At your service: One of the questions I’m asked most frequently (though not always this bluntly) is, “Who the hell do you think you are to review restaurants?” The easy answer is that Westword told me I was the restaurant reviewer. But my background was one of the reasons I…
Good things come in small packages. And truly exceptional things are coming out of a tiny, nine-table restaurant in northwest Denver. Reservations have been a must almost from the moment the clumsily titled Today’s Gourmet Highland’s Garden Cafe opened seven months ago. Its modest size was only part of the…
In the suds: What Coors Brewing Company and Anheuser-Busch each want you to learn on a tour of their breweries is that their product is the tastiest beer made from the finest ingredients by a corporation dedicated to honesty, integrity and whatever other really honorable characteristic they can get the…
My husband was born in the United States, but trust me–that doesn’t make him qualified to open an American restaurant in another country. Yet many restaurateurs who move here would have you believe that the only credential they need to establish a credible kitchen is a birth certificate from a…
Chew on this: The Colorado Restaurant Association predicts that $4.2 billion will be spent at Colorado restaurants in 1995. If the number of establishments that have recently opened is any indication, half of that money will flood Cherry Creek. Ready for the dollars to start rolling in is Tazu, at…
The north Boulder neighborhood has always seemed slightly out of step, a modest Fifties enclave in a town that’s otherwise consciously–and constantly–at the cutting edge. But the area took a great leap forward with the update of the North Broadway Shops and the adjacent Community Plaza. The design company on…
Movers and bakers: In an attempt to save the noble art of pie-making from extinction, Scott Meyerson opened Granny Scott’s Pie Shop at 3333 South Wadsworth a few weeks ago. Although there’s no actual Granny here–just Scott, a Culinary Institute of America graduate and former pastry chef for Blue Point…
Although I’ve done time in several major cities, I’d never before encountered the number of so-called Mexican restaurants I found in Denver. Miami certainly has more than its fair share, but at least in that city the repertoire stretches far beyond the standard beans and rice. Sure, you’ll find those…
Wheels of misfortune: In November, the U.S. government fined Barolo Grill for violating Title III of the Americans With Disabilities Act. That’s a short summary of a convoluted case that’s left a bitter taste around town. Much of the restaurant community is now disgusted with the ADA, Denver citizens with…
It’s a brilliant concept: Let diners cook their own food. Not only does the restaurant save the cost of a grill man, but it also erases any annoying misconceptions about how long it takes food to cook–and how fast a kitchen should work. The idea is not exactly new, though…
Gift of Gabby: Nothing I’ve written in over a year at Westword has garnered more response than my December 21 Mouthing Off column about Pat “Gabby Gourmet” Miller. Not surprisingly, no one called to defend her practice of eating free at local restaurants. What did surprise me, though, was that…
My family was always known for its progressive thinking, but never more so than on New Year’s Eve. Every year, instead of driving downtown and getting drunk, we stayed close to home and got drunk. This happened during the annual progressive dinner, a tradition that originated in Britain but took…
It’s that time of year when your company, which is filled with employees who normally can’t stand each other, hosts a festive luncheon outside the office where those same employees can overindulge and exchange such enchanting, thoughtful gifts as coffee mugs shaped like breasts or cows. It’s also that time…
Read all about it: Pat “Gabby Gourmet” Miller’s new dining guide is out–but it’s mostly leftovers. With the exception of profiles of restaurants that have opened in the last two years, it’s a rehash of the same reviews she and her husband, Mark, printed in the 1992 and 1993 editions…
This is the way many of my conversations with owners of small Asian restaurants start out: “Hi, this is Kyle Wagner from Westword newspaper. I have visited your restaurant and would like to ask a few questions for the review.” “Newspaper? We don’t have advertisement.” “No, I’m not selling advertising…
Mug shot: “I would be very interested in doing a review of hot chocolate from best to worst,” the letter began, and its writer, Hannah Temple, went on to explain just why she would be the right woman for the job. “I drink it a lot,” she said. Since the…
Only the rigors of founding a new nation could have kept infamous foodie Thomas Jefferson from doing what one out of every four restaurateurs in this country (and what seems like one out of every two in this city) feels compelled to do: open an Italian restaurant. In fact, Jefferson…
Hot to trot, Part I: Chile peppers are hot, all right, and a new store that sells nothing but products containing chile peppers in some form or other may have just the recipe for success. Richard Reed, a Denver musician (formerly of the Hot Pickles and other bands), opened The…
Living out in the boonies has its advantages: There’s no pollution (we see Denver’s brown cloud from a healthy distance), people shoot each other only after they’ve listened to too much country/ western music, and you can run around the house naked, because the neighbors are too far away to…
Cafe society: Every traveling foodie dreams of discovering some out-of-the-way, small-town cafe that serves incredible homemade bread or meat loaf or pie or marinara sauce made lovingly from an Old Country recipe by a ninety-year-old woman who’s been doing this since she was ten. The reality, however, is that you…
For fifty years Dolcamino’s held forth in a South University storefront, cooking up big batches of pasta and red sauce for hungry students and other locals. Then the Coos Bay Bistro moved in–and suddenly the street is flooded with folks from all over town hungry for the restaurant’s excellent Italian-based,…
Mag, mag, mag: My predecessor, John Kessler, is now at the Denver Post, which recently ran his assessment of cooking magazines under the headline “Post’s Food Writer Critiques Publishers’ Servings.” Maybe the grind of daily journalism has worn Kessler down, but I think he was far too charitable to a…
