh yeah, peaches. And that’s just…

The Hornet reopens its nest…with improvements

As I reported here at the start of July, The Hornet (76 Broadway), one of Broadway’s most convivial watering holes, had announced it was closing for seven days to allow time for a few remodeling projects. I swung by on Friday, July 10, the projected reopening date, to assess the…

Washington to finally get some balls

Lawmakers will finally get some balls this week, when the Western Business Roundtable hosts its annual “Taste of the West” reception at the Rayburn Office Building on Thursday. complete with Rocky Mountain oysters, the official food of Colorado. “We’ve been doing a Taste of the West event in D.C. for…

Milking It: Arrowhead Mills Puffed Millet Cereal

Puffed Millet Cereal Arrowhead Mills Rating: No spoons out of four Cereal description: Small, light tan beads of grain intermittently marked by dark brown specks. They resemble the tiny bits that wind up at the bottom of the popcorn bowl along with unpopped kernels and/or random seeds that attract birds…

Tonight: Le Central’s prelude to Bastille Day on a new patio

Tomorrow marks the day when French nationals, Francophiles, Francophonies and the majority of Denver’s French restaurants celebrate Bastille Day, the national holiday of France that commemorates the storming of the Bastille in 1789 at the start of the French Revolution. But Le Central, 112 East Eighth Avenue, is getting an…

Blowing the top off topless coffee-shop plans

In the current Shmuck of the Week, Joe Tone weighs in on Dan Kennedy, the University of Colorado sophomore who wants to open a topless coffee shop in a campus conference room that would only be open one day a week — but somehow could cover the costs of topless…

The List: A fish for every taste

With this week’s review of Mikuni and a visit to the new Hapa Sushi in Greenwood Village, I figure that rookie fish-eaters are taken care of.  But what about those of us who want more than fake crab wrapped in rice or deep-fried shrimp in mayonnaise sauce?  What about those…

Cafe Society: Week in review

What you might have missed this week while schooling us at beer pong…Readers got crabby recounting their worst Denver dining experiences.Our local hot dog champ got his chance to eat with the best at Coney Island on the Fourth.We checked out the underbelly of Denver’s best happy hour, where the…

¡Hola! La Brisa

Back in June, I pretty much broke into La Brisa — by way of the alley, a deserted hallway and a wobbly ladder. Yesterday, the restaurant officially opened at 375 South Pearl Street, directly next door to the Candlelight Tavern, a neighbor that La Brisa co-owner Andy Koncsik wasn’t too…