Where it’s at: The restaurant mantra of “location, location, location” is becoming more significant as the rest of the United States–chains and independents alike–converges on Denver to snap up savvy spots in LoDo and Cherry Creek. But as veteran Denver restaurateur Adde Bjorklund knows, it’s not just where you put…
The fight is on. In this corner, we have a chain restaurant that advertises fresh, high-quality Mexican food, a fun family atmosphere and low prices. What it actually delivered, though, was sub-mediocre food, prices higher than those at any authentic Mexican restaurant I’ve ever visited, and a waiter who told…
Steaking a claim: A recent trip to Pennsylvania found me falling in love with the cheese-steak all over again. I didn’t get to my favorite place, Pat’s Steaks in Philly, but I hit several good copies and pinned down what makes a cheesesteak work. For me, at least. Even though…
Try to guess what these four things have in common: stripping, footsie, finger sucking and orgasms. X-rated movies? No way. These are all acts considered proper fare for restaurants–restaurants on the big screen, that is. From Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm–which surely provoked a few arguments on the way home from…
Luck o’ the Irish: Traditional pub food is infamous for its lesser cuts of meat, greasiness and general simplicity, but that still didn’t prepare us for the meal we encountered at Nallen’s, an Irish eatery at 1617 California. Not until after we had picked at a batch of freezer-burned fish,…
Buckingham Palace is veddy, veddy nice, thank you–if pressing your forehead against cold metal in order to peer at a bunch of palace guards with fuzzy black Q-tip heads is your cup of tea. And Westminster Abbey is quite lovely–if looking at dead monarchs interred in tombs worth ten times…
Eggstraordinary: Not that anyone has asked, but here’s the sick, disgusting thing I used to eat for breakfast daily–I’m not kidding–before I became a hired belly and had to start watching what I ate. My morning meal consisted of two sunnyside-up eggs, four slices of white American cheese and two…
Considering the number of eggs we eat, it’s a wonder the chicken isn’t our national bird. According to a narrative on the back of the Dozens menu–inexplicably illustrated with a picture of a rooster, not a hen–Americans crack open an average of 314 eggs a year, which flies right in…
In the minority: The only grand slam found at Denny’s these days comes from a door being closed–the one that says “Everyone is welcome.” If Denny’s is like most chains, an enormous binder somewhere spells out company policies on everything from what shoes employees must wear to how long french…
There are those folks whose routines sound like the instructions on a shampoo bottle. They work nine-to-five, sit through rush hour on I-25 to get home in time for Entertainment Tonight and then tumble into bed. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Those folks are not Melvyn and Jane Master. The owners of…
Unfriendly fire: Colorado’s “at-will” law regarding firing hits hard in the restaurant industry, where it’s often easier to hire a new body than to take the time to train, rehabilitate or accommodate an old one. The bottom line of “at-will” means that an employee can be fired for nearly any…
The Beef Council couldn’t have put it any better than Mark Twain did in A Tramp Abroad: “Imagine a poor exile, and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering…
Taste’s good: Despite the fact that Greyhound lost my luggage, one of the babysitters drove our child nuts and the electricity disappeared throughout Vail an hour before the big event (while I was ironing my one dress, I might add), the fifth annual Taste of Vail was a blast. Where…
There’s no surer way to send an executive chef running for the aspirin bottle than to tell him that the pastry chef served forty slices of pie burned black on the bottom, or that the prep cook forgot to grill the shrimp required for that evening’s special, or that the…
A real fun guy: As a hired belly, I am no stranger to exotic and unusual foods. Rattlesnake, you ask? Bring it on. I’ve also tried yak, goat and, at a restaurant in Beaver, Pennsylvania, called the Wooden Angel, lion that the owner had flown in from Africa for a…
So you want to open a restaurant? The recipe for success has gotten quite simple: pasta and whatever. The beauty of something made from flour and water and a little egg is that it goes with everything. Pasta with jalapenos! Pasta with 75 kinds of cheese! Pasta with a microbrew!…
Chain gang: No fewer than 36 restaurant chains plan to add Denver links within the next year. With the number of recent local eatery additions and the sizable dining community already in place, something has to give–and I’m betting it ain’t gonna be the big-money corporations. Of the impending arrivals,…
Looking through the open window into the closet of a kitchen, the first thing you see is the top of her black-haired head, and before the front door closes, her smiling face pops up in greeting. Someone else takes you to one of the tables in an adjoining room, but…
The mold and the beautiful: Last week, during an otherwise wonderful tapas experience in Ranelle’s at 2390 South Downing, I popped a stuffed mushroom in my mouth, only to pop it back out again when I realized it had turned into a flu remedy. Although the waitress kindly took the…
Cement with a side of cabbage. That’s the way most of the world sees German cuisine, the fat, jolly cousin of the food family. We’re talking heavy, heavy, heavy here: potatoes and dumplings and thick, greasy sausages and–ach du lieber!–next thing you know, you’re laying down a foundation for a…
The ballpark’s in your court: With the opening of Coors Field only nine days away, new restaurants are popping up all over LoDo. Morton’s of Chicago completes its move from the Tivoli to 17th Street and Wynkoop this week with a grand opening March 24, the proceeds of which ($100…
Like the reptile it was named for, the Rattlesnake Grill began making noise long before it struck. The hum started about a year ago when rumors ran rampant that, yes, the Jimmy Schmidt would be opening a new version of his Rattlesnake Club, the tony, very expensive (and therefore much-maligned)…
