A few weeks ago I awoke dogged by a beautiful fantasy. This was it: Every day precisely at noon, I would rise from my typewriter, don my fedora, slip a detective novel into my suit pocket and head over to the Union Station lunch counter, where a sneering counter boy…
Union label: Redfish Seafood Kitchen, reviewed by Robin Chotzinoff in this issue, doesn’t look (or taste) like part of a chain–but you sure can tell its public relations firm is from out of town. A release faxed over on July 29 announces, “Soooo, Denver’s been having a little heat wave…
When partners George Blincoe and Michael Reed brag that their brewpub serves the “best dam beer” and “best dam food” in Colorado, they can be forgiven the hyperbole, if not the pun–because when you open yet another brewery/restaurant in a county that boasts more breweries per capita than any other…
A shot in the dark: According to the announcement stuffed into the mailing envelope, “Mexico’s Legendary Secret Hits the U.S.” in the form of Don Julio tequila. But the big secret may be how the importer, Remy Amerique, Inc., got a liquor sample through the U.S. Postal Service, which delivered…
What’s on tapas? So far, the summer’s big food trend is the return of tapas–essentially dim sum for the bar crowd. The town’s last two places to really push tapas are now pushing up daisies: Majorca looked great but business wasn’t; its old space at 777 East 17th Avenue is…
So many of the dreamy things attributed to childhood are a crock. The innocence, for instance, or “the carefree days of…” A popular parenting cliche is: “What are you complaining about? You’ll never have it this good again.” But all of this is just plain wrong. It’s hard and weird…
Another opening, another chow: After a lull of, oh, about a minute, restaurants are popping up in LoDo faster than fly balls in nearby Coors Field. Last Thursday Redfish Seafood Kitchen opened in the Union Station space previously occupied by TGIFriday (and thank God that one’s gone); even though this…
Cafe Brazil has always been a curveball to throw at someone from out of town. It’s particularly fun when visitors assume there’s not much to eat in Denver other than big haunches of elk–and then they stumble into the turquoise-and-salmon-pink cinder-block interior of this tiny northwest Denver bistro. Order them…
If he weren’t stoned, he said, he would never have eaten the food at Elitch Gardens. Even stoned, the red-mohawked teen was reluctant to try most of the snack items we picked up at the amusement park. And after eating the food myself, I can’t say that I blamed my…
Catering to my needs: Last month, while in line for the buffet at a wedding reception, I chatted with a socialite who throws many parties at her expansive Cherry Hills Village pad. She asked me which caterer I recommended, and I gave her three names: Bistro Boys (the catering sidearm…
Getting the best of them: As usual, there are a few hotly contested awards in this year’s Best of Denver issue, which came out last week to cheers and jeers from readers and the restaurant community. The most controversial item (so far) seems to be my selection of Sonoda’s, with…
The voice leaving the message sounded sadder than that of a person whose best friend had just died. “I’m so, so worried that this place is going to close,” the caller said. “If you went there, you’d just fall in love with the food. Please visit it and see what…
Get three women together–two married with children and one completely unencumbered–for dinner and drinks, and it’s like a Vietnamese order-by-numbers meal: You never know what the heck’s gonna come out. Luckily, our trio was throwing the dice at Saigon Bowl, a two-year-old restaurant occupying a space in the Far East…
With Child: After an evening of red meat and red wine last week with Julia Child, sponsored by the Colorado chapter of the American Institute of Wine & Food (which Julia founded sixteen years ago with Robert Mondavi, Richard Graff and others) and held at Brasserie Z, I came to…
After eating at Kevin Taylor’s Brasserie Z, I have only one thing to say: Kevin, you can hold that banana between your knees. Correction: I have only one negative thing to say, because that banana was the only flaw I found during three otherwise stellar meals at Taylor’s new restaurant…
Book ’em: If you’re one of those people who loves chain food–and I know you’re out there, furtively wolfing down T.G.I. Friday’s potato skins–then Top Secret Restaurant Recipes will let you hide your problem in the privacy of your own home (and keep you from throwing any more of your…
Cutting the Cheesecake: Dixons Downtown Grill, reviewed above, isn’t the only restaurant affected by the new Cheesecake Factory, at 1201 16th Street. Part of a California chain, this big, splashy eatery serves big portions and some splashy food, but the Factory certainly isn’t good enough to warrant the multitudes lining…
Stop going to the Cheesecake Factory. I mean it. The food’s fine, but it’s not worth an hour-long wait at lunch. And if you keep going there, the few locally owned restaurants left in LoDo–the ones whose owners have been lamenting the long lines at the chain Cheesecake Factory when…
I once overheard a woman extol the charms of a local French restaurant. “The waitstaff is so rude, it’s great,” she said, not a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “It’s just like eating in Paris.” That’s a little extreme, but certainly the escape factor is one of the attractions…
When the Wynkoop Brewing Company started up back in 1988, no one had a clue how big the microbrewery business would become. Or, for that matter, how big the Wynkoop would get: Today it’s the nation’s largest brewpub. But on opening day, the crowds flocked to that lonely LoDo outpost…
If Denver were a starving Third World country, Noel Cunningham would be its Mother Teresa. At Strings, his eleven-year-old restaurant, he does his bit to feed the masses–at least, the relatively upscale masses. But Noel Cunningham’s generosity extends far beyond that. The longtime restaurateur helped create the decade-old Share Our…
A poke in the ribs: Sam Taylor’s Bar-B-Q, which relocated to 435 South Cherry Street a few months ago after a decade at the Links at City Park, used to serve my favorite bones in town. Now I’m not so sure. I stopped by Sam’s new location on Mother’s Day–a…
