I don’t usually go to restaurant openings. There are several reasons for this, chief among them that the events themselves — filled with back-slapping and pasted-on smiles — generally bear no resemblance to how the places will look on their first day of actual service, and the food is nothing…
When the weekend rolls around, some people — we won’t call them boring, but they’re not exactly exciting — enjoy quietly reading the Sunday paper over a cup of steaming coffee. But real drinkers understand the pleasure that a brunch cocktail can bring, and there’s no better place to enjoy…
Midway through my first meal at Vega — somewhere between cleaning up every scrap of delicious oxtail tamal and toppling a pretty but ill-conceived Napoleon of salmon ceviche, thin-sliced cucumber and jicama, and moving it around the plate to make it look like I’d enjoyed it — I had one…
It was a little tough back then,” Sean Yontz, now of Vega (see review), says of his ten years with Kevin Taylor. “We all, all of us, worked 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. every day. I saw more of Kevin than my wife or my son. I spent my life…
For most twentysomethings, the name Adam Sandler calls to mind the hilariously bad mullets of the Wedding Singer or the classic hockey-golfing of Happy Gilmore. So for a Gen-X member, it’s hard to write an item about a certain cocktail without including a line from Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song”: So drink…
By my twelfth cup of coffee, the walls were starting to vibrate. My tongue tasted like a leather strap dipped in Pennzoil. Through the big front windows, I could see the lights of Romantix glowing through the fog hanging close over I-25, interrupted now and then by the dirty white…
Well, folks, it’s over. Last week you saw my rookie-year picks for the best of everything Denver’s restaurants have to offer, and I gotta tell ya: While I had a blast eating my way through the city (and beyond) over these past months, no Best of Denver issue ever comes…
Venice oozes romance, with its picturesque canals, meandering gondola rides and the chiming bells of St. Mark’s Square. But it’s also a very long, expensive transatlantic trip away. So instead of making the voyage, try sweeping your lover off his or her feet with the Peach Bellini at Maggiano’s Little…
One more bean sprout, Jay, and I swear to God, I’m gonna shank someone.” I laughed. Not out loud, though, because Glen’s threats aren’t always idle. “You gotta trust me,” I told him. “You’ll like the place. And it’s better than the bird food you’ve been eating lately.” Glen’s doctor…
One of the great, guilty pleasures of a critic’s gig is having to wait for a table. Because I work anonymously, I don’t get to waltz into any room I choose and demand the best table in the house and untold adulation. No, I have to wait out in the…
Howard Lahti is a rock-it scientist. Fifteen years ago, the Canadian geologist/geochemist was pondering a stone sample over a snifter of Scotch (single malt) when he was struck by an idea: Why not use a piece of chilled Scottish granite to cool his favorite spirit? Today, Lahti’s bright idea is…
Back in college, a major portion of my diet consisted of neon blue, orange and red Mr. Freeze popsicles; boxes of the incandescent tubes were stacked in the freezer at all times. But I never realized that I missed Mr. Freeze’s flavor until I took a sip of the Blue…
Le Central is what most people picture when they daydream of lunch at the perfect French cafe — the perfect French cafe this side of France, that is. Whitewashed walls and sunlight streaming in through the windows. A cozy grouping of small dining rooms, with ten seats here, fifteen there…
My near-religious experience was inspired by mussels (see review, page 65); a guy I knew had a slightly less reasonable epiphany over a glass of wine. Mark was a cook, a blackout drunk and all-around unsavory character I knew back in the early days of my apprenticeship. I was just…
If you decide to skip the river of green beer that’s certain to run through LoDo this weekend in favor of a day of snowshoeing or schussing, you can still toast Ireland’s patron saint at the Beaver Creek Tavern, located at the base of the Centennial Lift (and known until…
The List at Lola was long and dignified. Long, because my name was about twentieth from the top — at 6 p.m. on a Saturday night on South Pearl Street. Dignified, because it seemed like every man, woman and child in the city of Denver who was cooler, richer, hipper…
While the crowds at Lola (see review) can seem downright predatory in their quest for the perfect table, the scene at Vega (410 East Seventh Avenue) — which opened just two months after Lola and started out billing itself as “nuevo Latino” — can be fairly sedate. According to chef-owner…
If James and Nate Banker have their way, “Pass the salt and pepper, please” will fade from polite dining-table conversation. The Banker brothers have launched a black-and-white quest for fortune, in the form of Spepper, a blend of salt and freshly ground black pepper. “It has that ‘Why didn’t anybody…
Lounge lizards looking for a new downtown joint are slithering out of LoDo and over to the mod Harry’s Bar, just off the lobby of the swank Hotel Magnolia. Harry’s serves up cosmos, appletinis and dirty martinis by the trayload, but the real crowd-pleaser is the bright-pink Negroni Martini ($8),…
If you’re wondering what to do with those two hours before a table opens up at Lola (see review, page 67), Jamey Fader’s yuppie-dense Mexican fish shack, here’s a suggestion: Head to Hanson’s Grill and Tavern, just down the road to 1301 South Pearl Street. Like Lola, Hanson’s opened this…
When most Americans think of Russian food, they think of frozen gray latitudes, trudging babushkas clutching bags of turnips and beet roots, and giant cauldrons whose sour-colored contents are glopped out onto chipped plates in cramped, dark apartments. They picture borscht — that most recognizable of old Soviet cuisine –…
According to Gorizont (Horizon), a popular Russian-language newspaper published in Colorado, this state’s population of ex-pat Russians is now 70,000 strong, with more coming every day. About two-thirds of this group live in the Denver area — and since these people all have to eat, several authentic, honest-to-Lenin Russian restaurants…
