It’s been a rough year for the food business. The economy’s still in the tank, and yet more and more restaurants are opening, creating more and more seats for diners willing to spend less and less. If I were a pessimist, I’d call it an inescapable spiral. But at heart…
If I lived in New Orleans, I’d be fat as a bastard. Old-Southern-colonel fat, in a Borsalino damp around the hatband from sweating in the Delta sun, a white linen jacket with the pockets full of boiled crawfish, and étouffée-stained pants with steel-belted suspenders to keep them up. Every time…
Dean was the son of a wino, one of the most tottering bums on Larimer Street, and Dean had in fact been brought up generally on Larimer Street and thereabouts. He used to plead in court at the age of six to have his father set free. He used to…
Three months. For most critics, that’s the amount of time that must pass before a brand-new restaurant is considered fair game for a review. Ostensibly, three months should be long enough for a place to survive its opening jitters, find a true tone and voice, and get a good set…
A study released last week by the big brains at the Brookhaven National Laboratory has finally proven something I’ve known all along: Bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches are addictive. Like cigarettes, heroin and reruns of the original Star Trek, certain foods — cinnamon buns, for example, fried chicken, ribs and…
This was one of those weekends when too much introspection and too many bad memories had turned me sour, when anything could trigger an avalanche of old junk down in my subconscious basement, raising dust and making my head hurt. Some ill-timed souvlaki, a lack of sleep and the smell…
Welcome to the first round of what will soon be America’s all-time favorite question-and-answer game: Ask the Critic. The mailroom here at Bite Me HQ is always deluged with questions about the Denver dining scene and food in general. And while my faithful research staff does its level best to…
I have yet to become acclimated to the vastness of the American West. It’s been almost five years since I left New York (the state), longer since I spent any significant amount of time in New York (the city), and still, my internal cartography remains keyed to East Coast measures…
Chef Jun Makino’s resumé may boast a connection to Jean-Louis Palladin (see review, page 65), but he’s not the only hometown boy who’s made good outside of the Rocky Mountain West. Denver’s kitchen community is chock-full of chefs who’ve done time with some of the food world’s serious heavy-hitters. Even…
It was a beautiful piece of fish. Generously cut from mid-body with a gentle, mathematically pleasing slope from the thick flank to the thinner, slightly more tough back quarter. The lovely white flesh was shiny with oil, golden-brown on the top and bottom from a pristine pan-sear and a broil…
Believe it or not, I did exhaustive research to arrive at the secret of eternal happiness that I reveal in this week’s review of the Walnut Cafe (see review). Like the theory of relativity, it seems deceptively simple when seen for the first time. I mean, duh: a nice long…
This is important, so pay attention. I’m going to tell you the secret of eternal happiness — and it won’t cost you a dime. You’re getting it in a free paper and from a restaurant critic, which just goes to show that you never can tell where or when enlightenment…
Ten days ago, my faithful staff here at Bite Me HQ and I were giving the Best of Denver 2004 its final tuneup, a last polish before sending it out into the world. There were still eleventh-hour additions and subtractions being made — awards sneaking in under the wire, awards…
John has a British accent — cultured, smooth, well-practiced, but fake. It keeps dropping off mid-sentence and goes out entirely when he has to raise his voice to be heard over the Saturday-night crowd of beautiful people and liars at Mao Asian Bistro and Sushi Lounge, hereafter to be known…
Long ago, in a column far, far away — July 18, 2002, to be exact, when Bite Me debuted — I had pretty strong things to say on the topic of restaurant decor, service and all that pomp and stagecraft that goes along with the execution of a fine meal…
It was the steak knives at the Capital Grille that really got to me. They were beautiful, utilitarian works of art with gleaming, sharp blades laser-etched with the restaurant’s logo near the forte, perfect balance, full-tang handles and black grips cold-riveted with bright steel. On the table, they had the…
To finish off the Chinese-American trifecta that filled my mailbag (see below), last week I took a spin by Little Olive, at 1050 South Wadsworth in Lakewood. In the beginning there was Little Ollie’s, a Cherry Creek offshoot of the popular Aspen eatery owned by Charlie Huang and John Holly…
It was getting on toward late, but I was still sitting at Cielo, sprawled in a soft, comfortable, sky-blue chair across from the fireplace in the vaulted dining room, closed in by cloud-white walls, the arched black ceiling above me like starless midnight. There had been four of us for…
I found a lot to love at M&D’s Cafe (see review), but one thing that didn’t wow me? The cornbread. And since cornbread (or, failing that, slices of spongy white Wonder bread) is an integral part of the barbecue experience, I was left feeling a bit cheated. M&D’s kitchen makes…
Imagine that you’re a restaurateur who’s just been handed a million dollars. A little more than that, actually, but for the sake of nice, round numbers, I’ll call it a million. You’ve got a big, fat check in your hand, ink still wet on all those zeros. What do you…
Try as he might, man cannot live on risotto alone. And after this man had made three visits to Parisi (see review) in five days, it was starting to look suspicious. The wife — vastly overestimating the dubious sex appeal of a scrappy, long-haired, foul-mouthed restaurant critic — began suspecting…
Matt checked the steel-bodied German dive watch clipped through the top buttonhole of his chef’s jacket. “Eleven minutes,” he said. “Total?” I asked, turning to make a bare-handed grab out of the salamander, the count “one-one-thousand-two” in my head as I set a searing hot platter on the stovetop rail…
