Chef Eric Skokan’s Last Harvest of 2016

As a cool breeze blows across Eric Skokan’s land, the chef and farmer gears up for what could be the first frost of the season. Near the sheep fields, crates full of squashes — spaghetti, acorn, butternut and the trumpet-shaped tromboncino — line the shed, and over at his second…

Photos: The Gang’s All Beer at the 2016 GABF!

The gang was all beer at the 35th annual Great American Beer Festival, a three-day, sold-out celebration of suds at the Colorado Convention Center this past weekend. By the end of Saturday, 60,000 people had poured through the festival, sampling 3,500 beers from 800 breweries. Photographer Brandon Marshall took it…

These Four Bakers Helped Create the Colorado Bread Line

Flour, water, salt and yeast: the four ingredients needed to make a loaf of bread, by the standard modern reckoning. But you can scratch one of those ingredients off the list: According to a few top bakers in Denver and Boulder counties, yeast isn’t needed. At least not in the…

100 Favorite Dishes: PB&B Acai Bowl at ProsperOats

No. 52: PB&B Acai Bowl at ProsperOatsFew foods have attained the kind of cult worship currently reserved for acai: The Brazilian fruit has been lauded for its antioxidant properties, making its way onto lists of ingredients that supposedly cure all kinds of ills. But while we practice healthy skepticism when it…

El Chingon Set to Expand Next Year With Cultura

Lorenzo Nunez, owner of El Chingon Mexican Bistro at 4326 Tennyson Street, says it took about a year after the restaurant’s opening in 2013 for Berkeley neighbors to catch on to what he and chef Robert Lopez (Nunez’s nephew) were trying to do. Many assumed the place (whose moniker is Spanish…

Twelve Tastiest Events on Denver’s Culinary Calendar, October 10-14

This week you can sink your teeth into a couple of wine dinners, a free lunch prepared by a James Beard award-winning chef, or the last brews at Denver International Airport’s Beer Flights. Keep reading for all the tasty details. Monday, October 10  MiNDFUL is hosting its Fourth Annual Mother’s High…

Our Ten Best Italian Restaurant Stories Over the Past Three Months

After Gretchen Kurtz’s review of Mas Kaos (where pasta and pizza share equal billing with tacos and guacamole), and with Columbus Day just around the corner, we have Italian cuisine on our minds. Looking back over our coverage of the local restaurant scene over the past few months, we noticed just…

Reader: Chaotic Concept Adds Up to a Good Time at Mas Kaos

Gretchen Kurtz just reviewed Mas Kaos, Patrick Mangold-White’s new restaurant in the Berkeley neighborhood that specializes in both pizza and tacos — and tequila. Drink enough of that and the combination seems completely reasonable (and as Mark Antonation discovered, other restaurants around town specialize in the Mexican-Italian combo). But even…

Root for Housemade Amaro From Elliot Strathmann at Spuntino

Elliot Strathmann, co-owner of Spuntino, at 2639 West 32nd Avenue, has been rooting around the woods of Colorado looking for specific ingredients, with the help of professional forager Graham Steinruck, founder of Hunt & Gather, a company that provides foraged mushrooms and other produce to Denver restaurants. Strathmann has been stocking…

Zengo Relaunches Monday With New Look and New Menu

Restaurateur Richard Sandoval’s thirteen-year old Zengo was cutting edge when it opened at 1610 Little Raven Street and still retained a swank, neo-’70s air into 2016 despite its relative age. But stagnation equals death in the hip downtown restaurant scene, so Sandoval shut down the Latin-Asian fusion eatery last month…

Five More Restaurants Where You Can Get Pizza and Tacos

This week Gretchen Kurtz reviewed Mas Kaos, a Mexican-Italian mashup on Tennyson Street that defies the logic many restaurants focus on, to focus on one cuisine and executie it properly. Instead, at Mas Kaos, Kurtz found herself doing what everyone else was doing: “chasing a few chile-soaked tacos with a…

Scotch and Tacos: A Winning Combo at El Paisa

After a recent dinner out left me unsatisfied (small plates — again), I pointed my car, as I often do, in the direction of Federal Boulevard, a slow but direct route from hipper zones to my southwest Denver neighborhood. Scotch whisky was on my mind, along with tacos (when are…

Ten Tips for GABF Week 2016 in Denver

Maybe this is your first time; maybe it’s your 31st. Either way, you are going to biggest, best beer festival in the world. This year, the Great American Beer Festival celebrates its 35th anniversary, and although many things have changed, many others have stayed the same. Here are few things…

Jensen Cummings on Tightening Up His Chef Game Through Consulting

In part one of our interview with Jensen Cummings, the chef tells us about his attempt to launch a Colorado movement by combining food and beer in a novel way. When he’s not working on that, though, he also does a fair amount of consulting for local restaurants, including VoiceBox Karaoke,…