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…
Sometimes things happen that you just can’t explain. American Idol is a success, and William Hung and other contestants have never taken Simon out back so they can fill all of his bodily orifices with concrete. Latrell Sprewell hasn’t gotten a massive federal grant to feed his family. And men…
I love Deluxe in spite of myself. Despite reason, despite my better judgment, despite being committed body and soul to the war against California Cuisine — that limping, wrongheaded, disastrous blight on the soul of American cookery — and throwing myself into the breach every time a California-style restaurant pops…
The throwback, time-capsule cooking being done at Deluxe (see review) is just the tip of the retro-nouveau iceberg. Adega is serving jumped-up TV dinners in the bar; Troy Guard plans a retro comfort-food menu of roasted lemongrass chicken and mashed potatoes (plus a raw bar) at his new place, which…
I love a great dive, and at fifty-plus years young, Club 404 is one of the all-time best dives in Denver. Jerry Feld bought the bar on his twentieth birthday and has been there ever since (although his uncle had to run it for the first year, until Jerry was…
Although every person from sun-intensive states like Texas or Florida thinks he not only knows how to drive in the snow, but knows how to ski without putting the rest of the people on the mountain at risk of life and limb, we all can use an occasional winter-survival refresher…
It was the smell of the place that got me. That warm, salty, enveloping, fried-pork-and-soy-sauce smell that spun through the small, squared-off dining room like a fog, like smells do in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons — turning into fingers and tickling the duck or bear or whatever right under…
North comes to Cherry Creek North (190 Clayton Lane, to be precise) this week, brought to us by the folks at Bloom at FlatIron Crossing (already part of a three-restaurant mini-chain out of Tucson), in a space where executive chef Christopher Christiano and the owners can extend their reach beyond…
When I walked up to the bar at El Tejado, I asked the bartender for Patrón on the rocks. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Don Julio is better.” Although I’ve been drinking Patrón for years, I decided to go with Don Julio Anejo ($7.50) and was happy that I did…
As all good Catholics know — as do those who are not good, but are well-versed in church law after spending several years finding loopholes in it — there is still plenty of time to give up something for Lent. For people who are neither good nor bad Catholics, Lent…
Swimclub 32 reminds me of this girl, Meghan, who was everything a (much) younger me could hope for in a girlfriend. She was gorgeous in an uncomplicated way, a bit ethnic, well-traveled, pretty in the face, with that face attached to a killer body and that body held up by…
From the moment it opened last year, Moda Ristorante & Lounge seemed lovely, friendly, oh-so-well situated…and doomed. Although the restaurant was holding up the corner of the chic Beauvallon complex at Tenth Avenue and Lincoln Street, my meals there always landed smack in the middle of Dullsville. I never reviewed…
