With the acrylic barely dry from its 2015 opening, the Art Hotel has a bit of swagger in 2016, managing to offer the kind of moneyed, cosmopolitan experience that you’d expect from a hotel in one of America’s urban centers. It’s a kind of feeling rarely attempted and a potential…
I love double-decker restaurants. Along with the pubs and bistros of London, often nested below street level (not to mention the cantinas of Cloud City, peacefully hovering above the gas giant Bespin), two-level joints add a unique dimension to the urban dining experience. And if 1515 Restaurant’s moniker had a…
If you’re a dessert skipper, you’re in good company. In a food-service system designed to satisfy diners with an entree and fatten them with small plates and sides, it’s just overkill to drop a dessert menu at the end of all that. Especially for nickel-counting happy-hour goers — and we…
The cock will crow and the dinner bell will ring when Goodbird Kitchen officially opens its doors on Tuesday, January 5. Big Red F, the local group behind the award-winning Post Brewing Company in Lafayette, as well as Lola, the five Jax Fish House spots and other restaurants, is offering a new twist…
It felt like being welcomed by St. Peter through the pearly gates: A friendly hostess grabbed our menus and parted a seemingly impassable dining room, leading us to a few set places miraculously empty. “Could it really be so easy?” I wondered. But this is Work & Class and after the…
It’s almost 2016, and you have no idea how you’re going to send off 2015. Here are ten options ranging from free to very, very fancy, custom-made to make your December 31 as mild or wild as you want it. 10) New Year’s Eve Extravaganza at Comedy Works Downtown and…
It’s quiet. The piano is silent tonight at Baur’s Restaurant and Listening Lounge, and the Denver Center theaters are dark on Mondays, bringing little foot traffic to 15th and Curtis streets. That leaves few distractions from an evaluation of the evening happy hour, a meal of which I had conflicting…
Where’s the line between high class and low-end? Denver is more socially and regionally stratified than ever, but most of us end up mingling in with and among each other like enriched flour cereal squares in a bowl of Chex Mix. On the high end you have a place like…
Climbing a fourteener. Dabs. Margaritas and Skee-Ball at Casa Bonita. A show at Red Rocks. Green chile with fat chunks of pork. There are certain things you simply must do when in Colorado, and visiting Denver’s oldest restaurant should be one of them. The Buckhorn Exchange was founded in 1893 and…
It’s become caught up in a life of brunch, curing meat, cannabis and yoga. This is Denver, after all. With the opening of his Boulder restaurant Blackbelly Market, Chef Hosea Rosenberg’s interests encompass those hobbies and far beyond. A ways away from the extravagance of West Boulder, Blackbelly still does…
A number of things have changed at the Squeaky Bean, but Farrah Fawcett still watches over all the comings and goings. Her candlelit memorial is a touchstone every time I return to the Bean, through chef changes, ups and downs and meals both inspiring and confusing. Though I love sitting…
Espresso Americano is not a name often tossed around at the breakfast nook — at least not in the U.S. Born in Honduras, this family-owned chain operates hundreds of coffee shops throughout Central America and two in Colorado. And a third outpost is taking shape right on the 16th Street…
It’s hard to get a second chance in a business where, statistically speaking, close to half of your peers are doomed to failure. But everybody loves a good comeback story, especially one about a good restaurant. Ototo closed on South Pearl Street in 2012, but the Den Family held on…
You can sometimes tell when a new restaurant is having its moment. For Bar Fausto, freshly popped open in early August on upper Larimer, that time is right about now. Fall looks good on its white brick and colorful wallpaper, and it looks even better when the space is bursting…
The 16th Street Mall doesn’t hide many culinary secrets; just about anything that’s edible is visible on a quick shuttle trip or a tourist-clogged stroll. But that doesn’t mean there are no surprises. A Mediterranean falafel-and-pita rig like WikiPita feels natural, but a classic Italian red-sauce joint in the form…
Happy Days had Laverne & Shirley. JAG had NCIS. Perfect Strangers had Family Matters. Some of these spin-offs were better than others, but they keep on crawling across our TV screens. Cho77 is chef-restaurateur Lon Symensma’s second, more casual take on Asian cuisine, which I guess makes his upscale ChoLon Modern Asian Bistro Balki Bartokomous…
It starts with sweet tea, the saccharine lubricant to any good Southern meal. Prepare it wrong, and you’ll be revealed as a damn Yankee packing Celestial Seasonings. Do it right, and Southern hospitality is just a few sips away. Jezebel’s Southern Bistro & Bar is an oft-overlooked juke joint on…
Linger, Ophelia’s Electric Soap Box, Root Down and Root Down DIA are all operated under the umbrella of Justin Cucci’s Edible Beats family of restaurants devoted to fun, sustainable food — and great happy hours. It’s a supper syndicate, a culinary consortium, which sounds a little suspicious to me — a single…
The brined, seasoned and fried chicken at the Post Brewing Co. in Lafayette is crackling good. So it’s natural that the recipe developed by executive chef Brett Smith and company would take roost in other parts of the metro area. Meet the new fried flock at GoodBird Kitchen, coming soon to Longmont…
You just want to grab a good slab of ribs for dinner tonight. Well hold yer horses, Jethro: barbecue in Denver is a battleground, where endless skirmishes are waged over where to get the good stuff — and some don’t bother to fight at all. Given barbecue’s history as the…
After two years on the 16th Street Mall, the curbside outpost of Cafe 180 has closed. You could eat at Cafe 180’s bright-green stand at 16th and Arapahoe streets more cheaply than just about anywhere on the mall — or all downtown, for that matter — with salads, wraps and soups…
There’s nothing like a first-date dinner. You probably picked a place with dim lighting, something that looked good on Yelp, with food that leans toward the sensual but doesn’t belie any unsavory intentions. You might choose a place like Vesta Dipping Grill, which not coincidentally has been a regular Best…
