At the beginning of the year, Pour La France! got the seven-year itch and decided it was time to try something new at its Denver and Boulder locations. So out came fresh paint, a snazzy set of china–and a revamped menu that no longer pulls solely from French roots. Still…
French kitchen god Escoffier advised that an omelette is “really scrambled eggs enclosed in a coating of coagulated egg.” And in The Way to Cook, one of Escoffier’s disciples, Julia Child, writes that “the eggs should be soft and tender inside, enclosed by a cloak of lightly browned coagulated egg.”…
They’re out: If you’re wondering about the picketers in front of Greens restaurant, at 1469 South Pearl Street, last week, here’s the scoop: Taylor St. John and Madrid St. Angelo, a gay couple charged in the January 1993 Mt. Olivet cemetery desecration incident (they cut a deal with the Jeffco…
The word on Carmine’s on Penn: You either love it or you hate it. If you love it, as I do, you appreciate the casual, fun setting and the huge portions of inexpensive Italian food. If you hate it–as many others apparently do, judging from the calls I’ve received from…
The evening Westword’s Best of Denver issue came out, my husband and I stopped at Carmine’s on Penn–which had just been named Best Italian–and were amused to overhear owner Larry Herz chatting with a table of twenty or so diners sitting right next to us. They were talking about…me. The…
It’s hard to imagine, but as recently as a hundred years ago, no one but a few goats and some crazy rugged individualists cared much for traveling into the mountains. Hey, who could blame them? You either had to pack in your own food, live on berries–or kill your dinner…
Jerk-offs: Soda fountains always make me nostalgic for a time I never even lived through (growing up, though, I was enamored of my grandmother’s Norman Rockwell print of two nerdly types on a prom date nervously sharing a soda). Denver still has a handful of soda fountains, some of which…
A few months ago, the mere thought of another Southwestern restaurant had me howling like a rabid coyote. But that was before I visited the Zolo Grill, now the clear ruler of this peculiar patch of the culinary world. Southwestern food covers a lot of territory–its evolution includes contributions from…
Thrown for a loop: Not surprisingly, it was in a bar that John Hickenlooper, an owner of the Wynkoop Brewing Company, came up with the idea of paying a $5,000 bounty to whoever introduced him to the future Mrs. Hickenlooper. So far, though, all the scheme’s paid off with is…
Long the food of choice for those who want to avoid the eggs-and-bacon routine at brunch, dim sum is catching on as a great way to eat a little bit of a lot of different Chinese foods at any time of the day. For the uninitiated, the term “dim sum”…
Growing pains: After over two decades as a mainstay of Denver’s dining scene, Little Shanghai, at 460 South Broadway, recently revamped its menu to match its expanded, updated interior. “We hired new cooks and wanted to make the menu more healthy,” says Ching Lei, the co-owner with her husband, Kim…
Since delicatessens have been around a bit longer than New York has–the first tangible documentation was in a publication printed around 1183 that refers to a burglary of cooked meats from a shop along the Thames–you have to wonder what people said when the first deli opened in the Big…
Deadbeat diners: The term “no-shows” is sure to strike fear into the heart of any restaurateur. You know, customers who make reservations and then don’t show up, without even the courtesy of a cancellation phone call. Look at it this way: You’re having a party for fifty friends. Everyone says…
The temperature had topped a hundred, with no relief in sight. Clearly, it was time to fight fire with fire–so we headed to the nearest Mexican restaurant. Tafolino’s, which sits almost on the Lakewood-Golden border, took over a plaza space formerly occupied by an Italian eatery. “When I bought the…
Life’s a bowl of cherries: A couple of things occurred to me while I was judging food at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival over the Fourth of July weekend: The event is as professionally run and well organized as any I’ve experienced, and there’s a lot of overpriced crap out…
The questions started coming up as soon as we sat down in Transalpin. First, there were the peculiar classifications on the menu–items were labeled both by style, such as “classics,” and by geography. And then there were the incredibly low prices listed beside those items. When a restaurant has really…
The BOD squad: Giving birth–which I am supposed to do in about a month–can’t be more strenous than trying to choose between the thousands of food and drink possibilities for Westword’s annual Best of Denver issue, which hit the streets last week. At the very least, it can’t involve as…
This is a fish tale with a happy ending–for Denver, if not for the fish. It begins in the cool Pacific waters off the northwest coast, where Mr. Swordfish finds himself the victim of a nasty sting operation–he’s wanted in fifty states for possession of cholesterol-lowering omega-3 fatty acids, and…
Pasta point of no return: The readers’ choice of the Olive Garden as “best Italian restaurant” in the Rocky Mountain News last week left me concerned for the state of this city’s palate. C’mon, people, the Olive Garden? I helped to open one in Florida several years ago (it was…
Judging from the way his hamburgers always look, Jughead’s criteria for the ultimate burger is a half-moon top bun, a meat pattie as thick as both bun halves put together and exactly the same width, two layers of frilly lettuce, a square of cheese hanging over the sides like a…
Make a pig of yourself: The invitation was to come eat some sowbelly and meet a few miners. How could I pass that up? Not surprisingly, the miners wound up being the better part of the deal at the June 4 Sowbelly Dinner in Idaho Springs. Held at the Idaho…
The party of eight at the next table barely noticed their food. “If we close”…”net profits”…”by next Tuesday”…”budget crunch”…The phrases floated over us like corporate Muzak. I watched as plate after plate was set down before the three women (all of whom were wearing red) and five men (all of…
