This ain’t my first rodeo, as they say. I’ve done my culinary tour of Colorado. I may not be to the Mile High born, but I have eaten the hell out of my adoptive home, taken to it with the fervor of a convert — of a man who knows…

Here’s a little bit of what I wrote about San Lorenzo Ristorante two years ago: “Carpaccio di bue dressed in lemon and oil, whole peppers stuffed with cheese and prosciutto, buffalo mozzarella with fresh tomatoes and roasted peppers draped with marinated Italian anchovies, grilled salmon with roasted potatoes, garretto d’agnello…

Lev Grossman is my new best friend. Who is Lev Grossman, you ask?  Lev Grossman is the book critic for Time magazine.  And in Time magazine, Lev Grossman (my new best friend) just wrote a killer review of my book, Cooking Dirty. Yeah, that Time magazine.  And yeah, little ol’…

Biker Jim Pittenger, whose Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs won our Best Cart on the 16th Street Mall in the Best of Denver 2009, now has a second location — off the mall.Three days a week, he (or one of his minions) will now be on the plaza at 17th and…

Oops. Just posted this week’s Ask the Critic question, and already we have an answer (and a correction). Turns out that Bistro Vendome does, in fact, have exactly what Jim is looking for.  Right there on the brunch menu, between the soup a l’oignon and the croissants, there’s a breakfast…

The last couple of weeks, our regular Ask the Critic time-waster has been concerned with moms and dads and holidays and other assorted domestic questions.  This week, we’re getting back to the core mission of our Monday-morning discussion with an actual question by a reader. Jim writes: I spent 9…

This week, I talked about Dougherty’s — a fantastic neighborhood bar that’s perfect for getting into all kinds of lightweight trouble, which just happens to have a very decent restaurant attached and a chef in the back who knows his way around the cuisine of the whiskey-sodden Micks.I followed that…

Yesterday, I got a very nice note from loyal reader Jason Marsell, hipping me to some killer street food in one of the most unlikely of places.Pad Thai on the 16th Street Mall.I was both intrigued and highly skeptical — my first blush of overwhelming enthusiasm giving way to some…

This just in from observant reader Jason Marsell: There’s a somewhat new cart on the 16th Street Mall (at Stout) that’s a one-woman Thai food operation, and it’s fantastic. I consider myself a Thai food fanatic and her pad thai gai is some of the best in town. I know,…

The Fainting Goat is just nine blocks up Broadway from Dougherty’s — and less than a block away from my office. As a result, I’ve been to the Goat, which just opened last November, more times than I can count, and have occasionally left it in no condition to be…

I’d walked past twice before figuring out that this unmarked door on Broadway was, in fact, the place where I was going. By the host stand inside that door stood a dapper young gentleman dressed to the nines. Me? Dressed to the fours, at best. “Hour wait,” he told me…

Ah, yes.  Another installment in my favorite time-wasting afternoon game: Can you guess where the critic is eating? On my first visit to a restaurant as a non-anonymous restaurant critic?Here’s a clue: I chose this place specifically 1) because I love it and have been eating here almost obsessively for…

Just drove by the soon-to-be-pancake-land over at 700 Colorado Boulevard, where the second Snooze is scheduled to take up residence sometime in August.And from the looks of things, owner Jon Schlegel isn’t wasting a lick of time. Tear-down seems to be proceeding nicely (as evidenced by the clouds of dust…

And who, you may ask, is the handsome devil right there?  That’s me, folks. No bullshit. No disguises.  The anonymous restaurant critic in the flesh and en clair. On Monday, June 15, at around 4 p.m. local time, my cover was finally, permanently blown.  That picture is the jacket photo…

I was at Dougherty’s the night that chef R.J. Van Stockum was adding Irish Leprechaun Lollipops to the menu. Lucky Leprechaun Lollipops. Irish Lollipops. The name had not yet been decided, but the prep had: a wad of Irish cheddar wrapped in prosciutto, cooked and stuck on the end of…

Last week, Ask the Critic was all about me and my mom, and where I should take her while she was in town now that I have run through all of Denver’s standard family-in-town destinations. In the end, we ended up hitting several places: D bar for starters, and then…

So now that I’ve squared things with Rioja in this week’s re-review and detailed about a decade’s worth of history on Larimer Square, what else is there to do?So glad you asked… Below, find this week’s list of all the best places on Larimer Square — and why. Now, if…

Earlier in the week, I put forth the question: When all the traditional choices have been burned through, where is the best place to bring your mom when she comes to town? I got a lot of great answers.  Potager, the Berkshire, Solera and Strings (no), Duo (I would’ve gone…

Okay, so what’s better than a new pho restaurant opening in town?  A new pho restaurant that also serves frozen yogurt! Seriously, how can you not be excited by that?  It’s so weird, so bizarrely, wrongly right, that I know you just can’t wait to get there yourself.  But if…

I gave Rioja four years before going back (in a professional capacity) and finally finding the meal I’d always wanted to have there. Richard Sandoval opened Tamayo, his “modern Mexican” restaurant, at the corner of Larimer and 14th streets in 2001. My predecessor, Kyle Wagner, reviewed it that same year…

I’m sitting at Rioja on a Monday night. A full book Monday night — rare for the best restaurants in the best of times, bordering on miraculous for this day and age, this city. I have one of the weird tables: a lonely deuce stuck between two four-tops, sitting, essentially,…