Two, please. For dinner. If it’s okay, we’ll just sit at the bar.” Twice before, I’ve eaten at Frasca, drunk at Frasca, allowed myself to be folded into the perfect ballet of service at Frasca, dining once alone, once with my wife. Neither time have I made it to a…
Even with a couple of years now behind it, Cuba Cuba still has the frantic buzz of a restaurant in its opening weeks. The crowds are big, the bar is packed, the vibe is Saturday-night-in-Havana electric. So how does Cuba Cuba do it? Simple: Owner Kristy Socarras-Bigelow has brought a…
Under my Grand Unified Theory of Steakhouses, the operation of any steakhouse can be diagrammed the way a particle physicist diagrams an atom. The customers come and go through the dining room like electrons jigging through the outer valences, entering with full wallets measured as an excess of positrons, then…
There’s one thing I never do at a restaurant — send back a plate — but I did at Sparrow. Another thing I never do is come straight to the point, and I’m breaking that rule now, too: This bird needs to have its wings clipped, immediately. Some history: The…
The kitchen at Luciano’s Pizza and Wings is a pizza-maker’s paradise. It’s huge, with acres of scrubbed tile and steely bright stainless, banks of pizza ovens warping the air around them with their heat, and half a dozen double-basket fryers lined up against the wall looking no more than five…
I love Deluxe in spite of myself. Despite reason, despite my better judgment, despite being committed body and soul to the war against California Cuisine — that limping, wrongheaded, disastrous blight on the soul of American cookery — and throwing myself into the breach every time a California-style restaurant pops…
It was the smell of the place that got me. That warm, salty, enveloping, fried-pork-and-soy-sauce smell that spun through the small, squared-off dining room like a fog, like smells do in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons — turning into fingers and tickling the duck or bear or whatever right under…
Swimclub 32 reminds me of this girl, Meghan, who was everything a (much) younger me could hope for in a girlfriend. She was gorgeous in an uncomplicated way, a bit ethnic, well-traveled, pretty in the face, with that face attached to a killer body and that body held up by…
Life so rarely lives up to your expectations. The Big Three — prom night, losing your virginity and your wedding day (which, in this ever-accelerating culture, can all happen in one 24-hour period if you really try hard) — have become so built up in the modern mind, so fraught…
I tacked the thayir sadam onto my order at the last second, no doubt hopelessly bungling the pronunciation as I tend to when I’m trying to be cool about something on a menu I’ve never seen before and don’t know whether I’m asking for rice pudding or the cook’s underpants…
Greg Goldfogel, owner of Ristorante Amore, was on the phone, and we were talking about gnocchi. We were talking a lot about gnocchi, which might surprise someone not steeped to the neck in the lore and weird obsessions of the kitchen. Because, really, how much is there to say about…
Americans like to take credit for things — but culinarily, we’re screwed. Almost everything we eat, good or bad, comes from somewhere else. What’s worse, most of the great things we eat come from the Europeans (the French, in particular) and we’d much rather blame the Europeans (and the French,…
One of the great things about living in Colorado is that no man, woman or child ever has to go to bed worrying about where to find good Mexican food. Nuclear terrorism, alien abduction, how the Broncos are going to fare in the playoffs — sure, those are real concerns…
Last Labor Day weekend, after spending several hours wandering around in the sun eating lukewarm shrimp cocktails and cheesecake on a stick at the Taste of Colorado, I stopped by Somethin’ Else, the place that Sean Kelly was putting into the very same spot where his last restaurant, Clair de…
Thanksgiving is a distant memory, Christmas is done, and the holiday season — in all its shlocky glitz and sweetness — is nearly over. All that’s left to do is bid a final farewell to the year gone by, to turn our backs on the little victories and larger defeats…
When I was young, Christmas in the Sheehan household was a fairly predictable event. It began about 4 a.m., or whatever godawful hour my brother Brendan and I would drag our parents out of bed for our annual living-room reenactment of the battle of Thermopylae, with Mom and Dad playing…
Larry Herz is happy. Walking the floor of Go Fish Grille on a Saturday night, he’s in his element — an industry veteran working a crowded house — and he’s got an energy that arcs off him like sparks. He moves between tables, chatting, checking up, floating, dodging. He back-pedals…
Finally, I feel like a true Coloradan. I’ve eaten at the Brown Palace. I’ve eaten at Casa Bonita (and lived to tell about it). And now I’ve eaten at The Fort. That’s the goddamn trifecta, isn’t it? So where do I get me one of them “Native” bumperstickers? When do…
Reporter, huh?” Fred said, looking entirely uninterested. “Like, you work for the newspaper?” “Yeah,” I said, looking down at the Vesuvius of cigarette butts in the ashtray, the half-eaten cheeseburger and cold coffee in front of me, thinking how working was the last thing I was doing. “Something like that.”…
It’s an embarrassment, the amount of instant ramen noodle soup in my cupboard right now, from a variety of companies (Nissin, Maruchan, some off-brand called Ninja), in several preparations (both the cup and the brick, as well as a microwavable bowl) and a spread of flavors that all taste exactly…
For nearly half my life, I watched no TV. When I tell people that, a squint of fundamental distrust screws up their faces, and they look at me like I’ve got lobsters crawling out of my ears. They always treat me differently afterward — as though I’ve just admitted to…
It must be weird when fame pays off, when you’re not just recognized for what you do well, but when that recognition translates into the kind of fast return that usually only comes in movies. There’s that scene of the Beatles in their hotel room, tumbling all over each other…
