GABF: Go where the beer geeks go

The Great American Beer Festival begins in three days, and if you want to be ready for it, you should check with Café Society every afternoon for our survival tips. Because let’s face it: For the average, beer-drinking Joe, the Great American Beer Festival can be a sweaty, draining sausage-fest…

Ask the Critic: Shelter from the storm

I may be a little premature with this, but because it’s all rainy and (at least in my neighborhood) snowy this morning, I couldn’t help but start thinking about fall and winter menus.  This, of course, led immediately to my daydreaming about eating fall and winter menus, and the first…

The Festival Italiano does it right — with sausage on a stick!

The Festival Italiano at Belmar, which took place this past Saturday and Sunday, has quickly become one of the best festivals in Denver. Not only was there great food and wine, as well as very little shlock for sale, fewer stroller and dogs, and lower temperatures (September beat August hands…

The week’s culinary calendar: Beer today, beer tomorrow…

With Denver Beer Fest under way, the city is overflowing with beery events. Tonight at 6:30 p.m., Avery Brewery is sponsoring a Beers, Brats & Burlesque: Tastings & Tassels extravaganza at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret, 1601 Arapahoe Street; while Avery experts guide you through a full selection of their beers, you…

Milking It: Kellogg’s Low Fat Granola with Raisins

Low Fat Granola with Raisins Kellogg’s Rating: Two-and-a-half spoons out of four Cereal description: What isn’t in this stuff? There’s whole oats and whole grain wheat, some of it fused together in random wads, like meteorites collecting fragments during the trip through space, other parts shattered into jagged fragments. Add…

Under Fire: Through the gates

Our former Cafe Society intern just decided to chuck college in favor of a real education: as a sous chef. In Under Fire, he chronicles his daily trials and tribulations in the kitchen. I recently wrote about how I’ve started the transition from being a pantry guy making salads and…

Guess where I’m eating

Breakfast, my mother used to say, is the most important meal of the day.  And while she was probably right about that, one of the details not precisely fixed by that nugget of motherly wisdom was when, precisely, breakfast had to fall.Me?  I like a nice middle-of-the-night breakfast.  I like…

The other side of Grub Street: Polling the foodistas

A couple of weeks ago, the esteemed folks over at grubstreet.com (the daily internet food organ of New York Magazine) published their 2009 Grub Report — a survey of the state of our food union (their words, not mine). And while I generally enjoy the work done by those web-crazy…

Denver’s Ten Best Brewpubs

The Great American Beer Festival begins just six days from now. If you want to be ready (and believe me, we are soooo ready), you’ll need to check in here every afternoon for some lowdown, some insight and some tips on how to do it right. In the meantime, here’s…

Guess where I’m eating?

Everything I ate at dinner last night was astonishingly perfect, but the high-rise of pork belly and watermelon threatening to tumble into a pool of fragrant, sambal-spiked broth stole the show. I hadn’t even finished the first bite before I propped the plate on my lap, shuffled my chair off…

Guess where I’m drinking?

What do you get when you cross a framed Farrah Fawcett photo with Jesus candles and bottles of Jack, Knob Creek and Colorado’s own Stranahan’s? If you’re anything like those of us sitting at the bar where the above pic was snapped, there’s only one answer to that question: Drunk…

Strings serves up an unbeatable beet recipe

Harvest Week ends today. But should you feel inspired to try to recreate some of the dishes that Denver’s independent restaurants have been creating out of local ingredients, Strings, Noel Cunningham’s New American restaurant at 1700 Humboldt Street, has offered up chef Lance Barto’s recipe for Red Beet-Potato Gratin Ingredients:…

Under Fire: Mopping up and more rules for the sous

Our former Cafe Society intern just decided to chuck college in favor of a real education: as a sous chef. In Under Fire, he chronicles his daily trials and tribulations in the kitchen. What is a sous chef, anyway? The job can look like it’s one short step from the…

Top ten ways America ruined pizza

I blame pineapple. That’s really where it started to go wrong. Once you decide that fruit is a reasonable pizza topping (and no, Mr. Fun-Facts, tomatoes don’t count), it’s a short trip to a slice of tuna salad, brownie and lemongrass. So yes, America has adopted the pizza, and that…

Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill opens today in Park Meadows

Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill, a Centennial fast-casual concept restaurant chain, opens its fifth store today in Park Meadows, at 8225 South Chester in Englewood. Created in 2007 by Alon Mor, Garbanzo’s serves pitas, shwarma, falafel hummus and other mixed Mediterranean specialties with a healthy (no trans fat, no preservatives) bent. Its…

The gang’s all beer!

“These are my peeps,” proclaimed Mayor John Hickenlooper, the geologist-turned-brewpub-owner-turned-politician. He gestured to the crowd of brewers and other beery folks who’d gathered at the Wynkoop Brewing Co., the brewpub that Hick and a hearty crew of entrepreneurs started in LoDo more than twenty years ago. The Mayor is no…

Guess where I’m drinking?

Denver is really reaping the benefits of Harvest Week. Chefs aren’t the only ones doing wonders with local produce; bartenders have gotten into the act, too. Last night I had the most glorious smoked Colorado bass with heirloom tomatoes, green chile goat cheese, pepitas and peach dressing at one of…

Candy Girls: Droobles Best Blowing Gum

Normally gum wouldn’t be the first thing we’d grab for a review, but the fact that this one starts off as cotton candy certainly captured our attention.  Droobles Best Blowing Gum is one of the Harry Potter products that began its life as a literary invention of J.K. Rowling and…