Hello, Dolly: Without the wig, the makeup and the five-inch heels, Melissa Lee looks like any other pretty bartender, albeit an unusually well-endowed one. But when Lee, one of Denver’s best drink mixers, dons the fringed leather, the skintight pants and the ear-to-ear smile, she’s Dolly Parton–or close enough to…
Since the only thing lying between Denver and the deep blue sea is a two-hour plane trip, the notion that we can’t get fresh fish here doesn’t hold water. The fact is, we can get our hands on seafood in less time than it takes the average Los Angeleno to…
Try to come up with a more obvious recipe for disaster: I get an invitation to dine at the home of a woman who tells me that she and the entire “Filipino community” of Denver are upset over my recent review of the area’s only Filipino restaurant, Nipa Hut. The…
In restaurant circles, you frequently hear the saying, “If you like to cook, don’t become a chef.” Seasoned chefs will tell you that they got into the business because they loved working with food and serving their beautiful creations to others. Until they became chefs, that is, and found themselves…
Here today, gone tomorrow: Back in January, Leo Goto challenged his Wellshire Inn staff to make the restaurant “five-star quality.” When they failed to do so, Goto fired chef Steve Ford (and quite a few others) and brought in the talented Lance Katcher from Marvin Gardens. Five months later, Katcher…
Some people are lucky enough to have fond memories of a mother calling out “Supper time!” to a horde of hungry youngsters who vied for the last bite of homemade meatball. But for those whose food pasts contained no more warmth than a cold can of SpaghettiOs twisting angrily against…
Cooking the books: At the end of each spring, publishers shower the food world with new cookbook releases. Although no copies of To Serve Man have yet crossed my desk, it wouldn’t surprise me if one did, considering the variety of books that have been appearing lately. For those who,…
Destination: Denver International Airport. Fasten your seat belts tight across your stomachs–this could be a bumpy ride. Traditionally, the only people who eat at airports are either (a) so hungry they don’t mind paying $27 for two rubbery eggs, bacon that looks like it was torn from a running pig…
Something’s brewing: Civilization moved south last December, when Columbine Mill Brewery and Pizza opened at 5798 Rapp Street in Littleton. This renovated, century-old former grain mill now turns out five microbrews–a stout, a red, a light, a pale ale and a raspberry wheat–and serves Italian food and pizza. That’s a…
Eating a Filipino meal is like breaking into the jars in science lab and ingesting the contents–only to discover that the results of your experiment in eating can be downright delicious. That’s what we concluded after our visits to Nipa Hut, the area’s only Filipino restaurant. Why it’s our sole…
Bay watch: A few local restaurateurs are eating crow over a recent food column in Westword’s sister paper, San Francisco’s SF Weekly, which pretty much trashed two of Denver’s supposedly finest spots–Zenith and Morton’s of Chicago. The name of the writer, restaurant critic Barbara Lane, may also sound familiar to…
The fight is on. In this corner, we have a chain restaurant that advertises fresh, high-quality Mexican food, a fun family atmosphere and low prices. What it actually delivered, though, was sub-mediocre food, prices higher than those at any authentic Mexican restaurant I’ve ever visited, and a waiter who told…
Where it’s at: The restaurant mantra of “location, location, location” is becoming more significant as the rest of the United States–chains and independents alike–converges on Denver to snap up savvy spots in LoDo and Cherry Creek. But as veteran Denver restaurateur Adde Bjorklund knows, it’s not just where you put…
Try to guess what these four things have in common: stripping, footsie, finger sucking and orgasms. X-rated movies? No way. These are all acts considered proper fare for restaurants–restaurants on the big screen, that is. From Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm–which surely provoked a few arguments on the way home from…
Steaking a claim: A recent trip to Pennsylvania found me falling in love with the cheese-steak all over again. I didn’t get to my favorite place, Pat’s Steaks in Philly, but I hit several good copies and pinned down what makes a cheesesteak work. For me, at least. Even though…
Buckingham Palace is veddy, veddy nice, thank you–if pressing your forehead against cold metal in order to peer at a bunch of palace guards with fuzzy black Q-tip heads is your cup of tea. And Westminster Abbey is quite lovely–if looking at dead monarchs interred in tombs worth ten times…
Luck o’ the Irish: Traditional pub food is infamous for its lesser cuts of meat, greasiness and general simplicity, but that still didn’t prepare us for the meal we encountered at Nallen’s, an Irish eatery at 1617 California. Not until after we had picked at a batch of freezer-burned fish,…
Considering the number of eggs we eat, it’s a wonder the chicken isn’t our national bird. According to a narrative on the back of the Dozens menu–inexplicably illustrated with a picture of a rooster, not a hen–Americans crack open an average of 314 eggs a year, which flies right in…
Eggstraordinary: Not that anyone has asked, but here’s the sick, disgusting thing I used to eat for breakfast daily–I’m not kidding–before I became a hired belly and had to start watching what I ate. My morning meal consisted of two sunnyside-up eggs, four slices of white American cheese and two…
There are those folks whose routines sound like the instructions on a shampoo bottle. They work nine-to-five, sit through rush hour on I-25 to get home in time for Entertainment Tonight and then tumble into bed. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Those folks are not Melvyn and Jane Master. The owners of…
In the minority: The only grand slam found at Denny’s these days comes from a door being closed–the one that says “Everyone is welcome.” If Denny’s is like most chains, an enormous binder somewhere spells out company policies on everything from what shoes employees must wear to how long french…
The Beef Council couldn’t have put it any better than Mark Twain did in A Tramp Abroad: “Imagine a poor exile, and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering…
