Opening a new restaurant is always a crash course in diplomacy, but there can’t be a much more trying ordeal than telling a diner the valet just smashed his car. Nonetheless, China Cowboy manager Rebecca Sparks (a veteran of the Aspen Ritz-Carlton) made all the right moves, up until the…
Taking back the neighborhood: Denver’s most controversial drinking spot, Pic’s Corner Bar on West 32nd Avenue, finds itself under fire for the umpteenth time in nine years from a group of neighborhood activists who claim it’s a denizen of drug-dealing, drunkenness and debauchery. The question is whether the Department of…
By A waitress’s first day on the job is never easy. It’s worse when the food she’s serving is hit or miss. And it’s sheer hell when her first customer is an anonymous restaurant critic. Still, the poor woman we encountered at Vella’s Italian Restaurant was a sweetheart who did…
For once, the food was better than the wines and I actually got enough to eat. The evening was also a first for Emily’s Fine Dining Parlor, in Harrah’s Central City Casino: its first wine dinner. Executive chef Scott Montgomery plied us with such goodies as buffalo mozzarella layered with…
We were craving great Mexican food–great cheap, greasy, hot Mexican food–and there seemed just one place to go: Larimer Street, where the shadow of Coors Field falls on a strip of pawnshops, vacant lots, shelters, bars and a few fabulous, if modest, Mexican restaurants. With an eye to the baseball…
Back on the chain gang: This year 26 national restaurant chains are expected to plop down outlets in Denver. Granted, we’re going to need ways to employ all of the people who are moving here from California. And we’ll have to have some way of feeding them, too. But this…
It was the best of foods, it was the worst of foods. At Mr. Steak’s Firegrill, the Omnivest Corporation’s first attempt at an upscale, hipper version of its Mr. Steak chain, the difference between the good dishes and the bad is as obvious as the night-and-day light show played out…
The group that lambasted Chinese food last year has now spent still more money (purportedly in the “public interest”) to learn that fettuccine Alfredo is like “a heart attack on a plate” and that spaghetti with tomato sauce is low in fat. I’m so surprised. You mean a dish made…
The French use the term “la casbah” as slang for “party.” It’s fitting, then, that La Casbah is the name of a festive new North African restaurant. La Casbah is only the second restaurant to bring the foods of the Arabian west–Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, with a heavy emphasis on…
A phone call from an eager real estate agent sent me on this month’s wild goose chase–to find out if the venerable Mary and Lou’s Cafe could be closing. The answer? No–at least, not over owner Lou Pobojeski’s very live body. He and his wife, Mary Lou, are looking to…
We never made it to Jim Morrison’s grave, but that was because we were determined to find an authentic Parisian bistro during our trip to France several years ago. After wandering for almost an hour in Montmartre–past all of the places that suck up most tourists–we stumbled up a side…
Living proof that decent food can be had at a good price, the Brick Oven Beanery at 1007 East Colfax served me up a heapin’ helping of its Original Brick Oven Chicken ($5.95) the other day. Half a chicken had been swathed in what I discerned as lemon and orange…
As a kid I did not trust the cuisine of India. Hey, there could have been anything in there–monkey brains, for all I knew, or even worse: green peppers. Because ethnic food had not yet reached our little pocket of suburbia (pizza was as exotic as it got), we had…
A Littleton cook faces criminal charges for allegedly spitting on a policeman’s chicken sandwich. Whatever your feelings toward the boys in blue, that’s just plain gross. The civilian riding with the officer thought so, too, which upped the ante to two counts of disorderly conduct. The accused, one Peter Hatfield,…
If you thought Lower Downtown didn’t need another hangout, stop by Wazoos on Wazee some Friday night and watch as hundreds of people jostle for elbow room. Where were they before this cavernous beer/pool/music hall opened in October? The answer can’t be that they were frequenting another LoDo hot spot,…
The first step in dealing with an addiction to Thai food is admitting that you have a problem. The second is accepting that there are no more steps — because who can contemplate a cure that bans curry?Chile peppers can be physically addicting, according to recent medical evidence. The reasons…
