Last week, we posted a list of Denver’s ten best Italian restaurants — in our (meaning my) not so humble opinion. This was followed almost immediately by a ruckus in the comments section over who, exactly, got to decide what “best” meant (again, me) and what qualified, say, Cafe Jordano…

Those of you watching the Cafewestword twitter feed over the weekend already know that I survived my night “cooking” at Mezcal without any serious difficulties. Nothing got burned down, no one got punched and, by the time we were done, we’d managed to serve several turns of the dining room…

Last Monday, everyone driving down Broadway knew that something bad was going on. Traffic was backed up for blocks, cars were going nowhere fast. And when they did finally make it to the block that holds both Deluxe and Delite, the reason for the jam became clear–both of those places…

Denver has many great Italian restaurants. As I wrote this week, Mark & Isabella is not one of them. Here are ten of my favorites: Il Posto (2011 East 17th Avenue, 303-394-0100). Il Posto has an excellent location, crammed between other bars and restaurants, their patios shoulder to shoulder. The…

As of late Thursday, there were just five reserved spots left at the tequila dinner being thrown by Sean Yontz at Mezcal. He’s putting together this dinner (the menu for which I posted a few days ago) in order to properly celebrate the TV pilot that will be filming at…

For obvious reasons, most of my meals are eaten out. Almost all of them involve me getting up off my indolent backside, putting on trousers, finding my sunglasses, grudgingly leaving the care of my mountain compound to the hundred monkey butlers I employ, finding my way to my autogyro and…

Patsy’s has been promising pizza for almost a year now. When the venerable red-sauce joint at 3651 Navajo Street was sold last fall to Kim DeLancey and Ron Cito (second cousin of founder Chubby Aiello), one of the managers there told me that pizza — a return to something that…

Dave Query and I have not always seen eye to eye. Actually, for a long time, Query (boss of the Big Red F restaurant group, which owns Jax, Lola and the West End Tavern, among other properties) just flat hated my punk ass. And I was none too fond of…

I was out eating when I heard that my father had died. Drinking, actually. But the place where I was — standing on a patio in a warm rain at ten o’clock at night, surrounded by new friends, a stiff whiskey in my hand — served food, too, and nothing…

I had a rough time of it when last I found myself under chef Chad Clevenger’s care at Mel’s Restaurant in Greenwood Village. But my experience was nothing compared to how Clevenger and his crew must’ve felt once my review of the restaurant came out. Still, I have to give…

Jonesy’s EatBar has some great fries. The mac-and-cheese fries in particular, served with a nice sprinkling of bacon on top. At the moment, they are probably my favorite fries in the city. The picture above? It shows my second favorite fries in the city — smothered with green chile, topped…

Of all the entrees, only one was even vaguely edible: a piece of swordfish, nicely cooked, napped with a chive crème fraiche – and mounted on a ratatouille that was like mush and bled oil like it’d been knifed on its way out of the kitchen. But still, somewhere in…

Actually, I guess it’s probably not on fire any more. But Deluxe and Delite, Dylan Moore’s two excellent, side-by-side operations at 30 and 32 South Broadway, respectively, were on fire an hour or so ago. Both places took a hit. By the time I got there, the flames were gone…

Novella Carpenter is a badass. No, seriously. Bad. Ass. And her book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, is basically a chronicle of her bad-assery. What is it that makes her so tough? What is it that makes me heart her big time? Simple. She became a farmer…

We’re dealing here with the nasty bits: the offal, the often-maligned parts of cows, pigs and other critters that get thrown aside by more easily grossed-out foodies who think that only the best, most pricey parts of animals are worth sinking their teeth into. Late last week, I heard from…

Last week, I told you about my impending attempt at doing TV and speculated about the potential disasters inherent in anyone allowing me to set foot in their kitchen again after years spent behind a desk. What’s more, I mentioned that anyone who was interested was welcome to come down…

What’s in a name? Apparently, not that much. Because while Big Red F honcho Dave Query has dropped the “Noodle House” portion of his Happy Noodle House restaurant’s name, the menu hasn’t changed a bit. Okay, maybe it’s changed a bit since I was there last. But then, it’d already…

Reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma fucked me up good. It changed the way I looked at food forever and seriously altered the way I actually ate. Considering that eating is my vocation, this was no small thing. I have never looked at an ear of corn the same way…

International Restaurant Week will be celebrated in my ‘hood starting tomorrow, the party banging up and down the most interesting mainline it contains: Havana Street. This is the week when everyone is encouraged to get out and get weird, to try something they’ve never tried before, to (occasionally) overpay at…

I know from diners; they are my natural habitat. And Colorado has some classics. Johnson’s Corner was one of the first places I visited when I first went west of the Mississippi, and it remains a favorite even post-renovation. My recent meals at Silver Creek Diner got me thinking about…

For a brief, brief moment, Blazer’s Street Market was my favorite market in Colorado. I mean, it was perfect: beautiful produce, a lot of it local, a lot of it organic, just stacked up in massive piles all over this store at 15550 East Sixth Avenue in Aurora. Everything was…