The Old Blinking Light grows its own … beef?

The restaurant garden is so trendy, the concept is almost becoming commonplace. Potager has a garden. So does Colterra. Bistro One and Root Down plan rooftop gardens this spring.But gardens have their limitations. In a garden, you can grow fruit, herbs and vegetables.You can rep these to the public, use…

Making vanilla to pay the bills: a talk with an ice cream alchemist

We live in a great food city. It’s not New York. It’s not San Francisco. And it shouldn’t be. Denver is more intimate and interconnected, with a culinary web stretching across the metro area. We have quirky shops, gourmet institutions, plenty of hole-in-the-wall joints and an active consumer base always…

Candy Girls: IKEA Chocolate Bars

Last week, Aubrey was off cavorting in San Diego while Liz was stuck at home, forced to sample some of the grossest candy in Candy Girls’ history. It wasn’t all fun and games for Aubrey, however, as she had promised to bring back strange and unknown treats from IKEA and…

Top Chef: Hosea Rosenberg

Well, at least someone in the restaurant industry has some money now… You’ve all heard that Colorado’s own Hosea Rosenberg (chef at Dave Query’s Jax Fish House in Boulder, at least for now…) won this year’s Top Chef prize.  He walked away with a slot at this year’s Food +…

Veggie Girl: Moongate Asian Grill

When I have a craving for sesame tofu, I head to the one restaurant that I know gets it absolutely right: Moongate Asian Grill, at 745 Quebec Street. Moongate cooks up a variety of Japanese, Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese dishes, with an extensive vegetarian selection — but I end up…

Up Close: Bistro One’s Olav Peterson

In his review of Bistro One, Jason Sheehan talks with chef Olav Peterson about the delicate process of building the perfect dish. In this week’s slideshow, photographer J. Knight captures Peterson at work doing just that…

Mee Yee Lin is gone, but its former homes live on

Mee Yee Lin was once the town’s best dim sum restaurant. But then competitors — including the surprisingly good Super Star Asian — moved into the neighborhood, and Mee Yee Lin moved from its original home at 3090 West Alameda Avenue to a much bigger spot at 2295 South Chambers…

La Torta is the king of tortas

Had Steve Ells found his inspiration for Chipotle in Guadalajara rather than San Francisco’s Mission District, the result would have been Las Tortas. Instead, this spot inside a weird little strip mall/roadside plaza space that was once home to Les Delices de Paris (now at 600 South Holly Street) is…

SAME Cafe: The restaurant where you pay what you can

To find out what recent customers paid for meals at the SAME Cafe, go to westword.com/slideshow. The first thing Brad Birky does is hand me an apron. “Would you mind starting on soup duty?” he asks, guiding me toward two large industrial cookers near the front counter. “This is tomato…

Colicchio goes a-whorin’ for Diet Coke?

On Oscar night, the entire food world was abuzz. Not because of anything that happened during the Academy Awards ceremony, but because of one of the (million and one) commercials that showed during the proceedings: namely, the Tom Colicchio Diet Coke spot that appeared to show the Top Chef judge and…

In anticipation of the Top Chef finale

I swore a few weeks ago that I wasn’t going to write another word about Bravo’s Top Chef until it stopped sucking. Until they stopped breaking the action every thirty seconds with completely inappropriate product placements (Diet Dr. Pepper cookoff!), until Fabio and Stefan stopped giving the mafia kiss of…

Auld Dubliner now Marmalade Bar & Cafe

The Auld Dubliner, at 2796 South Broadway, closed just five weeks ago. Now owners Phillip and Lorri Donaghy, who also owned the Squealing Pig in Cherry Creek (which closed last month, too), have reopened the place as Marmalade Bar & Cafe. It’s open daily for breakfast at 7 a.m. and…

Get some Sweet Action on Broadway

Do you long for baklava, adzuki red bean or garam masala ice cream? Your wait will end one week from Friday when Sweet Action Ice Cream opens at 52 Broadway. The space, formerly occupied by Fahrenheit Books, will be shared with Twisted Sol, the tattoo shop moving down from Capitol…

Our Weekly Bread: Cheesesteak Connection

The sandwich: Hoagie Philly Where to get it: Cheesesteak Connection What’s on it: Chopped steak, melted American cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo (with sauteed onions and mushrooms added) How much: $5.49 There are few foods that I don’t like, few styles that I can’t develop an appreciation for on some…

Two Spoons to bring soup and gelato to the masses

Two Spoons opened this month in the former location of Gelato Bacio, at 1021 Pearl Street in Boulder, and owner David Cohen, who for seventeen years has owned Spruce Confections, at 767 Pearl Street, is now serving up more joy by the gelato and soup spoon. “We make everything from…

Getting in on the conversation at Bistro One

“Talk to me about your fish.””The monkfish?””Yeah…”I’m writing about Bistro One this week — and this review’s a little different.  For a change, it’s all about the food.  More to the point, it’s all about chef Olav Peterson and his menu and the things that go right and wrong between…

Organixx is greener than a Prius — let’s hope the food tastes good

The website of Organixx, the new restaurant at 1520 Blake Street, offers this on its home page: “Sustainable, eco-friendly, reusable, recyclable, fair trade, natural, energy efficient, organic, local, green, low-impact, fresh. These are words that inspire us at Organixx.” Amazing: In a single sentence, there’s every possible key word used…

Manischewitz! Denverite competes in national cook-off

When I last talked with Deborah Leebove, daughter of Joyce Foster (the former city councilwoman who is now a state senator), she’d just reached the finals of the third annual Simply Manischewitz Cook-Off.And now Leebove, pictured here with her entry, elaborates on the experience: “I desperately wanted a new kitchen,” she…

Another round at Katie Mullen’s

I dropped by Katie Mullen’s on Friday night to get a look at the finished place — and to see whether the numbers quoted to me regarding its first few days of business (800 covers one day, pushing 900 the next) were within hollering distance of the truth.And you know…

Sexy Pizza’s sexy facelift

Back in October, I wrote about Sexy Pizza, a new pizza joint at 1018 East 11th Avenue that was enjoying good word-of-mouth for both its name and its pizzas. At the time, partner Kayvan Khalatbari told me that Sexy’s owners were planning some renovations that would make the name seem…