Denver Restaurant Week Announces 2018 Dates

With so many restaurants continuing to open in Denver — and continuing to lure customers with new concepts and diverse dining options — it seems that every week is restaurant week in the city. But there’s only one official Denver Restaurant Week, and the food-filled celebration organized by Visit Denver…

The Welcome Inn Is One of Denver’s Most Endangered Dive Bars

The Welcome Inn was one of those places I’d always been meaning to go but had never managed to check out until just recently. It’s on the edge of what many now call RiNo, but is still known by long-time regulars as the East Side, and it’s a friendly and casual spot…

First Look: Frasca Team Debuts Tavernetta at Union Station

Standing in front of Tavernetta, the new Italian restaurant from Frasca Food and Wine owners Bobby Stuckey and chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson, you almost wouldn’t guess you were in Denver — despite being only a stone’s throw from Union Station. New hotels and apartment buildings crowd in around the stone facade of…

Steuben’s Arvada Launches Everyday Breakfast Service

Eggs and bacon are a basic part of the diner experience. Steuben’s owner Josh Wolkon knows that, and even though the two Steuben’s locations in Uptown and Arvada have never been open early, the menus are riddled with fried eggs, crispy bacon and even “Joe’s Breakfast,” a straight-up diner combo…

Spicy Pickle Returns to Denver After Five-Year Absence

If you’re relatively new to Denver, you probably don’t remember a time not so long ago when the city was desperate for a good sandwich. But in the last years of the twentieth century, we were facing a new millennium with the same insipid chains that passed off poorly made…

Meg Grace Larcom on Local Sourcing, Neighborhood Dining and Hedge Row

It’s been thirteen years since the first Kitchen opened on the west end of Pearl Street in Boulder, where it quickly became a regional bastion for farm-to-table fare and launched a restaurant group that today has outlets across the country. In August, that group opened Hedge Row in Cherry Creek. Overseeing the menu there and at the Kitchen is Meg Grace Larcom.

DIY Takeout Shows You How to Make Denver’s Favorites at Home

In his DIY Takeout series, Nick Evans has been chowing down on great takeout food around Denver and then reverse-engineering his favorites at home to come up with recipes for home cooks. Check out his videos on how to make everything from a Chipotle burrito to Smashburger to a Biker…

Suburban Sandwich Shop Stack Subs Takes Aim at Downtown

Family owned and operated sandwich eatery Stack Subs originally opened in August 2012 on South Union Avenue in Lakewood before spawning a second shop in Belmar at 420 South Teller Street. Now owners Rick and Ann Koerner are taking aim at the big city and will open a new Stack…

How a Denver Food Truck Owner Became His Own Beef Supplier

The smell of this corn mash is intoxicating and sweet, with a rich, grainy note and a hint of booze. Cows love the stuff, according to Jose Gonzalez, owner of the Mestizos food truck and one of the founders of DenCo Meats & Custom Cuts, a meat-processing facility in Deer…

Farmers’ Market Finds: Veggies With Vesta

It wasn’t hard to spot the tall, broad shouldered Nick Kayser, executive chef of Vesta, as he waited by the Ela Family Farms fruit stand in the Union Station Farmers Market (run by Boulder County Farmers Markets) this past Saturday morning. With an iced coffee in hand, the friendly chef began…

Aloha, Denver! Nine Must-Try Hawaiian Dishes

The Mile High City doesn’t feel particularly tropical, even with September’s heat wave, but that doesn’t mean we lack a good selection of Hawaiian foods. You don’t have to host a backyard luau or bury a pig in a fire pit to get a taste of the islands. You can…

The Nine Tastiest Events on the Culinary Calendar This Week

It’s an animal-centric week on the Denver restaurant scene: Rabbits, pigs and dogs make appearances, but only one of them ends up on your plate. Guess which one? Here are nine of the best events on the culinary calendar from Monday, September 11 through Friday, September 15. Monday, September 11…

Rocky Mountain Roasting Rodeo Contestants Are Full of Beans

The first ever Rocky Mountain Roasting Rodeo is set to take place in Denver this weekend. The two-day event gathers fifteen professional coffee roasters from the Rocky Mountain region, including New Mexico, Wyoming and throughout Colorado. For the competition, all participants were given twenty pounds of the same green Ethiopian…

All the Restaurant Openings and Closings This Week

This week was a slow one in the Denver restaurant scene, which is a good thing, giving diners a chance to take a breath and look around for good eats rather than just rushing off to the hottest new openings. Hot describes the gooey fried cheese curds at Wally’s Wisconsin…

Edgewater Will Soon Have Its Own Hawaiian Restaurant

Edgewater’s Thai choices were cut in half when Thailicious recently closed at 2045 Sheridan Boulevard (at least US Thai Cafe is still going strong), but the space won’t remain vacant for long. Rich Braunthal, who has run the Ohana Grille food truck since 2015, is turning his mobile business into a…

In Defense of Pumpkin Beers

I love pumpkin beers. There, I said it. I love a sweet, malty, gourd-based ale layered over with cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, ginger and maybe some honey. Ramp up the alcohol content and put the whole thing in a rum barrel, and I’ll wait up all night in the pumpkin…