Drink of the Week

Ready for some monkey business? Follow the brightly painted arrows on Colfax past Kitty's and right into Dulcinea's 100th Monkey, Denver's newest jazz venue. This no-frills dark den fills up nightly with the town's hipper cats, who lounge on comfortable couches and listen to live jazz; Colfax regulars, who make this street the pumping artery it is, line the bar. In keeping with its locale, Dulcinea's does not make frou-frou drinks: The bartenders pour the basics, and they pour them stiff. The daily happy hour, which runs from 6 to 9 p.m., offers $2 Fat Tire beers and two-for-one well drinks. But we went for the Maker's Mark and Coke ($5) -- served on the rocks, of course, and mostly bourbon, with a minimal shot of Coke. Opened just over two months ago, Dulcinea's is the third gem in the hippie-bar triple crown created by the Bianchi brothers, owners of Sancho's Broken Arrow and Quixote's True Blue. Although Dulcinea's complete moniker combines Don Quixote's lady with a quote from Jerry Garcia, the owners don't want the bar to get a philosophical reputation. "Sancho's is a thinking bar," says Dulcinea's bartender. "We're a drinking bar."