“Nothing could be finer than dinner at the diner.” So goes the jingle at the Rocky Mountain Diner where, for the last fifteen years, the staff and crew have been working hard to take customers back to the golden age of diners. And you know what? For the most part,…
It’s one o’clock in the morning and I’m still eating crab. I’ve been eating crab since my wife went to bed more than an hour ago, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, watching cartoons with the drifty stare of an acid casualty, surrounded by the wreckage…
t Kim Ba (see review), owner Ba Forde has served a very traditional version of her family’s native cuisine for almost two decades. For a time, her sister was doing much the same thing as one of the original partners at T-Wa Inn (555 South Federal Boulevard). But T-Wa has…
New Zealand is on a roll: Lord of the Rings, sauvignon blanc, kiwi fruit, Russell Crowe and Xena (not in that order), as well as the cleanest air and water in the world. And now those clever Kiwis have used that water to create a new, super-premium vodka: 42 Below…
Nobody likes to admit defeat — especially not a member of the Institute of Drinking Studies. We pride ourselves on being able to enjoy any bar, no matter if it suffers from watered-down drinks, pea-soup-thick smoke, snobby patrons or slow service. Our antics are usually enough to guarantee our happiness,…
Make no mistake: Devil’s Food Bakery is a dangerous place, a place firmly dedicated to helping those with a weakness for the venal wrongs of gluttony to pave their way to hell with pastry. With real lemon curd, with Devonshire cream, fondant, butter cream and mousse. With profiteroles with handmade…
Two, please. For dinner. If it’s okay, we’ll just sit at the bar.” Twice before, I’ve eaten at Frasca, drunk at Frasca, allowed myself to be folded into the perfect ballet of service at Frasca, dining once alone, once with my wife. Neither time have I made it to a…
Last week, on the day I filed my review of Frasca (see review), chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson was on a plane headed for New York City, where Food & Wine magazine was about to name him one of the ten Best New Chefs for 2005. For Lachlan, for Frasca, for everyone…
Asked recently for the name of my favorite female bartender, I realized that I’m a complete sexist. While I could rattle off at least ten great male bartenders, the only woman I could think of was Kris Lykins at Strings. I’m sure there are many fabulous female bartenders in town,…
Technology is a wonderful thing, as you guys who have seen TV’s greatest commercial or whose girlfriends get the Victoria’s Secret catalogue already know. The new Body by Victoria IPEX brassiere is touted as “the world’s most advanced bra” — and by “advanced,” they mean “making the average-looking bosom seem…
Even with a couple of years now behind it, Cuba Cuba still has the frantic buzz of a restaurant in its opening weeks. The crowds are big, the bar is packed, the vibe is Saturday-night-in-Havana electric. So how does Cuba Cuba do it? Simple: Owner Kristy Socarras-Bigelow has brought a…
Under my Grand Unified Theory of Steakhouses, the operation of any steakhouse can be diagrammed the way a particle physicist diagrams an atom. The customers come and go through the dining room like electrons jigging through the outer valences, entering with full wallets measured as an excess of positrons, then…
By the time the Best of Denver 2005 hit the streets last week — the culmination of months of work and countless bloated, hung-over mornings suffered by myself and my faithful lackeys here at Bite Me World HQ — over a hundred winners in the Food and Drink section alone…
The attractive man directly across the bar was wearing a black T-shirt with cut-off sleeves and the word “Fruitcake.” When I suggested to my companion that not only was the shirt redundant, but would be far more creative with an inventive slogan like “Rum Balls” or perhaps “Cherries Jubilee,” he…
I have a new bar to add to my list of favorites, and I owe it all to my favorite Scotswoman, Julie Docherty. It’s somewhat surprising that I remember her or the Streets of London Pub (1501 East Colfax Avenue) at all, because several members of the Institute of Drinking…
There’s one thing I never do at a restaurant — send back a plate — but I did at Sparrow. Another thing I never do is come straight to the point, and I’m breaking that rule now, too: This bird needs to have its wings clipped, immediately. Some history: The…
The most telling thing about my time at Sparrow (see review, page 53) was that I never felt the least bit of sympathy for the place — and it takes a lot to set me off that way. It takes such a wholesale breakdown of every aspect of the dining…
Love often blossoms in the spring, and suddenly there’s a lot to love in Cherry Creek, where everyone’s heading North. This new restaurant was brought to us by Sam Fox, who owns a number of spots around the country, including Bloom in FlatIron Crossing. Although North’s decor is streamlined, the…
As a member of a very Irish and Catholic family, I look forward to St. Patrick’s Day as much as I do Christmas. Since I first convinced someone to buy me beer, I’ve tied one on every March 17. In the beginning, I thought that drinking green beer was a…
The kitchen at Luciano’s Pizza and Wings is a pizza-maker’s paradise. It’s huge, with acres of scrubbed tile and steely bright stainless, banks of pizza ovens warping the air around them with their heat, and half a dozen double-basket fryers lined up against the wall looking no more than five…
Buffalo-style pizza is a small-scale, fiercely regional take on the thin-crust New Yorker that’s the gold standard of the American pie-maker’s art. At Luciano’s Pizza and Wings (see review), Kris Ferreri offers a pizza that isn’t just a good copy, but borders on the kind of uncompromising reconstruction more commonly…
I was entertaining a friend who’d surprised me by popping into town, and I wanted to take him to a cool “Denver” spot for drinks. After considering some of the trendier options, I went with one of our historical gems: the Cruise Room. Anyone who’s lived in this city for…
