Once is an event, twice is a coincidence, but three times? Three times is the beginning of an addiction, and for the Bush administration, Heaven Dragon Chinese Cuisine and Lounge is starting to look like an unhealthy habit. It was back in 2002 that President George W. Bush got his…
Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.” Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said that, and I believe it. What a person eats says volumes about his personality; his choice in food speaks with a clear voice straight from the heart and gut. And that’s why I…
My first cocktail-waitress job was at the Bull & Bush, and even back in the day, I knew the Bull was a special place. A Cheers-like place, full of womanizers like Sam Malone, lovable losers like Norm, annoying know-it-alls like Cliff, and at least one wiseass young cocktail waitress like…
I recently went to the happiest place on Earth — and no, I don’t mean Disneyland, which calls itself “The Happiest Place on Earth” because it has bathrooms cleaner than yours will ever be and employees who are happier than you’ll ever be. True, I have extremely fond memories of…
One of the best Vietnamese restaurants in the country, Dac Hoa, is in Rochester, New York. It’s a small, Barton Fink-ish place, with a perpetual pall of dishwater gray light, rickety tables and peeling everything in a borderline-creepy neighborhood. Still, most people who eat there have no idea how good…
Recounting the history behind Chez Thuy’s exquisite cuisine (see page 61), I was reminded of this episode: During the siege of the French at Dien Bien Phu by the Viet Minh, one of the last cargo drops recorded before the base was overrun included, in addition to the usual ammunition…
I have a terrible weakness for young, handsome, cocky bartenders. Young and handsome alone don’t do it, but add a little arrogance and I’m a goner. So when our young, handsome bartender said “Tsingtao is a Chinese beer, you moron, and we only have Japanese beers,” I knew I was…
There’s nothing like a bad case of hiccups to ruin an otherwise enjoyable evening of greasy food and excellent drink. I’m talking about hiccups that rip through your body like a seizure, giving you a near-fatal case of whiplash and leaving the taste of bile in the back of your…
The International House of Pancakes seemed like the obvious choice for breakfast. I had friends in town — non-foodie friends who couldn’t pick a head of endive out of a lineup even if I spotted them three food groups — and the IHOP was walking distance from their hotel. We…
Agave Underground never really had a chance. It was simply the wrong place in the wrong space at the wrong time. And what a wrong space: This spot at 250 Steele Street was briefly Agave, and before that, Bistro 250, a place so short-lived it closed almost before it opened,…
When my dining companion asked the waitress, “Is your salmon wild or is it farm-raised, and if it is wild, has it been injected with red dye?” I thought, holy Grateful Dead, if that isn’t affirmation I’m in Boulder, I don’t know what is. So I gave my Boulder-raised friend…
So I’m driving down the road the other day, flashing dirty looks and giving the finger to all the morons with cell phones stuck in their ears, when I notice this whistling sound coming from my sunroof. Perplexed, I look up to see that my ski racks are bent down…
I saw successively imprinted on every face the glow of desire, the ecstasy of enjoyment, and the perfect calm of utter bliss. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste It was the strangest sort of party, uncomfortably intimate and cheerful for no reason at all. This was 1994, maybe…
While I enjoyed Little India (see review), eating there made me think about the best Indian place I’d tried in Denver: Maruti Narayan’s. Because of Narayan’s location at 12200 East Cornell Avenue in Aurora — way back in a forgotten corner of the multi-tiered Regatta Plaza, a graveyard of great…
During college, we’d go to a notorious party town to blow off steam after a long stretch of school in a notoriously boring town. We’d all shack up at some condo where, after the three beds and two couches were taken, the safest spots to sleep were under the kitchen…
When I came to Colorado ten years ago and immediately started railing against the typical Coloradan’s lack of driving skill (“It’s snowing/raining — we’d better slow down to half the speed limit!”), I was informed that Coloradans (or whatever you call yourselves) weren’t at fault; it was all the damn…
I stopped by on a whim, at about five-thirty in the afternoon, drawn in by both the action and the tickle on my internal culinary Geiger counter. Regardless of what the clock said, I wanted lunch, since I’d slept really late and already had two dinners scheduled for that night…
It’s been two years and change since I walked out of my last kitchen. That last one, in Albuquerque, wasn’t even a good kitchen, but I remember it with an irrational fondness because it was the last one, and the last of anything is always special. I was (believe it…
Sparrows are considered rather common, but common is not the word you would use to describe the new restaurant that bears the bird’s name. An enthusiastic foursome is trying to make Sparrow fly in the space that over the past two decades has housed Transalpin, JV’s the Cork, Sacre Bleu…
Many things cause guys to regress and act half their ages. Women, for example, can turn even accomplished hounds into virtual teenagers who will do anything — including change their hairstyle, clothing and job — to impress them. When a guy gets “sick” with the sniffles, he can put on…
It’s the simplest thing, and it’s almost universally overlooked in the fast-paced, big-business kitchens of the world. There it’s a throwaway, a gimme course, with the duty of making it generally given over to the lowest guy on the galley totem pole. The soup. The free bread on the table…
It was a deeply and profoundly abysmal lasagna that I wouldn’t feed to an enemy. A few layers of limp pasta swimming in an acid bath of red sauce that would’ve embarrassed Chef Boyardee, stuffed with rank ricotta and topped with some desiccated parsley dandruff — are you kidding me?…
