Sometimes a restaurant owner has to kick some butt to turn a place around. It worked at Cucina Colore, the Cherry Creek North link in the Momo family chain that originated in New Jersey, stretched to Boulder with Teresa’s Pizza Colore nearly six years ago and then added Pizza Colore…

Food and whine: It’s easy to point out all the negatives at the Aspen Food & Wine Magazine Classic held in the resort town last month. There were the cooking seminars packed with hundreds of people, some of whom brought their wailing newborns and some of whom asked really irritating…

You can have your low-fat, cholesterol-free, vinegar-sparked, olive-oil-slicked, healthy Mediterranean diet. I’m listening to my inner Julia Child. At the Aspen Food & Wine Magazine Classic a few weeks ago, Julia, the woman who made French cooking user-friendly, titillated the closet fat addicts hanging on her every word by dumping…

When they reign, it pours: Even before the calls started flooding in from readers regarding this year’s Best of Denver issue, there’d been some fallout in the city’s shaky restaurant scene. Checking on picks just days before publication, we learned that the House of Bunbuster, in line for a “Best…

Two restaurant critics for competing dailies visited a restaurant several times in the same week, ate nearly identical meals and published their reviews on the same Friday. One said the meals were among the best he’s had. The other said the meals were among the worst he’s had. What gives?…

Steaking a claim: This year concert promoter Barry Fey did us a favor and called the Westword office before the annual Best of Denver issue–scheduled to hit the streets June 27–so that when we pick the wrong places for awards, we’ll at least do so with full warning. A few…

Good homestyle cooking. Friendly atmosphere. Reasonable prices. Sounds like an advertisement for one of those chain restaurants that bills itself as your neighborhood eatery, doesn’t it? Yeah, your neighborhood and the neighborhoods of three dozen other cities across the country. But what if those words accurately describe a real neighborhood…

Truckin’: If it hadn’t been for the price of gas, my visit to the Denver West Travel Center–otherwise known as the Union 76 at the Ward exit off I-70–would have been really boring. As it was, the heated arguments about where to find the best prices–cries of “I just paid…

John M. Wallace is a trucker. During his fifteen years on the road–the last three driving for a national furniture chain–he’s been through 32 states and eaten at “near about three, no, make that four hundred truck stops.” He’s dropped by Deno’s 6 & 85 in Commerce City at least…

When a trio of restaurant veterans bought the venerable Mary & Lou’s Cafe, the surrounding neighborhood cheered. Sure, they’d miss the 99-cent breakfasts and the all-night hours, but that part of Broadway was experiencing a rebirth, and the area could use a restaurant that reflected the changing times. From the…

Tommy knockers: The Larimer Group is getting ready to expand outside Larimer–about a hundred feet away, actually, into the parking structure that the company built one street over in LoDo. The folks responsible for Cadillac Ranch, Mexicali Cafe, Champion Brewing Co. and Josephina’s, among others, will soon open Tommy Tsunami…

Other fish in the sea: For once I’m going to do myself a favor and head off the inevitable phone calls I get anytime I write something like “Denver has about five decent fish houses.” (For a review of a sixth, Starfish, see the previous page.) So for the record,…

With a thriving winery in Provence and the wildly popular Mel’s Bar and Grill here in Denver, why would veteran restaurateurs Mel and Janie Master want to cast yet another line into the water? “It’s a bit like being in the theater,” Mel says. “You put on a play, it’s…

Toilet talk: Here’s the poop on why the Newsstand Cafe at 630 East Sixth Avenue now requires a photo ID to get the key to the men’s room–some jerk had been tearing the bathroom apart. On a daily basis, this fellow came into the coffeehouse and vandalized the joint’s john,…

The last time my neighbors had been at El Rancho was when they got married, twelve years and several children ago. So when I asked them to join me there for dinner, they jumped at the chance. During the half-hour drive into the foothills, my neighbors raved about El Rancho’s…

Chain reaction: The dailies keep bringing us updates on just which celebrity-driven national chain restaurants–now being referred to as “eatertainment,” the kind of catchphrase that gives journalists goosebumps–will be doing their business in Denver soon. With each new announcement–Country Star, the Cheesecake Factory–my tastebuds shrivel up a little more. As…

The first clue that there was something funny about the Giggling Grizzly was this notice on the menu: “If somehow our food and service have not lived up to your standards, please let us know so that we can help lower your standards.” The second was the menu’s logo, of…

Middle Eastern food is good for the body–and the soul. It’s healthy, with few fatty ingredients, yet satisfyingly starch-heavy, since rice and flatbreads serve as its foundation. It’s replete with flavors, particularly the kind that grab at your tastebuds in the salty and sour regions. It’s beautiful, colored with tomato…

Desperately seeking: The start of spring may turn some people’s fancies to thoughts of love, but for me it means only one thing: three months left until Westword’s annual Best of Denver issue. By the time the actual issue rolls around–on June 27 this year–I’ll have visited hundreds of restaurants,…

A sushi chef wields more than a knife. His skill–both at cutting fish and at cutting up–can make or break a Japanese restaurant. Some sushi chefs give you the silent treatment, making you feel like an unruly student in a Buddhist temple during meditation time; others are as deft at…

Loaded guns: The sign outside reads “Arap’s Eatin’ Drinkin’ Darts,” and after joking for the hundredth time how we “sure would like to see some darts eatin’ and drinkin’,” we decided to stop by Arap’s Old Gun Shop, at 3866 South Broadway in Englewood. Inside the smoky lounge, it looked…

In an industry where one out of every four new ventures goes belly-up within the first two years, Noel Cunningham has beaten the odds. He has not one, but three successful restaurants: Strings, Ciao! Baby and 240 Union. “Actually, I don’t know that I perceive them as being successful,” Cunningham…