Did you ever get in trouble as a kid — not for something small, like tracking mud through the kitchen, but for something really big, when your mom’s brain would freeze and she’d rattle off the names of all your siblings and pets before finally calling yours — (both first…
I’m willing to drive across town for donuts. I’m even willing to drive across many towns for them, which is why I’ve made the trek to Evergreen more than once. There, at Tin Star Café & Donut Haus, you’ll find a quirky but but very satisfying combination: apple fritters (my…
Chefs may debate the value of a cooking-school degree, but Ryan DiFranco, owner of DiFranco’s, which I review this week, has no regrets about school of another kind. “I use a lot of the stuff I learned in business school,” he says, everything from supply-chain management to inventory control to…
In March, when we announced our picks for Denver’s best eats in our annual Best of Denver, DiFranco’s earned the nod for Best Italian Restaurant. That must’ve had owner Ryan DiFranco both smiling and sweating, because March was also the month that he and chef Joe Freemond parted ways. See…
Did you see the memo? The one proclaiming that Tuesday is the new Friday? Apparently everyone around us at DiFranco’s had, because on a recent Tuesday night, couples, friends and families were pouring into this shoebox-sized restaurant faster than seats at the community counter and two small tables could open…
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little surprised by the assumption that Americans can’t take the heat. In this week’s review of Mali Thai Cuisine, general manager Alex Tongbua didn’t come right out and say it, but he did soft-shoe around the point by noting that “American people,…
Ever since the air-conditioning in my car broke a few weeks ago, I’ve been doing all I can to beat the heat: I prop up sun shades when I park; I drive with the windows open, radio volume up high so I can hear over the road noise; and I…
For years, much of what was sold as coffee was so light, sweet and flavored, it had little relation to the actual drink. But now the trend is moving in the other direction, with craft baristas letting the inner bean shine through, pouring strong black coffee never to be sullied…
Too many home cooks find their confidence drying up when they consider fish. And that’s too bad, considering all the mahi mahi, wahoo, grouper and hogfish available on the market side of Big Mac & Little Lu’s Seafood Market & Grill, which I review this week. “We receive daily shipments…
If your summer plans include more staycations than vacations, I’ve got a place for you. After you’ve posed in front of the Capitol, taken a tour of the U.S. Mint and paid your respects to Buffalo Bill’s grave — in other words, done all the things you’ve never done before…
Many of the restaurants I’ve reviewed have been launched by people trying to recreate the flavors that they grew up with. Karen Wee Lin Tan Beckman dishes up her mother’s recipes at Makan Malaysian Café; Jaedo Ryu uses Bop & Gogi to showcase the bulgogi, kimchi and bibimbop of his…
Nose-to-tail dining is nothing new. People have eaten every possible part of an animal for millennia, as a way to stretch their food supply. But in the last decade it’s become a trend, thanks in part to the 2004 release of The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, by British…
Even if they’re working in open kitchens, chefs only know part of the story. They know what moves and what doesn’t and how to predict how many covers they’ll do on a given night so they can manage inventory accordingly. They certainly know what Yelp tells them, plus or minus…
When the creators of YouTube launched the website in 2005, they might have predicted the success of videos like Psy’s “Gangnam Style” and the parodies that followed, the funny cats and even all the flash mobs. But I bet they couldn’t have guessed that one day Justin Brunson, chef-owner of…
I didn’t think much about dessert at The Universal, which I review this week, until I’d finished my tempeh banh mi. “Will that do it for you?” the server asked as she came to clear our plates. When we inquired about sweets, she said they didn’t have any. I knew…
Fried chicken would fit right in at The Universal. For that matter, so would Paula Deen, given all the butter whisked into the grits that have become synonymous with this breakfast-and-lunch spot in a Sunnyside strip mall. But the restaurant isn’t as Southern as those “grits of the day” make…
Many restaurants rely on a good happy hour or late-night bar scene to help drive traffic. But breakfast-and-lunch spots have to find another draw, and The Universal, which opened in a strip mall on West 38th Avenue last summer, found it in biscuits rather than craft-beer, grits rather than gin…
I’m a firm believer in feeding my kids whatever the adults are having, so they’ve grown up eating everything from mussels to kale salad. One exception, though, is jerk chicken, which makes the green Tabasco that people put on eggs seem like, well, kids’ stuff. But I love this spicy,…
After years of watching our porches rot and rebar poke through the driveway, I find myself in the middle of a big landscape project. To some, this might be the stuff of dreams. We’re picking out plants, buying mulch, putting gardens where the gravel pit of a driveway used to…
Izakaya Den and Sushi Den aren’t the only sibling restaurants on Old South Pearl Street — or the only family-owned enterprise that’s growing along that stretch. Patrick Mangold-White is slated to open Uno Mas, a taqueria, in the former home of Budapest Bistro, on Sunday — so it seemed like…
At Ay Caramba!, the spot in Cherry Creek I review this week, you can get four kinds of cerveza on draft, not to mention a chelada (Tecate with lime juice), toro (Negra Modelo with limemade and citrus vodka) and a paloma (tequila and grapefruit juice). But more traditional low-octane libations…
Ten years ago, getting one of the legions of Atkins adherents to eat a slice of bread was like trying to talk your way out of a parking ticket: impossible. I’ve tried many times and lost on both accounts, as recently as this morning, when a guy wrote me a…
