Readers: Tiny buns, greasy burgers, and repeating lists

While comments about the ubiquitous butternut squash soup keep appearing, like the dish itself, at the end of Laura Shunk’s Groundhog Day list of The Five Most Overdone Menu Items , a few notes about the equally ubiquitous sliders were particularly tasty: For example, Max says: I want to open…

Guess where I’m eating?

The number of restaurants that have left their doors locked (or shuttered early) over the past few days because of Denver’s chillathon is, frankly, a little unnerving, but the takeaway sushi in the above snap came from a restaurant that, despite the bitter cold, was busy till the bitter end…

Top Chef All-Stars: Judges get uptight about loose risotto

They sent Tre home on last night’s Top Chef All-Starsbecause his risotto wasn’t loose enough? Give me a break. Perhaps it tasted terrible. Perhaps Anthony Bourdain was right in saying the focus should be on the rice, not the accompanying ingredients (Antonia had commented earlier that Tre wasn’t cooking the…

100 Favorite Dishes: South African black ruff from TAG

No. 74: South African ruff from TAG Troy Guard, chef/owner of TAG (and soon, TAG Raw Bar), has roots in Hawaii, which may explain, at least in part, why his board at TAG swims with shellfish and fish, including things like Maine diver scallops puddled in a parsnip vanilla puree…

PETA can’t get its impotence billboard up in Denver

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has had a beef with Denver before, most recently when PETA’s McCruelty statue planned for the 16th Street Mall was determined to violate Denver sign ordinances. This time, PETA’s billboard of a sexy, sausage-draped model has been snubbed by the city (correction: the…

In the zone: When every dish, and plane, lands safely

Welcome to In the Weeds. Kyle will be right with you — most likely to complain about something. Usually he is pleasant, but this is his place to blow off some steam. Don’t take it personally; he just needs to vent because he’s been doing this for about thirteen years…

Top five new names for Midtown at Vallagio

As a resident of a town even further south than Vallagio at Inverness, the new development at Dry Creek and I-25 that’s now trying to call its restaurant-centric self “Midtown,” I have to admire the guts of developer Peter Kudla. By bringing a number of established restaurateurs and chefs, including…

Big Papa’s BBQ closes a Littleton location

Serving barbecue is a world away from high-end fashion retail, but Big Papa’s BBQ owner Frank Alfonso compares his decision to close his location at 12652 West Ken Caryl Avenue in Littleton to the decision Saks Fifth Avenue made to close its store in the Cherry Creek mall. “We’re like…

Illegal Pete’s rolls out vegetarian burritos late into the night

Mission-style burritos might be named after San Francisco, but let’s face it: Between Chipotle and Qdoba, Colorado has put its own stamp on foil-wrapped behemoth burritos. And although those two chains are the most widely known outside of the state, the four metro locations of Illegal Pete’s are local favorites,…

Local Spanish language soap opera takes on obesity

Long-lost evil twin? An intergenerational love affair between family members who don’t know they’re related? A romance forged via ESP between two people in a coma? As long as the dramatic music was right, we wouldn’t blink if we saw one of those absurd scenarios unfold on a daily soap…

Marco Ramirez, exec chef of The Palm, on life in a crazy-busy kitchen, the flood that almost drowned it, and how hard work and determination fulfilled his American dream

Marco Ramirez The Palm 1672 Lawrence Street 303-825-7256 www.thepalm.com This is part one of my interview with Marco Ramirez, executive chef of The Palm. Part two of that interview will run in this space tomorrow. Marco Ramirez, a self-described “child of a poor farmer family” in El Salvador, was shooed…

Swift’s Steakhouse #4 becomes Ismini’s Grill

“The neighborhood has changed a lot. People like to go out to dinner and sit down and have a drink.” That’s Ismini Giakouminakis’s explanation for the changes that are under way at the restaurant she’s owned at 8 South Broadway for five years. And the first of those is the…

Ba Le serves authentic banh mi and more

Of all the food sold on the streets and at the markets in Vietnam, banh mi may be the most universal, peddled by wandering vendors hauling baskets of baguettes on their backs and at tiny slivers of shops wedged into the never-ending rows of storefronts. But in Denver, there are…

ChoLon Modern Asian Bistro channels a Southeast Asian market

Just 24 hours after I returned from Asia, I was craving the cuisine I’d left behind — and I was particularly hungry for the food stalls of the markets. So I headed straight for ChoLon Modern Asian Bistro, where Lon Symensma channeled Cholon, the Chinatown market in Saigon, when he…