Food & Drink

Denver Restaurant Week ended at the close of service on March 11, with a record number of restaurants participating: 303. “Talk about a Denver number,” says Rich Grant, the spokesman for Visit Denver, the convention and visitors bureau that organizes the seven-year-old event. Even more impressive was the number of…

After Laura Shunk received an e-mail from a national food pub working on a list of the best pastas around the country, she posted a piece spilling some of her own favorites, and asked readers for their own. And out poured some saucy suggestions — Luca D’Italia, Rioja, Mizuna (fair…

Over the course of my life in Denver, I’ve eaten a lot of mediocre Thai food, putting down bowls of curry and plates of pad Thai that were edible — but forgettable — up and down the Front Range. But this winter, after I returned from Southeast Asia, where I’d…

The Berkeley neighborhood certainly isn’t lacking for bars and restaurants. But when the owners of Tennyson’s Tap decided to set up shop on West 38th Avenue at the start of the year, they were betting that the neighborhood didn’t have another bar like it. “There are a lot of local…

Last night, in the midst of making final preparations to open Caffé, Bobby Stuckey and Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson put together a momentous Monday night wine dinner at Frasca Food and Wine featuring Sasa Radikon, a wine producer from Friuli that makes unique, complex macerated wines — but rarely leaves the vineyard,…

It’s official: after months of construction, oven problems, delays and, finally, stocking, outfitting and training, the third member of the growing Frasca Food and Wine family, Caffè, opened this morning. The sliver of a spot, tucked next to Pizzeria Locale, is filled with quirky artifacts that include paintings of roosters…

Once the Stock Show leaves town, there are only a few places where a bartender wearing a cowboy hat doesn’t look ridiculous. But here — ka-ching! Can you guess where I’m drinking? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to the week’s Where am I drinking/eating posts is…

Three years ago, designer Tran Wills took a trip to Chicago and was inspired by some of the cute stores she saw there — so inspired that she decided to open the Shoppe on East Colfax. “The concept was always going to be cupcakes, cereal and coffee, open till two…

A national publication is working on a list of the best pasta spots in the country; we got an e-mail this morning asking for a few of our favorite pasta plates in Denver. Early contenders:…

If you hurry, you can still grab yourself a nice, big Italian breakfast — with some eye-opening Italian/American/Mexican green chile on the side. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to the week’s Where am I drinking/eating posts is entered into a…

After the fourteen-day eating orgy of Denver Restaurant Week, Cafe Society has finally had time to digest all the entries in our best and worst stories from Denver Restaurant Week contest. And here they are:…

Cafe Society was already giving EatDenver decks to the best/worst Denver Restaurant Week stories (read the entries here), but our bonus offer of an EatDenver deck for the server who serves up the best story about surviving Denver Restaurant Week set off warning bells for SmokingLoon: Oh-oh, here comes the…

The best curry I’ve ever tasted was at a pop-up beer garden near the banks of the Mekong River on the border between Thailand and Laos. The proprietors had pieced together a kitchen from a series of elaborate camp stoves, and they used it to feed a huge crowd, waiters…

i-Fish, a new Pan-Asian restaurant, opens tonight at 2200 Market Street, in a completely redesigned space that was formerly occupied by Saucy’s, a short-lived barbecue joint. The kitchen, helmed by Jake Rand, who used to be the head sushi chef at Elway’s Downtown, is turning out what he calls “Pan-Asian…

Last night on America’s Next Great Restaurant, fast-casual restaurateur hopefuls designed their logos, hired chefs and cooked for a crowd of 1,000, competing against each other in a challenge that mimicked a fast-casual lunch rush. And hometown investor Steve Ells, along with cohorts Lorena Garcia, Curtis Stone and Bobby Flay,…

Ryan Hickey has cooked in several restaurants around town, but it was while manning the stoves at Colt & Gray, his current gig, that he really started thinking about perfectly good food that goes to waste in kitchens. “We throw a lot of stuff away because it doesn’t look good…

Late last week, Brian Laird, the executive chef of Russo’s Kitchen + Tavern, which opens on Thursday at Vallagio at Inverness, trotted out a non-stop medley of dishes during a staff tasting and orientation — and we were lucky enough to share in the food coma. And Laird, the former…