We thought our first meal at Señor Pepe’s (reviewed this week) moved at a snail’s pace — and it did. But on a recent trip to La Junta, we really experienced life in the slow lane. We couldn’t get a decent meal for love or money — and what we…
Welcome to the Hotel California, restaurant-style: You can order anytime you like, but you can never eat. It wasn’t always this way at Denver’s former Hotel Paris, brought back from the dead a decade ago as the trendsetting La Coupole. But that restaurant closed mysteriously one day this past spring,…
You won’t find the real thing at La Brasserie (see this week’s review), and French food in general is not Denver’s culinary strong point. But there are a few good choices out there — especially if you’re willing to drive an hour or so. One of my favorite French restaurants…
Service with a smile. Not harried help with a grimace. Not a smile paired with the total cluelessness that you might actually need a fork to get that food into your mouth and that you might want your meal before it is the temperature of that guy’s body they found…
Since it opened several years ago, eating at Japon has been a little like fishing in the Pacific — although we often reeled in keepers, the going could get rough. On my first visit to this whimsically decorated Japanese restaurant, the cooked items were far superior to the raw (“A…
Papa J’s Italian Restaurant and Lounge (see review) isn’t the only Big Daddy of red sauce north of Denver — there’s also Papa Frank’s Restaurant and Lounge at 6570 West 120th Avenue in Broomfield, in the Villager Square Shopping Center. And Papa Frank’s has a history, too: owner Tom Rizzi…
Meet the king of the middle road. Plunked down next to I-25 in an asphalt jungle of hotels and motels that have no restaurants, much less room service, Vasil’s EuroGrille enjoys a captive audience. Too bad those captives won’t find anything particularly enjoyable at Vasil’s. If this is a EuroGrille,…
Not too far from Vasil’s EuroGrille (see this week’s review) sits the Inverness Hotel and Golf Club (200 Inverness Drive West in Englewood). The Garden Terrace serves breakfast, lunch and dinner daily, but the all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch — which has snagged Best of Denver honors two years running — and…
The cute college-age guy is wearing nothing but a pair of denim shorts, and he’s obviously freezing his butt off. He sticks his hand into the waterfall, shivers, then turns to his diving partner, another cute college-age guy, and asks, “Man, can’t they turn the heat up?” as he runs…
Unlike at Casa Bonita (see review), everyone is fully clothed at Hacienda Colorado, 5059 South Wadsworth Boulevard in Lakewood — and the food is delicious. But the two eateries do have something in common: the Black-Eyed Pea. The corporation once owned Casa Bonita, and Hacienda co-owner Tim Schmidt owns all…
Ready or not, here they come. When husband-and-wife team Tim Elenteny and Janice Henning decided to open a restaurant in the space formerly occupied by Diced Onions, the San Francisco transplants didn’t know a lot about Denver’s dining scene. “We thought we’d come in and get all set up, have…
Remember tapas? The Spanish tradition, which calls for serving up little tidbits of food meant to be snacked on with drinks, enjoyed another wave of popularity in Denver during the last year or two, then receded back into restaurant-trend oblivion. But one survivor remains: Ilios. Owned by Dee Diamond, who’s…
No restaurant is happy about no-shows, but the smaller the place, the harder it’s hit when people make reservations and then fail to cancel them — much less show up. The Beehive avoids this problem altogether by taking reservations only for groups of five or more. “We stopped taking reservations…
After over twenty years in business, the Zang Brewing Co. just won the location, location, location lottery. The original Zang Brewing Co. belonged to Bavarian immigrant and would-be miner Philip Zang, who bought the failing Rocky Mountain Brewery after he failed to strike it rich in the gold fields. He…
There aren’t very many chefs who can take the night off and leave their restaurant in the hands of their employees — at least, not without worrying that the next morning, the kitchen will look like a food warehouse exploded and the answering machine will be filled with forty messages…
Okay, there are two kinds of bar diners in the world: those who would rather eat and drink at Zang Brewing Co. (see review above), with its downscale, inexpensive food and harried, overcrowded setting, and those who prefer places like The Pub at Nordstrom, which serves upscale Continental fare in…
Like father, like sons. Although the Armatas boys tried career paths other than the one pursued by their dad and his dad, they knew it was futile. “We figured that sooner or later, we’d be in the restaurant business,” says Alex Armatas, the middle brother. “We all tried to do…
Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. But first you need to tame the beast with a new chef, a new location and even a new, improved name, like that of Basil Ristorante, now occupying the former home of the Parlour, at 846 Broadway. I first visited…
Denver has several diner-style eateries at which the triumvirate of Mexican, American and breakfast foods reigns supreme. For starters, there’s the other Armatas joint, Newbarry’s, at 2995 West Jewell Avenue, where from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, diners can scarf down some of the same foods found at Sam’s…
If I’d had a video camera, I could have filmed The Kitchen Bitch Project, and believe me, it would have been much scarier than that other movie. But there’s no footage to document the horror of my three meals at Lamonica’s Steak and Chop House. No, just several friends who…
For half a century, the immigrant working men of Louisville hacked out a living in the Acme Mine below the dirt streets of their town, swinging pickaxes, inhaling coal dust in the gloom and praying for Sunday. On Sunday the miners would go to church and, if times were good,…
Phone lines: My mention of cell-phone abuse in my review of Tres Margaritas (“Wasting Away in Margaritaville,” August 19) prompted many responses, including several vehement voice-mail messages and e-mails defending people’s inherent right to annoy the crap out of others. The issue is gaining momentum nationally, too: Local reporter Brad…
