Want to know why food is a great beat? Because there’s always someone out there who’s gonna think of jamming a full serving of pasta primavera into a waffle cone and selling it on the street (as pictured above). Usually, these people are going to be coming from a place…
As a countdown to the Best of Denver 2010, coming April 1, Cafe Society is serving up a hundred of our favorite dishes in Denver. Send your own nominations to cafe@westword.com. Number 78: The Fries at Encore…
I heard this week from Ian Kleinman — our own personal Mr. Wizard, the man who brought molecular gastronomy to Westminster and blew the heads clean off almost everyone who was lucky enough to walk through the doors of O’s Steak and Seafood when he was running his molecular gastronomy…
As a countdown to the Best of Denver 2010, coming April 1, Cafe Society is serving up a hundred of our favorite dishes in Denver. Send your own nominations to cafe@westword.com. Number 79: Green chile cheeseburger from Cherry Cricket…
For those of you who both dream of a career as a chef and fear that you can’t make it in the big leagues… Schenectady’s first Culinary Boot Camp offers foodies professional training and exquisite dining at one of the nation’s top culinary schools at a fraction of the cost…
Quick! First, think of the worst (but funniest!) possible food or beverage around which to stage a cook-off. Now, imagine the worst (but, again, funniest) place to hold said cook-off. Now, imagine the one celebrity chef on earth who should stay far, far away from such a debacle in the…
Last week, I wrote about a not-so-great cheesesteak. Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone in having that not-so-great cheesesteak. Laura was with me, and Laura is a woman who knows from good (and not good) cheesesteaks. I was disappointed. She was even more so. And so, in advance of the recent snow…
Troy Atherton Guard, the man behind the semi-eponymous restaurant TAG, serves the best rice I’ve ever had. Yeah, rice. But this is no backhanded compliment. Rice is important — vitally so to maybe half the world. There are about a bazillion varieties of it, each one requiring its own infinitesimally…
In case you’ve got nothing else planned for tonight and have a yen to go rub up against a whole bunch of other Denver foodies and star-fuckers, don’t forget that the one and only Guy Fieri (the restaurateur, Food Network workhorse and hair-bleach pitchman) is bringing the circus to town…
Okay, so maybe the new location for Yanni’s Greek Restaurant isn’t quite this pretty, but it is certainly a step up — a move from a slightly rattletrap strip mall on South Monaco Parkway to a space smack-dab in the middle of the Landmark development’s throbbing retail heart, right next…
Hiramasa, flash-seared on a hot flattop, served with yuzu, jalapeno and pop rocks. Braised pork cheek with a hard-fried quail egg balanced on top. Sushi rolls cut and plated with machine precision, filled with Maine lobster, with kobe beef, with avocado and unagi and pickled gobo root. Beef short ribs…
My recent review of Red Trolley — the Highland neighborhood ice cream shop turned hot dog parlor, breakfast bar and coffee shop — was a strange one. The ice cream (the stuff the shop was founded on) is excellent almost across the board, and while I wasn’t crazy about all…
Ali Baba Grill,109 North Rubey Drive in Golden, already serves the best hummus and most addictive baklava in the area, and owner Fiyahd Aoutabachi has already shared the wealth beyond Golden, expanding his Lebanese and Mediterranean offerings out to Highlands Ranch with a second location at 8800 South Colorado Boulevard…
Now that the venerable Wellshire Inn (3333 South Colorado Boulevard), long the go-to spot for special occasion dining on the Big Three restaurant holidays, has closed down its regular restaurant service and gone event-only, a reader wants suggestions for Christmas dinner/ I generally spend my Christmases at home, surrounded by…
It’s funny to watch the evolution of a restaurant scene from the inside; to track, over time, how the pieces all come together. The first thing any burgeoning scene needs is a solid groundwork of excellent restaurants and pretty good restaurants. A few is not enough. There needs to be…
As a countdown to the Best of Denver 2010, coming April 1, Cafe Society is serving up a hundred of our favorite dishes in Denver. Send your own nominations to cafe@westword.com…
Skewered meat: that most dangerous of foodstuffs. But at this restaurant, it’s absolutely worth the risk of losing an eye or getting into a tableside sword fight with your dining companion in order to get your mitts on the chicken kabobs, the schwarma, the hummus. Can you guess where I’m…
This is what I spent my afternoon doing. What about you? No, I didn’t bake that monster. I’m smart enough not to attempt anything of the sort. Rather, I found someone for whom breads, pastries and chocolates have been le raison d’etre for a quarter-century: Chef Michael Dupont. Dupont might’ve…
“Laura!” “What?’ “Laura!” “What!” “We need to get rich. Like, immediately.” “Sounds good to me.” “No, seriously. Right now. We need money.” “Any particular reason, Jay?” Yes. One very particular reason. Because I just got the new ThinkGeek catalog in the mail and I want pretty much everything in it…
Red Trolley is a one-trick pony (an ice cream shop) trying to find other ways to make money (selling hot dogs, among other things) when the season isn’t right for ice cream — becoming all things to all people in a very deliberate and calculated way. Denver Ted’s is a…
When it opened in the middle of the hot summer of 2008, Red Trolley was an ice cream and gelato shop, and only an ice cream and gelato shop. Still, it was located in a lovely, historic space (the website claims Red Trolley stands on the site of an old…
The restaurant world is full of one-trick ponies. It is, in a way, designed for them — built up like a machine made for repetitive specialization. Grill men are grill men. Chefs who do Italian are (generally) not capable of being pulled out of their element and told to make…
