A few days ago, I was a food nomad. Mindlessly searching for sustenance, I wandered along Colorado Boulevard looking for something cheap yet nourishing -- with nourishing almost immediately eliminating most fast-food joints. But not all. The spots that really piqued my 'buds were places like Qdoba, Noodles and Company, Smashburger, Spicy Pickle and Chipotle.
After finding enough sustenance to make logical thought possible again, it dawned on me that all these places had tw
After my disastrous meals at Beaucoup Burrito, I thought it might be helpful to list for its owners, employees and customers six local fast-casual concepts that actually work. They are, in no particular order:
Chipotle: Founder Steve Ells gets credit for inventing the entire fast-casual concept at his now-ubiquitous burrito chain. And while there might be some argument among culinary historians as to whether Ells was actually inventing anything or just codifying a style that had alre
I have to extend an apologetic hand to both my fellow Westworder Joel Warner and, by extension, the Highland Mommies -- the web message board group in North Denver; See, at Monday's editorial meeting, Mr. Warner brought up a rumor he'd heard that Chipotle was changing its menu. There weren't many details and the story had come to him through a posting on the Mommies message board -- two things which immediately made me call bullshit on the entire thing.
"Chipotle hasn't changed their menu in fi
This week's Time magazine story on "America's Food Crisis and How to Fix It" cites Chipotle, Denver's homegrown success story, as one of the companies doing things right -- which made yesterday's petition delivery to Chipotle headquarters in LoDo, calling on the company to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, go splat.
"We put a lot of energy into finding farmers who are committed to raising better food," founder Steve Ells told Time, explaining Chipotle's Food With Integrity Philosop
"At long last," proclaims the Coalition of Immokalee Workers website, "a grower steps forward."
And let's not forget a restaurant company, Chipotle, which, as spokesman Chris Arnold had told us three weeks ago, was negotiating with that grower to get around a stalemate that had prevented the Denver-based outfit from raising the price it paid for Florida-grown tomatoes - a raise that will now go directly to Florida farm workers.
The grower that made it possible: East Coast Farms, one of
