Agave Underground never really had a chance. It was simply the wrong place in the wrong space at the wrong time. And what a wrong space: This spot at 250 Steele Street was briefly Agave, and before that, Bistro 250, a place so short-lived it closed almost before it opened,…
The International House of Pancakes seemed like the obvious choice for breakfast. I had friends in town — non-foodie friends who couldn’t pick a head of endive out of a lineup even if I spotted them three food groups — and the IHOP was walking distance from their hotel. We…
SAT, 9/25 One of the big-city touches that Denver has always had down cold is the tradition of the downtown street fair. If nothing else, we know how to throw a party. And now we can add the Festival Italiano to all of the old faves. Things begin tonight, sort…
While I enjoyed Little India (see review), eating there made me think about the best Indian place I’d tried in Denver: Maruti Narayan’s. Because of Narayan’s location at 12200 East Cornell Avenue in Aurora — way back in a forgotten corner of the multi-tiered Regatta Plaza, a graveyard of great…
I saw successively imprinted on every face the glow of desire, the ecstasy of enjoyment, and the perfect calm of utter bliss. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste It was the strangest sort of party, uncomfortably intimate and cheerful for no reason at all. This was 1994, maybe…
It’s been two years and change since I walked out of my last kitchen. That last one, in Albuquerque, wasn’t even a good kitchen, but I remember it with an irrational fondness because it was the last one, and the last of anything is always special. I was (believe it…
I stopped by on a whim, at about five-thirty in the afternoon, drawn in by both the action and the tickle on my internal culinary Geiger counter. Regardless of what the clock said, I wanted lunch, since I’d slept really late and already had two dinners scheduled for that night…
It was a deeply and profoundly abysmal lasagna that I wouldn’t feed to an enemy. A few layers of limp pasta swimming in an acid bath of red sauce that would’ve embarrassed Chef Boyardee, stuffed with rank ricotta and topped with some desiccated parsley dandruff — are you kidding me?…
It’s the simplest thing, and it’s almost universally overlooked in the fast-paced, big-business kitchens of the world. There it’s a throwaway, a gimme course, with the duty of making it generally given over to the lowest guy on the galley totem pole. The soup. The free bread on the table…
Sean Yontz has been at Mezcal (see review) from the beginning. He wrote the menu, tinkered with the recipes and staffed the kitchen. These days, he’s in the house three, sometimes four nights a week. Thing is, he doesn’t really work at Mezcal. He isn’t a partner, doesn’t have a…
We’d both woken up mad, the wife and I. Rolled out of bed pissed off, brushed our teeth pissed off, then gotten dressed pissed off, each under our own cloud of bad feelings and faulty neurochemistry. Wisely, we tried to avoid each other, to keep our two clouds from bumping…
I’ve never understood the draw of gummy Chicago deep-dish, and I loathe those smart-ass nouveau California cracker-crust abominations. I’ll choke down a cornmeal-dusted New York thinny if no other options are available, though, and have been known to flirt coquettishly with an occasional buttery New England pan pie the same…
It was a knee-jerk New Yorker’s reflex that led me to Famous Pizza. Make that Famous Pizza #1. “The Original Famous Pizza,” as spelled out on the front window and the menu. Opened by Gus Mavrocefalos in 1974, this joint has been operating out of its crooked storefront for thirty…
Breakfast King has finally completed its promised remodel — but if you didn’t know what to look for, you could miss it, easy. The 24-hour hash joint that’s squatted for decades in the shadow of the old Gates Rubber plant still has the same funk — that weird, one-two punch…
What’s that?” asks the young Vietnamese guy sitting at the table across from mine. He brings his hands together, palms touching, then opens them — miming the book I have in one hand. I raise it up off the table and show him the cover — it’s my well-thumbed copy…
On vacation in Vancouver, Denverites Cal Smith and David Citizen wandered into a fragrant Chinese spice shop and fell in love with the place. More important, they noted that Denver had nothing like it, and in an entrepreneurial moment, decided to try their hand in the spice business when they…
Six weeks have passed since Colorado’s new booze legislation took effect — the give-a-little/take-a-little double whammy of decreased blood-alcohol levels for drunk-driving offenses (a .08 limit now, down from the somewhat more forgiving .10) and the legalization of take-away wine. Prior to July 1, diners constantly faced the Sophie’s Choice…
The kitchen at Zengo is a mess, a riot of white jackets, ice and fire. I count six, eight, maybe as many as ten cooks bouncing, spinning in place, shuffling plates and pans and sheet trays; hear raised voices — no particular words, just the sharp cadence of a chef…
Questions for “Ask the Critic” have come from all corners of the restaurant cosmos this month. A sampling: Q: Enough about Sean Kelly. Whatever happened to Denver’s other famous chef named Sean — Sean Yontz? I know that Vega closed, but is he cooking anywhere now? — Michael A: Good…
My buddy Gracie and I have this map — a U.S. highway diagram torn from the front of an old Rand McNally atlas, showing all of the major interstate routes spooling out across the fruited plain. From I-95’s start in Florida’s malarial salt bogs to the terminus of I-90 in…
While out wandering a few weeks ago, I stumbled across the Bugling Bull Trading Post out on Highway 67, west of Sedalia, where I had one of the best orders of country-style ribs of my young life. Granted, I wasn’t looking for ribs: I’d muscled the car off the road…
Japanese cartoons are lysergic-acid freak shows of giant robots and big-eyed children, blinking lights and talking cats, and jumpy, herky-jerky dancing-root vegetables. Japanese porno is vile and fetishistic. Japanese punk music is ten times more screechy and primal than that of any teenage American garage band — often reduced to…
