Vina Pho & Grill expands into Boulder

When Allyson Tran opened her first pho joint, Vina Pho & Grill, in Edgewater in 2009, she’d really been looking for a spot in Boulder. “I always wanted to go to Boulder,” she says. “My first plan was to open there, but we couldn’t find a location.” Now she’s finally…

Josh Radin at the Boulder Theater, 2/28/11

JOSH RADINWith Laura Jansen and Cary BrothersBoulder Theater | February 28, 2011 “The Radin audience is an audience that loves music,” said Laura Jansen in the middle of her opening set. And, I would add, chick flicks, even if, like me, they’d vehemently deny that under oath. But only the…

Gaetano’s on Tejon Street serves up great food

While I nursed a glass of cheap house red at the Gaetano’s bar, I watched neighbors cycle in to pick up their to-go orders. First came a couple in running gear, talking with a little too much enthusiasm about how great their workout was. They were replaced by a young…

Bigger isn’t better at Carmine’s on Penn

By the time our entrees arrived at Carmine’s on Penn, I had a nearly irrepressible urge to turn to the next table — a gaggle of beefy men who’d just sat down — and explain that we three relatively normal-sized women had not come in to eat like pigs. We’d…

Freshcraft to tap Pliny the Younger tonight at 6 p.m.

It’s that time of year again: Russian River is shipping out small batches of Pliny the Younger, the rare triple IPA with ridiculous ratings and a fervent cult following, to the handful of lucky establishments. Westword’s Beer Man will have the full scoop on that tomorrow — and details on…

Taco Bell’s employees weigh in on the beef

After being sued for false advertising on the grounds that its taco filling didn’t contain enough beef to be called “beef,” Taco Bell filed a countersuit, gave away ten million free tacos to Facebook fans and took out full page ads all over the country to explain that the beef…

Restaurant Law Blog dishes up legal advice for Colorado restaurateurs

The legal side of the business is not the romantic part of running a restaurant, but it’s also unavoidable. And because Messner& Reeves LLC deals with those issues on a daily basis, the Denver-based law firm is now dishing up its insight on Restaurant Law Blog, helping Colorado restaurateurs (and…

Nella’s Frozen Yogurt will open two self-serve shops this spring

Get ready, Denver, because a blizzard of frozen yogurt places are about to hit the market. According to Jen West at Foothill Commercial Builders, her company alone is currently building more than a dozen. Two of those are slated to become outposts of Nella’s Frozen Yogurt, a brand-new, Colorado-based brand…

Bubba Chinos opens two locations today, in Boulder and Thornton

It’s full speed ahead for Leonard Cordova and Bubba Chinos. The restaurateur has four or five more locations in the pipeline for spring, and two new stores just opened today. One is at 88th and York in Thornton. The other is in the University Hill food court in Boulder, a…

Shawarma Mediterranean Grill opens in Centennial

In 2000, brothers Abe and Pierre Dagher closed Cedars, a Lebanese joint on Federal Boulevard they’d owned for fourteen years, and went their separate ways, exiting the restaurant industry for other trades. But now they’re back together — and back in the business: In mid-January, they opened Shawarma Mediterranean Grill…

Memphis BBQ is served, sauce optional, at Yazoo Barbeque Company

Sauce is a condiment. In my opinion, it’s optional.” So says Don Hines, who owns Yazoo Barbeque Company, located in a strip mall across Arapahoe Road from the barbecue joint where Jabo Lawson makes 125 varieties of sauce. Though the two restaurants are just yards from each other, they’re on…

Jabo’s Bar-Be-Q provides northern Louisiana flavor in the southern suburbs

I played a lot of hooky in high school. Especially during sixth period, an unpalatable world geography lesson that started, somewhat inconveniently, right around noon. So I frequently used this 47-minute time slot for an entirely different kind of geographical education: exploring the culinary landscape of the Denver Tech Center…

Review preview: Jabo’s Bar-Be-Q

I used to frequent Jabo’s Bar-Be-Q back when it was a three-day-a-week cart operation, feeding hordes of Tech Center lunchers and hooky-playing high-schoolers in a vacant lot off I-25. And I loved the joint, both for the food coming off the mobile smoker and for Jabo Lawson, the jovial man…

Sneak peek: Boulder’s Caffé

On Saturday night, the building at Eighteenth and Pearl in Boulder that now houses both Frasca Food & Wine and Pizzeria Locale was a frenzy of gastronomic activity: Both restaurants seem to have hit their post-expansion stride. And when we stopped by for a little Barbera, we also got a…

Pagliacci’s celebrates its 65th anniversary in 2011

When we compiled our list of restaurants that have been in business, and run by the same family, for forty years or more, we missed one of the longest-standing Italian venues in the city: Pagliacci’s Italian Restaurant. Although it’s a baby by the standards of the Blue Parrot, that’s still…