Cora Faye’s Cafe

The tablecloths at Cora Faye’s Cafe — heavy, almost like oilcloth but patterned with flowers — are a little sticky. And so is the air. It’s close and warm in the cluttered front dining room, the atmosphere rich with smells that are both food smells and the smells of people…

The French Connection

Last year, I did a three-minute radio piece on my deep and abiding love for barbecue. I’d been asked to do it by Jay Allison, who was producing a show for NPR called This I Believe — a resurrection of a project originally started by Edward R. Murrow in the…

B.J.’s Port

Ms. B.J. mumbles an apology to no one in particular because the beer’s not chilled enough, but Sean and I don’t mind. It’s already started to cool off outside, and we’re at B.J.’s Port, 2801 Welton Street, to enjoy ourselves, not complain. So we pour the contents of our first…

Tequila Pocket Shot

Take your best shot. A couple of Saturdays ago, a friend and I headed to the Kiowa Creek Sporting Club in Bennett, site of the Independence Institute’s ATF party, which celebrates alcohol, tobacco and firearms. But not necessarily in that order: Even though I wasn’t driving, I’d been given strict…

Yazoo Barbecue Company

I’m fairly sure that if you were to make a list of all the songs least likely to be heard in a Deep South barbecue shack, “Dead Man’s Party,” by Oingo Boingo, would be damn close to the top of the list. And yet that’s just what was playing over…

A Heavy, Doilied Dose of Soul Food

A sit down at Cora Faye’s Cafe. The tablecloths at Cora Faye’s Cafe — heavy, almost like oilcloth but patterned with flowers — are a little sticky. And so is the air. It is close and warm in the cluttered front dining room, the atmosphere rich with smells that are…

Chutney’s

On the floor at Chutney’s, manager Subash Shetty moves silently from table to table, filling gaps in service left by his waiters and waitresses. He takes drink orders. He answers questions the servers can’t — how to pronounce tikka-e-noorjahani and which is spicier, the Peshawari chicken or the chicken Chettinad…

Space Case

In last week’s Bite Me, I talked about Sushi Moon (6585 Greenwood Plaza Boulevard, Greenwood Village) and the troubles that operators Jessie Son and Young Joe Kwon were having finding their place in the already well-defined niche of pan-Asian fine dining. They’d recently lost a chef and were looking for…

Ace-Hi Tavern

It’s never been about slumming. Or kitsch. Or camp. No, Barbara Middlebrook drinks at the Ace-Hi Tavern — a dive bar right down to its shag carpet and cash-only policy — for the same reason that she looks forward to walks down Main Street during breaks from her job at…

Colorado Bulldog

Fear of flying. There are a few places in town I’ve always wanted to try, but they don’t seem like the kind of spot a woman should visit alone. And so every time I drove past the Piper Inn, I felt like I’d had my wings clipped. I’d been driving…

Royal Peacock

Chutney’s and its chef, Ravi Chandra, present a view of Indian cuisine that’s somewhat above and to the left of the norm — but they’re not alone. The Royal Peacock, which opened in Boulder back in 1983, has always offered Indian food that took its inspiration not from the classical…

Burn Notice

This week Jason Sheehan reviews Chutney’s. Photo by Mark Manger. A few years ago, while working in Albuquerque, I made one dumbass move that almost accidentally ended my cooking career — a full three or four months before I ended it quite deliberately on my own. It was a Tuesday…

Osaka Sushi

I remember deciding, years ago, that sushi was the most perfect food on the planet. Bear in mind that this was long before I’d actually eaten my first piece of sushi. And that this was coming from a kid who’d grown up in a blue-collar neighborhood in a blue-collar city…

Limón Turns One

Last week, Alex Gurevich called to let me know that Limón, his killer Novoandino/Peruvian restaurant at 1618 East 17th Avenue (“Small Miracles,” February 8), is turning one on July 12. He and his guys are throwing a party — live music, drink specials all night, complimentary frittatas, that kind of…

The Irish Hound

Everybody has a really good first bar story. Often it’s a tale about a group celebrating somebody’s 21st birthday by seeing just how close people can get to death and still be fine the next morning. Sometimes it’s a saga about using a bad fake ID to sneak into the…

Grapefruit Margarita

Wasted youth. When I first walked into Centro, the reconcepting of Cafe Rhumba by Dave Query (who also owns Lola, Jax, West End Tavern and Zolo), I immediately knew that I would like it. Even though the food at Rhumba was far from stellar, I always enjoyed the place: Query…

Domo

While Osaka Sushi (see review) might be the kind of place I wish were around when I was still a young, easily intimidated sushi eater, Domo is the kind of place I’m happy to have around now that I’m all growed up and know what I like. So what do…

San Lorenzo Ristorante

I eat a lot, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It’s my job, after all, but sometimes even I am amazed at my rapacious capacity for putting on the feedbag. Like a couple of weeks ago, when I was down south with Laura eating pancakes — just a…

Art and Commerce

I’ve written some good menus in my time. Bouncing around as much as I did while wearing the whites, I got a lot of practice. Italian menus, French menus, tasting menus and complex, multi-course event menus inspired by things as ridiculous as Eastern European liquors and the birthday party of…

The Blue Walleye

If you ask a real fisherman, he’ll tell you that walleye is one of the best eating fish. It’s not a particularly pretty fish, but it’s the reason that God made beer, beer batter and Shore Lunch. I’ve never been deep-sea fishing, but fighting a fish while you’re strapped into…

Horny Purple People Eater Margarita

A change will do you good — and the changes taking place in Denver are amazing. Fifteen years ago, La Fiesta tried to expand from its weekday, lunch-only schedule into the evening hours, but it just didn’t work. Back then, the Curtis Park neighborhood was not even approaching a transitional…

Chianti Ristorante

Craig D’Alessandro of San Lorenzo Ristorante (see review) is not the only guy to come out of the Il Fornaio restaurant family and make a name for himself in the suburbs. Before he opened Venice in LoDo, before he opened the other Venice (which is just walking distance from San…