Mouthing Off

Alcohol rub: When the Cherry Tomato (see review, previous page) applied for a liquor license right after the place opened last spring, the owners were bombarded with letters from neighborhood people purporting to oppose the application. At the hearing, though, only 30 people showed up to fight the license, while 150 others turned out to voice their full support. The Tomato won, but Tom Felese says he and his partners were sweating during the initial stages of the process. "We really had to convince the neighborhood and the Excise and Licenses people that we were not going to be a bar, that it was a legitimate sit-down restaurant," Felese says. "At first we were nervous about the [Park Hill] association, but in the end it turned out to be only a few people who were seriously against it."

Well, it's possible that those few people just scared off another eatery a couple of blocks from the Tomato. Last week the phone at Oblio's, 6115 East 22nd Avenue, was disconnected--two days after I'd picked up a pizza there.

When I'd spoken with Dawn McKay, who owns Oblio's with her husband, Dan, two weeks ago, she said that they were looking at a huge battle to obtain a liquor license--but that they needed the license if they were going to make it as a restaurant. "Not many people want to eat pizza without beer," Dawn said. "We've had a few people walk out when they found out we didn't have alcohol, and I'm sure a lot more didn't come because of it, too. But several people from the Park Hill group told us they're going to fight us. So we've been struggling."

Like the group that opened the Tomato, the McKays are neighborhood folks--"Twelve years," Dawn said proudly--who thought they saw a need for a neighborhood eatery. "We worked on it for three years, leased the space and built as we went along--laid the floor, built the booths and everything," Dawn told me. Dan had owned Priorities, the restaurant once in the space now held by Dozens, at 236 West 13th Avenue, so "we knew what we were doing," Dawn added. And they certainly knew how to make pizza--their crust, sauce and cheese were excellent, and the place was charming and family-friendly. Good pizza is hard to come by in Denver, so this hurts; maybe it's time for the neighbors to rally around the McKays and give pizza chance.

The doors are closed at Pinots, which earlier this year took over the old home of Transalpin, at 410 East Seventh Avenue, but the phone hasn't been unplugged. Instead, a voice on the answering machine announces that the restaurant is closed through September for "remodeling." For once, this hackneyed message may actually have the ring of truth; although Pinots was short of customers, the strange space configuration was a primary culprit. "We'll be having new and exciting changes for everybody," the voice promises.

Also closed "temporarily...for remodeling" is the Prime Rib Restaurant and Steak House, at 10151 West 26th Avenue in Wheat Ridge. Since the answering-machine message hasn't changed in two months, however, a resurrection here seems less likely.

Diners who fell for Jim Begbie's cooking at his now-closed Anastasia Vieux Carre (whose space at 5946 South Holly Street in Greenwood Village will soon be Uncle Sam's) will be delighted to know that Begbie's stirring things up at the Plum Creek Golf and Country Club, 331 Players Club Drive in Castle Rock, which is open to the public. The Sunday brunch is "killer," Begbie says--of course he does--because its $14.95 price covers both champagne and a buffet featuring such items as leg of lamb and prime rib.

A few hours farther from Denver, rumors were rampant that Jim Cohen, late of Vail's Wildflower, was taking over for George Mahaffey at the Restaurant at the Little Nell. But those rumors were wrong. Cohen, who now runs the kitchen at the Phoenician, in Phoenix, Arizona, was considering the position but finally turned it down. Mahaffey plans to stay at the Nell until a suitable replacement is found.

--Wagner