Food & Drink

Last Thursday night, Wolfgang Puck, the Austrian-born culinary force whose restaurant empire spans the globe, touched down at the Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch in Beaver Creek for a blow-out wine dinner at Spago, the resort’s tony in-house restaurant that Puck inspired. The dinner, a benefit for First Descents, an organization that…

Years ago, when I was writing for Sunset magazine, I did a roundup of Colorado’s best barbecue joints, which included the spot whose sauces are spotlighted in the above pic. The pitmaster who oversees the joint takes as much pride in those sauces as he does the smoke in his…

Just two weeks ago, several of the city’s food trucks added a new weekly stop to their rosters: Wednesday appearances at 15th and California, the site of the Tiri’s Garden farmers’ market. That crowd was led by the Steamin’ Demon and the Paris on the Platte truck, and they also…

A Lakewood man got a trespassing notice for telling a Safeway deli employee that he likes large chicken breasts, Michael Roberts reports…

Heather and Doug Buchman are closing down their Second Street Art Market and Wine Bar in Monument. “The time has come for us to move forward from this experience and do more of what we do best,” they report. The wine bar will remain open through Saturday; after that, they’ll…

EatDenver’s Harvest Week, a seven-day jubilation that pays homage to Colorado’s bountiful crops, sprouts today, with nearly forty of the city’s top independent restaurants strutting seasonal menus showcasing locally sourced ingredients, libations and products. Think it’s too late to snatch a seat at one of the nearly 40 restaurants celebrating…

The explosion of cocktail culture in Colorado was ignited by a legion of talented bartenders working to prove that their craft is more than mixing rum and Cokes; it’s creating drinks that reflect their deep understanding of spirits. And few bartenders have done more to influence that culture than James…

Before the era of mobile trucks descended on the Mile High City, Drew and Ashleigh Shader were busy running the Atomic Cowboy and Fat Sully’s, housed in the same space at 3237 East Colfax. But after trips to Portland and New York City, the couple decided they’d like to own…

Southwest suburbanites are all over the arrival of Virgilio’s Pizzeria and Wine Bar, which opened on Saturday in the former Johnny Carino’s plot at 10025 West San Juan Way, in Littleton. The behemoth 6,400-square-foot space is the second restaurant from owner and pizza master Virgilio Urbano, who opened his first…

A Denver-based restaurant operator is adding some burgers to its pie-centric portfolio for a cool $27.5 million. American Blue Ribbon Holdings LLC, which last year acquired the Village Inn and Baker’s Square restaurant chains, last week bought the Ohio-based Max & Erma’s out of bankruptcy…

“We just made our first dollar, and then we lost it in a game of rock-paper-scissors,” says Biker Jim, Denver’s sultan of fat sausages. The game went down at 9:30 this morning, when Biker Jim sold a Coke for a buck to his first customer on the grounds of the…

Skee-ball, anyone? The game’s blinking lights beckon from the back of Stoney’s Bar and Grill, which just opened yesterday at 1111 Lincoln Street. “There’s another one coming,” promises co-owner Will Trautman. We’ll cut the place some slack, since Stoney’s just opened. Besides, there are plenty of other things to keep…

Cafe Society served up five Guess where? contests last week, featuring everything from this still unidentified shochu margarita to yet another meal at go-to Benny’s to a disappointing cioppino. For correctly identifying it (twice!) as coming from Highland Pacific, Bsquared wins an EatDenver deck…

Behold the final winning entry in our Sunday summer supper contest. Just in case you missed all this, here’s the short version: We asked readers to suggest a name for the coalition of chefs — Alex Seidel (Fruition and Fruition Farms), Jeff Osaka (twelve), Justin Brunson (Masterpiece Deli and Lechon),…

Interstate Kitchen + Bar’s Andre Lobato, the featured kitchen wizard in this week’s Chef and Tell interview, turns out one of the best happy hour menus in Denver, in part because it includes popcorn pelted with bacon and spicy peanuts. And, really, what’s better than that? “The first bar I…