Popular, you’re gonna be popular! In Wicked, when the male lead asks, “So — what’s the most swankified place in town?,” good witch Galinda answers, “That would be the Ozdust Ballroom.” If the Broadway show were set in Denver, she definitely would have named Bar Luxe (goofily pronounced bar lukes…
In honor of a visit from someone who will soon fill the post of Italian Representative to the Institute of Drinking Studies — should he actually get hired here in Denver after more than one representative burst into his interview to make drinking plans for the coming weekend — we…
There was a time when Java Moon was hailed as the conquering hero of the Golden Triangle. It was a coffeehouse in a neighborhood that desperately needed one (you know, to balance out all the dive hotels and new lofts and pawnshops and galleries and whatnot), a coffeehouse that also…
Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away, there was a restaurant ruled by a king named Larry. Now, King Larry wasn’t an evil king. He wasn’t cruel or ruthless, as kings so often are. He didn’t abuse the peasantry of Hotcakesland, didn’t cut off peoples’…
After visiting Carmine’s on Penn (see review), I decided to check in with Carmine’s original owner, Larry Herz. I hadn’t talked to him since he announced he was closing his Go Fish Grille, at 250 Josephine Street (which had replaced his Indigo at the same address), and going to work…
One recent blustery night, suffering from my second cold of the season but feeling like I was coughing up bird feathers and had become the first North American victim of the bird-flu pandemic, I grabbed a few friends to test out this new proverb: “Drink a cold, feed a fever.”…
My New Year’s resolution is to be like U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo, only a little more conservative. I decided this after spending part of the holidays in Summit County with several million people from out-of-state who I doubt had ever sat in chairs, much less been schooled in skiing etiquette…
When I wrote my original review of 3 Sons (“Same Old, Same Old,” September 11, 2003), people called me an assassin. They called me a thug and an asshole and a brainless, potty-mouthed jerkoff who didn’t know nothin’ from nothin’. What I didn’t get was a single letter sympathizing with…
It’s not often that a fellow like myself — a dedicated carnivore, shameless bacon addict, fan of all things larded, bloody and fat-spackled — goes looking for health food. Ten cups of coffee a day, taken as preventative medicine against potential lifestyle complications like sleep; ice cream for breakfast, Cuban…
The problem wasn’t so much that we were drinking, but that neither of us had really stopped in a couple of days. When my little brother and I get together back home — as annually as we can manage — drinking is just what we do. It’s not to excess…
I believe Spanky’s Roadhouse (1800 East Evans Avenue) chose its name in hopes of generating buzz before patrons even crossed the threshold. Whenever anyone who was born at least twenty years ago hears the word “roadhouse,” he immediately thinks of the cheesy ’80s movie with Patrick Swayze and then almost…
Okay, so John Holly’s Asian Bistro in Lone Tree isn’t Super Star Asian (the incredible dim sum place at 2200 West Alameda) or the old Mee Yee Lin (another incredible dim sum place that became a merely passable dim sum place with great shu mai and incredible dumpling soup after…
Mama T is leaving. She’s moving to Cincinnati, where her husband is working a factory job now, where there’s another apartment waiting, another community expecting her. She’s going with her son Rafael, and she’s taking her pots and pans. She’s taking her living-room set with the white lace doilies. She’s…
Drink of the week? We were looking for the drink of the season, and it wasn’t going down all that well. Twenty-eight restaurants had signed up for the Denver Convention & Visitors Bureau’s first Mile High Libations contest — that added up to 31 drinks, each bearing a Mile-High friendly…
I consider it one of the great fortunes of my life that, for as long as I have been my own man, I have never had a normal year — one that could be anticipated, seen through end to end, navigated on an even keel. All of my years have…
I have not always been a good guy, and I have not always lived a good life. I have committed sins venial, carnal and culinary, have knowingly done wrong and sometimes enjoyed it quite a bit. I have vices, secret shames, public hatreds, a checkered past — and remain, in…
Okay, so it’s not very often that I come down on the same side intellectually and ideologically as the folks from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. As a matter of fact, it’s not very often that I can stand to be in the same room with any of…
I recently started working out with a personal trainer named Michael. When I complain that the weights are too heavy, Michael tells me that he confused my weights with those of “Mrs. Peterson, who is eighty years old and just entered assisted living.” When I tell him I think I…
‘Tis the season when it’s socially acceptable to act like someone who hit puberty and was given the keys to a brand-new muscle car on the same day. The culmination of this season is the office Christmas party, which rivals revealing government secrets as a foolproof way to ruin a…
Unlike Aquarium — the fish restaurant at the Downtown Aquarium (see review) — Eat Street at the Denver Children’s Museum is not serving any of its less successful exhibits for lunch. Nor did operators Jay and Emily Solomon (who also own the nearby Jay’s Patio Cafe on 15th Street) feel…
Planned communities creep me out. It’s something about their zero-down homogeneity, the Stepford-ness of their razor-straight streets and perfectly manicured medians, their covenant controls and faux-utopian doubleplusgood Orwellian weirdness. It’s the way they build their own parks, schools and churches on the same templates that govern the placement of their…
I don’t spill a lot of ink writing about chefs and restaurants doing charity events. A lot of you probably think that’s because I’m a miserable, Scrooge-ish crank full of spite and humbuggery. And while I certainly am, the real reason I don’t keep track of every bake-off, giveaway, beneficent…
