Q: I am a fifty-year-old hippie engineer with a hot date for Saturday night. Where can we go so that she can dress to the nines? So many places are way casual even when they are expensive. She seems to prefer the more basic foods — steak, good salads –…
Nicole and Rick Fierro fell in love at first bite. The two met one night while noshing at Chinook and immediately found they had food in common. Rick was managing the Washington Park Grille (for years before that, he’d been a front-of-the-house man at various Berardi ventures, including Juanita’s Uptown);…
Until Piscos arrived on the scene, Cafe Brazil, at 3611 Navajo Street, was about the only South American game in town — and it doesn’t have nearly as choice a location or as snazzy an interior. But it certainly has excellent food, and that’s enough to ensure that this storefront…
Q: A few years ago in Port Arthur, Texas, in a working waterfront cafe/bar/dive, I had something called “rat toes.” These were breaded, deep-fried jalapeños, stuffed with your choice of boudin (blanc) sausage or a bread/seafood/ broth filling. Both were marvelous. Anyplace in the Mile High City where I can…
It was a weeknight in Cherry Creek North, and two Italian restaurants were open for business a few blocks away from each other. One was so crowded that at the check-in desk, the matre d’ looked like a tourist surrounded by street urchins waiting to pick his pocket outside of…
I once watched a tense Broncos playoff game at the jam-packed Edgewater Inn, and when the crucial moment arrived — your predominantly orange heroes down a field goal late in the fourth quarter, and Elway directing one of his trademark drives — a curious phenomenon took hold in the place…
The way things are going in the restaurant biz — the Colorado Restaurant Association reports that sales will be up about 6.1 percent this year over 1999, which should translate to $6.4 billion shelled out to Colorado eateries, and restaurant jobs in this state will increase by 2 percent, which…
Q: I come to Denver for about a week each month, and I’m looking for other restaurants with the quality of food you find at the Beehive and Café Brazil. Something romantic with excellent service and value, at $15 to $20 per entree, preferably not in the suburbs and not…
It takes about ten minutes to get to the table, walking slowly and deliberately, with two or three items dropped along the way, which means other diners are bumping their heads trying to help. Once we reach the table, there’s much deliberation over whether this time we need booster seats…
It’s a beautiful day in the Denver Tech Center neighborhood when an eatery as good as El Azteca moves in. This local favorite recently opened a fourth location, at 12201 East Arapahoe Road. Like the original El Azteca, at 3960 South Federal Boulevard in Sheridan, as well as the downtown…
From the day Teri Rippeto opened Potager in May 1997, her restaurant has been ripe for the picking. So why don’t more diners stop in and smell the roses? “We’ve been a tough restaurant to understand and adjust to, I think,” says Rippeto. “Our menu is different every month, we’re…
Q: Just wondering if there is a Thai restaurant that offers facilities for wedding receptions? A: You bet: Vientiane Garden, at 7113 Sheridan Boulevard in Westminster (303-429-4462), has a setup for a DJ, a big dance floor, and excellent Thai and Laotian food. Get your guests a big platter of…
Some professional chefs never intended to cook professionally. Exhibit A: Marvin Bronstein, who won Denverites’ hearts as well as their stomachs with his brief stint at the coincidentally named Marvin Gardens in the mid-’90s. Fifteen years before, he’d been a nurse practitioner working in the pediatrics department at the University…
In the December 30 Mouthing Off, I invited readers to guess when the very lame Dante Bichette’s Sports Bar and Grill, at 700 East 17th Avenue, would finally strike out. As it turns out, even the most pessimistic prediction was much rosier than reality, since the restaurant shut its doors…
The regulars at Rodney’s are a sufficiently worldly and world-weary lot that when John Elway used to fall by for a Scotch on the rocks and a game of backgammon, they paid him almost no mind. Too busy dismembering their slabs of prime rib and football-sized baked potatoes. Too busy…
Q: I have lived in Colorado since 1983 and Denver since 1988, but my wife and I will be leaving the sprawl in about six weeks for Bend, Oregon. I was wondering if you could give me a list of your top ten favorite restaurants in the city — not…
We’re just two steps inside the front door, and immediately the host and a couple of employees lounging around the foyer start working it hard, trying to turn “Hi, there. How many this evening? Smoking or non?” into an Abbott and Costello routine. Then our seater takes over, and he’s…
Some restaurants that serve family-style, like Buca di Beppo (see full review), actually welcome families. One of the best — although the fare is American rather than Italian — is Uncle Sam’s (5946 South Holly Street in Greenwood Village), which does a remarkable job of making even the toddler set…
In the early to mid-’90s, Carmine’s on Penn was the first restaurant to bring an updated take on family-style dining to Denver (“Love, Italian Style,” August 17, 1994). The concept was all about big flavors and big portions and, in Carmine’s case, some big egos. But now, six years later,…
As anyone who’s seen Demolition Man knows, the only eatery with the ability to survive the Apocalypse — a kind of culinary cockroach, you might say — is Taco Bell. And the way things are headed right now, it’s quite possible that, even though we’ve survived Y2K (so far), at…
A recent, and harried, visit to the newly renovated King Soopers at 13th Avenue and Speer Boulevard quickly turned into a time-warped version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Because all of the Whos in Whoville could not have found the canning supplies needed to make a last-minute gift of…
Is heaven located on tatty West Colfax? Well, maybe. To find out for yourself, try this: Seated at your sun-drenched window table at the cozy, two-year-old Los Reyes, beneath a lovely watercolor depicting a hacienda kitchen, order a plate of sopitos. A specialty of west central Mexico’s state of Michoacán,…
