Aurora’s Asian food scene keeps heating up. The already expansive H Mart got a new tenant late last year in A+ Food Station, which serves Korean dumplings, noodles and more inside the grocery and retail market. A little farther east, Pacific Ocean Marketplace opened its third and largest grocery, with…
When hunting for the cuisine of any country or ethnic group, Colfax Avenue is not a bad place to start. This month I’m looking for pupusas, the stuffed tortillas of El Salvador, and there are at least three restaurants on Colfax east of Quebec Street that either specialize in Salvadorean…
Megan Heinley has been working on her dessert recipes for years, hoping some day to have the opportunity to turn baking into a profession. That chance came in December, when her friend Jason McGovern opened Denver Deep Dish in lower Highland and wanted to serve local baked goods for dessert…
The best new bars in Denver in 2014 are pouring Colorado beers from multiple tap handles, mixing killer cocktails with local ingredients and providing a high level of professional service to both educate and entertain customers. From laidback and loungey to lofty and luxurious, a wide variety of top-notch watering…
Earlier this month, a Chipotle worker made a raised-hands gesture when nine New York Police Department officers entered a Brooklyn location of the national burrito chain for dinner. The officers immediately left the building and the incident has since sparked a boycott of the store by local police from the…
I’ve never experienced a weekend,” says Duc Huynh, who runs the second Vinh Xuong Bakery. His parents opened the original bakery on Federal Boulevard more than 24 years ago and still work there from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day of the week, baking baguettes and other Vietnamese sweet…
No. 57: Chorizo Breakfast Stew at DJ’s 9th Avenue Cafe Food doesn’t always have to be fancy or fussed over to be great. Sometimes it just needs to be the right dish at the right time. In cold and blustery weather, when stumbling into a cafe steamy with vapors from…
With the incredible number of bars and restaurants that opened this past year, trend-following can lead you down a pretty deep rabbit hole. Sure, there was plenty of kale on Denver’s menus, but a big part of that is that kale is cheap and easy to grow in Colorado. But…
Ethniche started in May as a deep dive into a different ethnic cuisine each month. Since then, I’ve traveled through Hawaii, Ethiopia, Greece, Thailand, the American South, India, Eastern Europe and back home to Colorado for four weeks of Den-Mex green chile in December. On my journeys, I’ve found that…
Jason McGovern has been serving up deep-dish pizza out of a window at the back of the Bar Car for a couple of years, but he’s finally getting his own place. His stand-alone Denver Deep Dish opens tomorrow in Lower Highland on a stretch of West 38th Avenue that’s seeing…
This was a year of big changes. I went from writing a weekly blog post about Federal Boulevard to covering the Denver food scene every day as a full-time job — and there has been plenty to cover. I was lucky enough to land the gig in the middle of…
On the northwest corner of 44th Avenue and Federal Boulevard, there’s a liquor store, a Heads of State and La Fuente Mexican restaurant. La Fuente is barely noticeable but for a few banners and signs advertising breakfast and tamales. The restaurant looks like it’s been there forever, slowly accumulating those…
In a year jam-packed with bar and restaurant openings, it was sometimes a relief to find comfort in familiar favorites. But even a few of these took advantage of the favorable economic climate to improve on already successful formulas. Two of them closed and remodeled; reopening as larger versions of…
Basil Doc’s has been turning out pizza since 1996 under the direction of owner Mike Miller. While the Crestmoor location isn’t the original store (the first Basil Doc’s, near Washington Park, is still turning out pizzas), Miller is now focusing his attentions on the little spot tucked in a row…
Butcher Chad Nelan has been working to perfect his sausage and cured meat recipes for the past two years, making it his sole focus over the past few months after leaving his job at Tony’s Market. His goal is to open his own company, Elevation Charcuterie and Artisan Meats, by…
Block & Larder just opened on Tennyson Street, featuring a chophouse-style menu from chef Lucas Forgy, who owns the place along with his brothers Jason and Aaron. Although the three brothers also own beer mecca Freshcraft, Block & Larder focuses more on the food and on cocktails than on craft…
The Gravitas Development Group has been behind quite a few of Denver’s hottest restaurant projects this year. Gravitas is the company responsible for the shipping-container project at 2500 Larimer Street that houses Work & Class and Cart-Driver, and it also built out the neighboring spaces on Tennyson Street that are…
Doughnuts have become a big business in Denver since Dunkin’ Donuts made a comeback in Colorado and Voodoo Doughnut opened its first non-Oregon store on East Colfax last year. Now a new national player in the fried-dough game is coming to Denver — and it may just have the worst…
Over the last century, the space at 2223 East Colfax Avenue has been a movie theater and a watch-repair shop and not much else. But the watch shop closed earlier this year when the 92-year-old owner retired after four decades in business, and wine aficionado Travis Gee decide it was…
Matt Mine Atticus 1115 East Evans Avenue 720-459-8273 Twelve years is a long time to hold down the same job; in the restaurant industry, it’s nearly a lifetime. When chefs manage to stick around for more than a decade, it’s usually a sign that they’ve found a home where they…
Nikki Hazamy and Donna Dempsey started Gypsy Juice over the summer, selling cold-pressed juices at music festivals and other special events around the state. In August, they opened a brick-and-mortar shop in Capitol Hill to serve juice and coffee to the neighborhood. But something was missing; with such a sunny,…
If you’ve noticed that the Denver restaurant scene is blowing up, you’re not alone. The dizzying number of new restaurants here and the competition pushing chefs and restaurateurs to give guests better dining experiences is getting national attention. Some of the resulting stories actually look into Denver’s changing reputation, focusing…
