Brew snub: At this past weekend’s Great American Beer Festival XIV, Colorado got skunked. Denied. The state’s 27 microbreweries, 33 brewpubs, two major breweries and two minor breweries produced more than 400 types of beer last year–but only twelve won awards. I can accept that. What I’m having a tough…
Once upon a time, Daddy made the money and Mommy made the dinner, and Junior and Buffy would come home from school and do their homework while Lawrence Welk bubbles floated through the living room and the dog helped set the table. Daddy would ask what was for dinner, and…
To market, to market: Back in 1989, Alfalfa’s Market, the granddaddy of Denver’s organic groceries, introduced hot-and-cold food lines at its original Boulder store. Since then, the array of offerings has expanded considerably. On a recent visit to the Littleton store, at 5910 S. University, I tried a sushi sampler…
Just for fun, try making Hamburger Helper for dinner every night. Make it the same way, with the same ingredients and the same side dishes. After two weeks, you’ll be sick to death of making Hamburger Helper. That’s what it’s like cooking in a restaurant. Many chefs circumvent kitchen tedium…
Hello and goodbye: Development in LoDo took an ugly turn recently when owners of the Ice House forced the Bluepoint restaurant (and everyone else) out so the building can be turned into lofts or offices, they’re not sure which. Half the staff at Westword is in mourning–Bluepoint was the spot…
With all the action just a few blocks away, the 16th Street Mall is starting to feel like it’s off the beaten path. Most of the restaurants along this stretch rely on lunch crowds to help them make it through the night, and some have redecorated or changed menus to…
Barrel of pork: The owner of House of Bunbuster, whose name I never was able to procure, phoned to say he was disgruntled over the category of “Best Pig’s Ears” in the 1995 Best of Denver. “I just think no one in Denver really cares about pig’s ears,” he said…
Longing to feel unwanted? Tryn walking into most restaurants with your kid in tow. Faster than you can say “high chair,” the place will put out the unwelcome mat. Assuming you stick around, you’ll be alternately ignored and stared at. When the waitpeople aren’t busy sighing by the side of…
The test of Colorado: A number of people have called to complain about the twelfth annual Taste of Colorado, held at Civic Center Park over the Labor Day weekend. Some think the group that sponsors the event, the Downtown Denver Partnership, was greedy in selling nine food tickets for $5–which…
This city’s mortality rate for Vietnamese restaurants is high, and any eatery that serves cheap, sloppily executed Vietnamese food has a better chance of stopping traffic on Federal Boulevard with a chopstick than it does of surviving. As soon as one restaurant closes, though, another seems to spring up faster…
The popularity of all types of Asian food has prompted some restaurants to offer more than one country’s cooking. Several of these “JVC” (Japanese, Vietnamese and Chinese) combo spots have opened here, particularly in the suburbs. One of the best I’ve found is Oriental Star, at 12203 East Iliff in…
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. When Kevin Taylor, chef and owner of one of the city’s few nationally known restaurants, Zenith American Grill, decided to open a second, more downscale eatery, he thought it would be a surefire hit to import the unique flavors of…
Spare changes: Denver continues to open more restaurants than it closes, and the chains are spreading faster than an infectious disease. The competition for customers–and ink–is fierce, particularly downtown, which is why it’s nice to find a success story like that of Bayou Bob’s. At the end of September the…
When my arteries start clogging up like Colorado Boulevard, Indian food is just what the doctor ordered. While some cuisines cancel out vegetables and rice with sugary sauces and fatty pork products and still call themselves healthy, this is the real thing: meats marinated in low-fat yogurt, lentil-thickened sauces and…
Movin’ on up: Robert Mancuso, the 26-year-old Olympic medal-winning chef who made the Normandy a contender again, has moved on. I heard that he’d hooked up with the swank Swiss Sonnenalp resort in Vail, but when I called to inquire as to Mancuso’s status, the Sonnenalp staff acted as though…
A restaurant doesn’t have to serve big, important food designed by a celebrity chef who wallpapers the dining room with his diploma from a Serious Cooking School in order for a meal to be worthwhile. Sometimes it’s enough that the food comes from someone who loves to cook and that…
A pizza the action: Of all the calls I get asking for restaurant recommendations, the majority involve pizza. People want to know where to get thin crust, thick crust, New York sloppy, Chicago deep-dish, Spago gourmet. Unfortunately, Denver is not the greatest place for pizza–I’ve tried every place I’ve heard…
In the mid-Eighties, stadiums began upgrading the food service at sporting events. It changed my life. Before that, baseball games were something to be tolerated. During the give-and-take years of dating, my presence at a game usually came as a tradeoff for an evening at an art-gallery opening. And on…
Covering all the bases: Coors Field is the first ballpark to feature its own in-house microbrewery, the Coors-owned Sandlot, but it won’t be the last. How many sports arenas across the country plan to put one in? “All of them,” says Richard Hesse, food-and-beverage director for Aramark Corporation, which runs…
My grandmother has a foolproof, color-coded formula for assembling a meal that balances all the basic food groups. It’s as simple as this: There has to be something orange, brown, red, green and white. If she’s serving steak (brown), then carrots (orange), noodles (white) and a salad of lettuce and…
Over the Barrel: Since Cracker Barrel cracked open its combination restaurant/country stores in Thornton and Colorado Springs in May, I’ve been bombarded with phone calls and letters from citizens who are boycotting the national chain. This quote from one writer pretty much sums up why: “We cannot allow a company…
We bring our family to a restaurant that bills itself as “family-style” and are promptly told to go to the bar with our child and wait thirty minutes, even though there are twenty empty tables within sight. When we are seated–thankfully only twenty minutes later–no one offers us a high…
