Jen Jasinski did Denver proud last night on Top Chef Masters. The chef/co-owner of Rioja, Bistro Vendome and Euclid Hall, who was named this year’s Best Chef Southwest in the James Beard Foundation competition — won both challenges, netting another $15,000 for Work Options for Women, her chosen charity. That…
Visit Denver’s Denver.org website has inspired several recent posts saluting the city, including lists of best free attractions and tours, the top eleven hidden tourism gems, the thirteen best free day trips from Denver and the perfect gay-friendly weekend. Today, you can visit Visit Denver’s six top “Shop ‘Til You…
Kris Padalino is one smart cookie. “I have degrees in biology and math and wanted to go to med school and become an anesthesiologist,” says Padalino. But she had other interests, too. “I paint, and I like food a lot,” she explains, “so I started baking cakes for fun and…
On Sunday, September 22, Westword’s annual celebration of the Denver dining scene will fill Sculpture Park at the Denver Performing Arts Complex with food and drink from some of Cafe Society’s favorite restaurants, as well as Best of Denver reader choices. Close to fifty restaurants, trucks and food businesses have…
The Denver Police Department was prepared to throw the book at scofflaws — the good book. On September 6, an e-mail went out from Mary Beth Klee, the DPD’s deputy chief of administration, that Chief David Quinones had okayed the delivery of “a box of Bibles to each of the…
Praxis Creative Arts Space is not just off the grid — it’s gone altogether. A month after its founder, Joshua (no last names, please) was featured in “Free for All,” Josiah Hesse’s July 25 cover story on people living off the grid, the community group that Joshua had founded with…
Chicago has deep-dish pizza. San Francisco has sourdough bread. What does Denver have? What are this city’s must-have dishes? That’s the question one reader posed yesterday. The answers? Beer, beer and more craft-beer. And green chile, of course. See also: What are the Denver must-have dishes?…
Can a deep-dish pizza, like the Patxi’s meat model above, taste as good in Denver, Colorado, as it does in Chicago, Illinois? Diners have been debating that for decades — and for the past week on Cafe Society. And the recent discussion raises another point: If deep-dish pizza is a…
Republican lawmaker Lori Saine will never be a restaurant critic….or a diplomat. On Wednesday, she showed up at a meeting of the Colorado Legislature’s poverty task force with a box of Popeye’s fried chicken — reportedly a “silent protest” of the uproar after Senator Vicki Marble of Fort Collins told…
While some pizza fans are still debating what makes a good Chicago-style, deep-dish pie — and whether it’s even possible to get one in the Mile High City — others have moved on to the Neopolitan pizza at Denver’s Pizzeria Locale, which Gretchen Kurtz reviews this week. The original Pizzeria…
Long before the Colorado rebranding team decided a variation on the Colorado flag would not be an option, Coloradans had turned into a bunch of flag-wavers. Over the past decade, the iconic flag symbol has been used on everything from tattoos to crocheted headband — a creative outpouring that’s exactly…
Do you have to be in the Windy City to get real Chicago-style, deep-dish pizza? Or can you find an excellent approximation in Cherry Creek, at an outlet of a California-based chain whose chef/co-owner, Patxi Azpiroz, was living in San Francisco when he decided to create a great deep-dish pie…
One of the real surprises of the response to the state’s rebranding effort is the affection that Coloradans feel for the state flag — even if Aaron Kennedy, the state’s chief marketing officer, says the flag design didn’t test well outside of the state, with many people assuming it stood…
Here in Colorado, it’s our nature to fight for the state we love — and to get quite cranky when we see something that we don’t think does this state justice. For the past year, Colorado chief marketing officer Aaron Kennedy has led an all-Colorado crew on what’s been billed…
The nose knows. You walk into a room, and instantly a smell connects you to a memory. And when that smell is connected to food, it’s often a family memory. “Smell is such a powerful sense, and it lives in the base of your neck, where all your memories are…
By last year, the population of Buford, Wyoming, had dwindled to exactly one: Don Sammons, who ran the convenience store, lived in a nearby mobile home and was ready to get out. So he put it up for auction, and Vietnamese businessman Pham Dinh Nguyen bought it for $900,000 –…
Happily wedded Hollywood sweethearts Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman make beautiful music together — and comedy, too! And — lucky Denver! — Mullally will be singing her heart out with Stephanie Hunt as “Nancy and Beth,” while Offerman offers a sneak peek of his American Ham solo show when they…
The marketing mavens behind makingcolorado.gov, the state’s rebranding campaign, quickly realized they needed to emphasize altitude. Colorado is “king of the mountains,” points out Aaron Kennedy, the state’s chief marketing officer. Still, pushing altitude also created another dilemma: They didn’t want a logo-slogan combo that might confuse being in the…
Tamayo, the modern Mex restaurant that Richard Sandoval opened on the edge of Larimer Square a dozen years ago, wasn’t looking so modern last winter. That’s when the internationally renowned restaurateur put a million bucks into an update of the space. In her current review, Gretchen Kurtz suggests that Tamayo’s…
The “Peak.” That’s what Colorado’s new logo has been dubbed — officially, at least. But plenty of people have their own, unofficial nicknames for the green-and-white triangle introduced yesterday by brandcolorado.gov as the state’s next brand. When we reported yesterday on the new slogan, “It’s our nature,” readers also weighed…
The nose knows. You walk into a room, and instantly a smell connects you to a memory. And when that smell is connected to food, it’s often a family memory. “Smell is such a powerful sense, and it lives in the base of your neck, where all your memories are…
Fast-food workers struck around the globe yesterday, including at two Denver-area McDonald’s locations, demanding an increase in the minimum wage — to $15 an hour in this country. Do fast-food workers deserve $15 an hour? With Labor Day looming, more than a hundred readers weighed in on that question yesterday…
