When Jesse Morreale told me he was taking over the old Le Delice space in Cherry Creek and turning it into a restaurant named Sketch, I thought it was a huge stretch. When this spot was Le Delice, it looked like a bad deli — and I couldn’t imagine how…
Lafayette has only one sushi bar. Fortunately, it’s a good one. Not just good, but creative. And not just creative, but intelligently so — which, when you’re dealing with a cuisine as rigidly structured yet infinitely adaptable as sushi, is even more necessary than good rice. Sushi Mara’s sushi bar…
I hated Black Pearl. I hated it before the place even opened. I hated the hype, the website, the menu. Even the building — the old Oodles space getting an expensive makeover to house the new restaurant — bothered me on some level I couldn’t quite grasp: the building just…
Just up the street from their Black Pearl restaurant (see review) Sean Huggard and Steve Whited will soon have a new neighbor. Lola is scheduled to depart its spot at 1469 South Pearl Street on February 28 (with a closing bash on February 27); by the end of March, it…
I grew up in the suburbs south of Denver, where the best restaurant was Mr. Steak — which I loved back then solely for its Texas toast. Today the Texas toast I like best is “Here’s to Texas, living single and drinking double — belly up!” And while I know…
Think Hollywood doesn’t have an agenda? Brokeback Mountain, a more socially acceptable version of Deliverance, is now sweeping awards ceremonies at which celebrities say it’s great that this story is being told, then go out and pick up twenty-something groupies so they can spend the night in front of a…
All this talk about New American food got me thinking about Matt Selby and his crew at Vesta Dipping Grill. Since it opened almost nine years ago — if you can believe that — Vesta’s concept has been simple: Take something and dip it in something else. But the restaurant…
Drinking, smoking and screwing. That’s what hotel restaurants are really for — for doing the first two as prelude to the third. Waiting, too. Hotel restaurants are good for waiting. And for drinking and smoking while you wait — for a friend, a business associate, your mule or that bartender…
The All-Inn — that’s what Jesse Morreale is calling his newest acquisition, at 3015 East Colfax Avenue, the former Executive Inn Motor Hotel. The All-Inn, as in his big bet, his best bluff, his largest pot to date. The number being tossed around is $2.1 million to buy off the…
Remember going to the movies with a big group of friends, smuggling beers in your pockets and then rolling the empty bottles down the aisle during the film — much to the disgust of the “adults” in the audience? As an adult (at least in age), I now generally avoid…
Do you ever get that feeling of impending doom? The one where the bottom drops out of your gut and you hear faint music that makes the Jaws theme sound like a lullaby? It’s the feeling you have when your significant other leaves you a hang-up message at work after…
The Rialto Cafe is one of those rare exceptions to the rule (see page 53) that hotel restaurants are good for nothing but drinking, smoking and screwing. Sure, you can drink here, and smoke (if it’s to your taste), and even take a room next door at the Marriott Courtyard…
The wait at the Cherry Cricket was twenty minutes, shading into thirty, late that Saturday afternoon. “That’s a long time to wait for a burger,” Laura said. “How’s it look in there?” “Busy,” I told her. “It’s always busy.” And we sat down on the low wall in front of…
Denver is the cheeseburger capital of the nation: Burgertown, USA. Yes, there are other cities that harbor their own singular burger geniuses, sleepy small towns in which freakish wild talents have set themselves along the path of greatness. There’s Solly’s Grille in Wisconsin, which serves upwards of three or four…
You’d think that all sorts of things would go with beer — and you’d be right. But even the discerning beer connoisseur who swills Keystone Light recognizes that while a plethora of items and activities complement a brew, there’s still a right and a wrong way to consume the stuff…
As the Chipotle IPO took off last week at a near-record pace, I visited another Colorado born-and-bred chain. Good Times — which was founded in 1987, six years before the first Chipotle went up — is a drive-thru burger joint in a world crowded with competition. To date, there are…
This place reminds me of someplace else,” my friend says, leaning his chair back against the wall and tracing a finger along one of the cracks in the broken plaster. That wall — multi-colored painted plaster over crumbling brick, the brick exposed where the plaster has fallen away — looks…
Those crazy kids at Monkey Bean (see review) have a cadre of fans — and they know how to use them. During last year’s Best of Denver voting, the ballot-stuffing for Monkey Bean was so wicked it would have made Boss Tweed and those cats from Tammany Hall blush. The…
Popular, you’re gonna be popular! In Wicked, when the male lead asks, “So — what’s the most swankified place in town?,” good witch Galinda answers, “That would be the Ozdust Ballroom.” If the Broadway show were set in Denver, she definitely would have named Bar Luxe (goofily pronounced bar lukes…
In honor of a visit from someone who will soon fill the post of Italian Representative to the Institute of Drinking Studies — should he actually get hired here in Denver after more than one representative burst into his interview to make drinking plans for the coming weekend — we…
There was a time when Java Moon was hailed as the conquering hero of the Golden Triangle. It was a coffeehouse in a neighborhood that desperately needed one (you know, to balance out all the dive hotels and new lofts and pawnshops and galleries and whatnot), a coffeehouse that also…
Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away, there was a restaurant ruled by a king named Larry. Now, King Larry wasn’t an evil king. He wasn’t cruel or ruthless, as kings so often are. He didn’t abuse the peasantry of Hotcakesland, didn’t cut off peoples’…
