Okay, I admit it: I’ve never heard of the The Vaccines, a British punk rock band that Rolling Stone magazine calls “Hopped-Up Romantics Ruling the U.K. Charts,” which is rather strange, since the music mag compares the group of four to Joy Division and the Jesus and Mary Chain, both…

Restaurants go dark all the time — even the best ones — but nonetheless, when I read the e-mail yesterday from Virgilio Urbano, announcing that he’d abruptly closed the original Virgilio’s in Lakewood, across the street from Belmar, I was stupefied. Frankly, I was beyond stupefied. The pizzeria is one…

A one-time Westword Best of Denver winner for its burger, this iconic restaurant and bar still draws a posse of politicos, power brokers and influential media types, but the majority of the wheeling and dealing takes place at lunch, while the dining room sits eerily barren during dinner. Can you…

Chris Cina Hideaway Steakhouse 2345 West 112th Avenue, Westminster 303-404-9939 www.hideawaysteakhouse.com This is part two of my interview with Chris Cina, executive chef of Hideaway Steakhouse. Part one of that interview ran in this space yesterday. Favorite restaurant in America: Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. I worked with Sean Kelly…

No one goes hungry at Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation — and that’s the whole premise behind tomorrow night’s gastronomic blowout that showcases the mad skills of more than thirty Denver kitchens and their virtuosos, all of whom congregate under one roof to feed fervent foodniks in an…

I sneaked away over the weekend, taking a jaunt to the mountains, where I found myself in a little town, population just over 100, that doesn’t have a whole lot going on, save for scenery gazing and a single restaurant with a gorgeous bar. Can you guess where I’m drinking?…

Pete Marczyk and Barbara Macfarlane do not leave their work behind when they leave Marczyk Fine Foods and head for their great old Denver house with the big, new kitchen. They often bring some of their market’s choicest ingredients home with them, and cook up a feast. “It’s June, which…

Chris Cina Hideaway Steakhouse 2345 West 112th Avenue, Westminster 303-404-9939 www.hideawaysteakhouse.com This is part one of my interview with Chris Cina, executive chef of Hideaway Steakhouse. Part two of that interview will run in this space tomorrow. Chris Cina wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, didn’t have…

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: There can never, ever be too many breakfast emporiums, and over the weekend, Tangerine, a new restaurant from Alec Schuler, opened in Boulder directly next door to Arugula, Schuler’s farm-to-table dinner restaurant. The fifty-seat space — contemporary, bright and bedecked with…

Several months ago, Brian Laird, who’d been spearheading the burners at Barolo Grill for more than a decade, parted ways, amicably, with Barolo owner Blair Taylor and his venerable Italian restaurant. Laird took a few weeks off to soak up the sun in Hawaii and mull over a new offer…

My favorite meal of the week is brunch, especially when it involves the man of my dreams and something French — in this case, a near-transcendent croque madame crowned with a trembling egg spilling yolk the color of sunflowers. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives…

Andrew Knowlton, the Bon Appetit food scribe, who, in the fall of last year, named Boulder the “foodiest town” in the United States, is now throwing around the culinary “F” word — fusion — in a story that trumpets the top six restaurants in the country to “Taste the New…

We’ve seen a succession of restaurant openings over the last several months, but Linger, the second restaurant from Justin Cucci, the owner/chef of Root Down, may very well be the most anticipated new arrival of the year. And after a remarkably good dinner there last week, at which Cucci, along…

It goes to reason that a bar justifiably admired for its beer roster would also serve a bang-up beer-based soup bolstered by crumbles of bacon and housemade pretzel nubs. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to the week’s Where am I…

The Justice league of Street Food — the fleet of food trucks that took our bellies by storm last summer — is back for a second season of gorging, beginning tomorrow, when ten trucks and carts post up at 3507 Ringsby Court, directly north of Fuel Cafe, in the paved…

Robert Thompson is on a roll. The proprietor of Argyll, a splendid gastropub in Cherry Creek, and the brainchild behind Punch Bowl, which will open in November in the Baker ‘hood, has just inked a deal, complete with a 25-year lease, to take over Baur’s Ristorante, Jimmy Lambatos’s elegant –…

The calls have been coming in fast and furious to Biker Jim’s cell phone, with befuddled callers wanting to know why the hell his hot dog cart isn’t parked curbside at its usual address on the corner of the 16th Street Mall and California Street. Here’s your answer: A film…

The Justice League of Street Food — Denver’s elite fleet of food truck movers and shakers — are back with a vengeance after last summer’s incredibly successful debut, and this Saturday, from 5 to 10 p.m., the motorcade is revving up for its first party of the summer season, pimping…

While the pipsqueaks at the Squeaky Bean have spent the last few weeks monkeying around — pilfering pigs, for example — this past year hasn’t exactly been a playful wallow in the mud for owners Johnny Ballen and Josh Olsen, executive chef Max MacKissock, bar manager Sean Kenyon and the…

While I feasted on dozens of ant eggs, prepared every which way, in Mexico City a few weeks ago, I didn’t come across one restaurant that was serving anything close to a molcajete stew, but here, in Denver, I’ve found quite a few joints that do. Can you guess where…