Bite Me

Yeah, but how's the food? Inmates at Denver County Jail are in for a change later this year, when the traditional "three hots and a cot" are replaced by two hots, a cot and a bologna sandwich. In accordance with Mayor Wellington Webb's proposed 7 percent cut in departmental operating budgets, the jail plans to eliminate its hot-lunch program and replace it with a brown bag full of sandwiches.

"This is not a surprise to inmates who've been in other facilities," says Sergeant Daryl Brown, public-information officer for the Denver Sheriff's Department. Other jails in the area have had their populations brown-bagging it for quite a while, he points out, and Denver County was an exception with its hot-lunch program, which fed close to 2,000 inmates each day. Did that make this city a more popular destination with criminals hankering for a noontime sloppy joe? More to the point, have any hoosegow gourmands complained that their third hot meal is being taken away? "Not really," Brown replies. "As long as they eat, they rarely complain."

The new program -- which is still in the proposal stage while details such as where the city is going to find the roughly 14,000 bags needed each week are worked out -- will save the jail about $150,000 annually while continuing to provide the same calorie count and nutritional value of the hot lunches. Instead of being given burgers or pasta, however, each inmate will be provided with a sack containing two sandwiches, fruit, milk and a small snack -- just like any kid going off to school, although I imagine that when Jimmy the Shiv sits down and tries to trade his apple for someone's second sandwich, the negotiations are going to be a bit more intense than those conducted under the monkey bars on your average playground.

As with the morning and evening meals, the bag lunches will be assembled in the jail's kitchen by food stewards hired by the city, who also oversee some misdemeanor inmates working as dishwashers and prep cooks.

There's already no such thing as a free lunch for jail deputies and other city employees working at the Havana Street facility. While they were once allowed to enjoy -- gratis -- the same noontime meal offered to prisoners in a separate cafeteria, under a system introduced earlier this year, they began paying either a dollar a day or $15 a month for the meals.

While that was still a deal for hot lunches that cost 87 cents per prisoner to prepare, the bag lunches will run only 52 cents per inmate. Given the budget and caloric restrictions, I'm not sure any chef could fill that bag much better; fortunately, city employees are not a captive audience and can break out of the box at lunchtime.

There's no free lunch, redux: I've gotten a few e-mails from readers left in the lurch by the sudden closure of Papillon (250 Josephine Street). Mostly, the hue and cry has been about gift certificates that are impossible to use now that the doors are locked. Ever conscious of the plight of the dining public, I looked into it, and here's what I found out.

First, they won't be any good at Opal, the new place rising from the ashes of Radex, the restaurant that Papillon owner Radek Cerny started several years ago at 100 East Ninth Avenue and which was later taken over by Bucky Parker. I talked with Parker, who will be a partner in Opal, too, and he said that while Radex was still open last month, it was taking reservations and walk-in clientele from Papillon but had no arrangement for honoring gift certificates (Bite Me, August 15). For the record, Opal has scheduled dry runs and VIP parties for September 9-12 and anticipates opening to the public immediately after.

Second, those certificates aren't any good at Le Chantecler, Cerny's place out in Niwot ("Chef and Tell," August 15), either. But someone there I talked with told me that people should hold tight to those gift certificates because (drum roll, please...) Papillon will be reopening. When, you ask? In about a month, allegedly.

I subsequently spoke to about a half-dozen restaurant insiders around town and got a half-dozen different stories about what's going on at 250 Josephine. Some said no, the place wasn't reopening; others said they knew who was taking the place over but wouldn't tell me; and still others said they didn't know who was moving in -- but they were more than willing to drop names, anyway. The only thing I know for sure is that the realtor handling the property has no signature on the dotted line yet, but the field of potential buyers has narrowed considerably.

The return of no free lunch: A couple of weeks ago, Westword received a call from the confused manager of Thai Basil (540 East Alameda Avenue), who'd just received a threatening call from some woman angry that her lunch delivery was late -- and threatening that since her husband (by which she meant me, I guess) worked at Westword, she was "going to make sure he writes something about how horrible you people are." The woman then dummied up Westword letterhead and faxed a fake review to Thai Basil, claiming it was about to be published.