Food & Drink

The Colorado Wine Industry Development Board has just announced its fourth restaurant recognition program, to single out restaurants that promote Colorado wine. Last year’s winners were Juicy Lucy’s (the original, not the second spot in Cherry Creek), the Mercury Cafe and Restaurant Six89 in Carbondale. For this year’s program, awards will be given…

Nation’s Restaurant News, the bible of the restaurant industry, has reported that David Giesen, who owns Steak Escape and Johnny Rockets franchises in Colorado, on Monday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. According to court filings, his Giesen Restaurant Enterprises LLC and Rocket Restaurant Ventures LLC have debts of between…

Tocabe: An American Indian Eatery opens tomorrow at 3536 West 44th Avenue, and even in a city stuffed with restaurants, it has the potential to set itself apart. The creation of Ben Jacobs, a member of the Osage tribe whose home is in northeast Oklahoma, Tocabe (the word is Osage for “‘blue”, Jacob’s mom’s favorite color) will be…

Mezcal kicked off its fifth anniversary celebration last night, a five-day affair full of five-buck deals through December 20: five-hour happy hours, five tacos for $5, five tamales for $5, tequila shots and coin-style margaritas for five bucks. (BTW, we’d pay five times that for a plate of the barbecued lamb ribs,…

212 Salad and Sandwich Company 1710 Sherman Street 303-861-7212 42nd Street Corned beef, turkey, coleslaw, lettuce and thousand island dressing on rye $6.49 I don’t know if it’s a rule that every New York-style deli that opens outside of the five boroughs has to name all of its sandwiches after…

“You know what they call French food in Paris?” the chef asked, repeating his shtick. “What, chef?” I responded, my fingers sore and shredded from peeling hard-boiled eggs under tap water, my brain numbed from hours of prep. I’d heard the question before, as well as the answer, but that…

I knew the news was going to be bad as soon as I got William Kennedy, one of the two partners at Santa Fe Tequila Company (along with Joe Falco), on the blower this afternoon. It was in his voice, in the defeated slump of his shoulders that I could actually hear over…

Downtown Littleton has a new neighborhood joint: Merle’s, which occupies the old Merle’s Alignment Center at 2609 West Main Street, which started life as a gast station in the 1930s. The building was unoccupied for a number years; and a group of partners all chipped in and bought the place, turning it into…

Bones looks like it will win the battle to be the first of the town’s new noodle houses to open. Frank Bonanno’s place at 301 East Seventh Avenue already has its name — the restaurateur’s childhood nickname — etched on the windows, and the renovation of the space inside (the old…

Today, Wichita. Tomorrow, the world. Smashburger — with its secret process that creates what Jason Sheehan called “meat candy” — has been a smash since the Colorado-based concept opened its first restaurant at 1120 South Colorado Boulevard two years ago.Since then, the owners have opened six more spots along the Front…

Last month, the Santa Fe Tequila Company at 901 West Tenth Avenue (shown above)abruptly closed its doors — shortly after opening a second outlet in Littleton. Although Jason Sheehan wasn’t a big fan of the original spot, which was close to empty when he visited it this summer, he’s no…

A few days ago, we noticed the sign on Jesse Morreale’s new hotel/retail/restaurant project at First and Broadway, which noted that a restaurant named Sketch would be going in. Sketch, of course, was the name of Morreale’s short-lived concept at 250 Steele, in the space now occupied by Tambien. But…

Wingin’ It, a local wing joint boasting 26 different wing sauces made from scratch, recently closed two of its four locations: 6860 South Lincoln Court in Greenwood Village and 7541 South University Boulevard in Centennial. But you can still get Wingin’ It’s deep-fried Twinkies, candy bars and Oreos–winner of 2003…

It looked like the year’s coolest project: turning the old EZ Mop building at 1223-1227 East 17th Avenue into a bar, with a renovated interior but the original EZ Mop sign out front. The advertising possibilities were endless: “Come sop up some alcohol at EZ Mop”; “A few drinks here, and…

Hung Kee, the Chinese restaurant that served unbelievably cheap Cantonese cuisine, has vacated its longtime spot at 1015 South Federal Boulevard. That space is now occupied by an Asian drycleaner’s, and when I tried to find out if Hung Kee had moved somewhere, I didn’t understand the answer. So if anyone reading…

  Okay, so I already wrote about the urbanspoon iPhone app, but just after I filed that blog, I went out back for a smoke (brrrr) with Sean, the IT guy who first introduced me to the gadget in question, and he showed me a couple other sweet (and marginally creepy/nerdy) things…

I am a luddite. And I don’t mean that lightly.  I am not some cutesy dipwad who gets flustered trying to work the copy machine.  I don’t eschew the use of computers out of some misplaced paranoia over the loss of my IBM Selectric.  I am not your grandma who…

Lucky Charms with the New Hourglass Marshmallow Charm General Mills Rating: Three and a half spoons out of four Cereal description: Oat cereal pieces in a variety of shapes. Most of them call to mind pagan wall drawings: X’s, stemmed triangles that suggest puffy trees and three-leaf clovers (guess mascot…

  The Lancer Lounge at 233 Seventh Avenue is one of this town’s great dives, a spot where you can always count on a collegial evening of drinking, as Drew Bixby recently reported in Drunk of the Week. What you can’t count on is finding food there. The most recent…

Steuben’s will host a toy drive to benefit the Denver Rescue Mission tonight, beginning at 9 p.m. and running until about 2 a.m. And if you donate a toy, not only does God give you a pat on the back, but you receive a free cocktail or Great Divide beer! The cocktails are creations…