I can only imagine what Chauncey Smaldone, the youngest of the loan-sharking, book-making Smaldone brothers, would’ve said when Lou’s Food Bar hung out its shingle down the street. For decades, Smaldone ran Gaetano’s, a cherished Italian-American restaurant that his family founded in 1947, and he no doubt would’ve seen Lou’s…
I can only imagine what Chauncey Smaldone, the youngest of the loan-sharking, book-making Smaldone brothers, would’ve said when Lou’s Food Bar hung out its shingle down the street. For decades, Smaldone ran Gaetano’s, a cherished Italian-American restaurant that his family founded in 1947, and he no doubt would’ve seen Lou’s…
If you’re a relative newcomer — i.e., not someone with a “Native” sticker on the bumper — you might be surprised to hear that Highland wasn’t always a synonym for “hot, new restaurant.” Back in the day, the area once known as Little Italy was full of family-owned restaurants dishing…
It doesn’t matter whether you brine and cook the bird yourself, pick one up from Whole Foods or hand a bottle of bubbly to the friend who invited you over for the feast. Regardless of who does the holiday cooking, chances are good that before your alarm rings on Monday,…
It doesn’t matter whether you brine and cook the bird yourself, pick one up from Whole Foods or hand a bottle of bubbly to the friend who invited you over for the feast. Regardless of who does the holiday cooking, chances are good that before your alarm rings on Monday,…
Thanks to years of cliche-building commercials for a certain steakhouse, you might think the only things in Australia are koalas, cars zipping across the empty desert and big steaks. But Karen Wee Lin Tan Beckman, chef-owner of Makan Malaysian Café, which I review this week, begs to differ. Born in…
In terms of holidays, Christmas is the king of lists. Every December, I make so many lists, I need a master list to keep track of them all. There’s an address list for Christmas cards, a list of teachers to thank, a list of friends and neighbors to bake for,…
As the daughter of a master gardener, I appreciate cool quirks of nature, even if I don’t have a green thumb myself. So when Ryan Leinonen, chef-owner of Trillium, explained that his restaurant was named for a rare blue wildflower that blooms every few years, and only when conditions are…
Unless you’re a movie buff, you probably don’t remember The Doctor, a touching early-’90s film about a surgeon diagnosed with cancer. Having seen life through a patient’s lens, the doctor, played by Oscar winner William Hurt, learns to practice a different, more empathetic kind of medicine after his recovery. Ryan…
Unless you’re a movie buff, you probably don’t remember The Doctor, a touching early-’90s film about a surgeon diagnosed with cancer. Having seen life through a patient’s lens, the doctor, played by Oscar winner William Hurt, learns to practice a different, more empathetic kind of medicine after his recovery. Ryan…
We say Peter, not Pierre; we shake hands instead of kissing on the cheeks; and we drive instead of hopping on the metro. And yet, says Karin Lawler, co-owner of the Truffle, “When you ask someone to name a cheese, they’re going to say Brie.” This Gallic bias often translates…
With Christmas ads filling the airtime vacated by campaign commercials, the holidays must be upon us. But it doesn’t have to be Santa season for a server to ask if you want a Christmas tree. In New Mexico, where folks are even crazier about chile than we are, diners can…
In those sultry, late-August days before I started eating for a living, Westword’s former Cafe critics offered advice on how I should handle my new position. Kyle Wagner, now travel editor of the Denver Post, suggested I tell people I’m a pet sitter, because otherwise I’ll spend every minute of…
In those sultry, late-August days before I started eating for a living, Westword’s former Cafe critics offered advice on how I should handle my new position. Kyle Wagner, now travel editor of the Denver Post, suggested I tell people I’m a pet sitter, because otherwise I’ll spend every minute of…
Naming a restaurant isn’t the same as naming a baby. When you name a newborn, you have no idea what kind of personality the kid is going to have. Restaurateurs, however, know exactly what to expect from their new kitchen (in terms of cuisine, at least), and generally pick names…
Hands on your buzzers, everyone! Here’s a trivia question: “High-school seniors share this in common with Cafe Berlin.” (Insert Jeopardy music here.) If you answered “What is 1995?,” you’d be right. In 1995, most of those seniors were in diapers, and Cafe Berlin, Denver’s longtime standby for hearty German fare,…
With seventeen years and three homes under its belt, Café Berlin (which I review this week) has become synonymous with German food in Denver (the jagerschnitzel is particularly noteworthy). But this restaurant is not the only place in town serving spaetzle and sauerkraut. Here are several more options for getting…
If you’re still mourning the end of Oktoberfest, I’ve got another fest to cheer you up: Strudelfest. Held at Rheinlander Bakery through the end of October, the festival celebrates a dessert that was once so central to European culture, an old wives’ tale claimed that young women were ineligible for…
Even if you’re too busy to read books, there’s a good chance you’ve dog-eared the pages of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, or at least chatted with someone who has. Malcolm Gladwell’s book spent an incredible 193 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and its premise…
There are many stops along the road to adulthood: getting your driver’s license, going off to college, taking your first (legal) sip of beer. Before all those, however, there’s another: your first cup of coffee. I remember mine clearly. I was a teenager at an outdoor sporting event in Wisconsin…
When you go to a restaurant you’ve never visited before, you never know quite what you’ll find. Even if you’ve pulled up the menu on Yelp during the drive over, you’re likely in for a surprise since those menus can be out of date. Middle Eastern restaurants are different, however…
Fall means many things to people: pumpkins, football, piles of leaves. But to nationally-recognized bartender Sean Kenyon, designer of the cocktail menu at Squeaky Bean (which I review this week), it means something else: aromatics. “When I think of fall and winter, I think aromatics right away,” says Kenyon, whose…
