The restaurant business, muses Mark Fischer, exec chef of Harman’s Eat & Drink, is “seriously peculiar.” Chefs, he continues, “have become really high-profile, and they’re granted an inordinate amount of admiration and given an inordinate amount of credit for the successes that are their restaurants, much of it completely justifiable.”…
Cafe Society served up four Guess Where? contests last week, ranging from a mound of cheap — and cheap tasting — nachos from Agave Taco Bar to a bowl of awesome hot and sour soup bobbing with foie gras dumplings from Zengo to a sizzling vessel of bibimbap from a…
Last week USA Today came out with its “10 Best Foodie Spots in Denver.” But you’d better move fast if you want to hit two of them: D Bar is closing this coming weekend in anticipation of a move, and Restaurant Kevin Taylor is closing for good at the end…
Montana just bumped Colorado out of its top spot as the least obese state, according to a recent report by Gallup. Mississippi is still number one for fat, with 35.4 percent of the population weighing in as obese. In Colorado, just 20.4 percent of the residents are obese, which earns…
Denver started celebrating St. Patrick’s Day last week, partied hard through the weekend — and the fun isn’t over yet. Bars and restaurants around town are featuring St. Patrick’s Day deals and parties today — some starting as early as 7 a.m. Keep reading for five of our favorites. And…
This week in Cafe Society, Gretchen Kurtz reviewed The Plimoth, a new spot that may help transform a long-ignored neighborhood. Lori Midson talked to chef Eric Cimino of Luca D’Italia about what it’s like to work in one of Frank Bonanno’s kitchens, what he would eat for dinner if he…
The Denver International Spirits Competition, the only international spirits competition in the Rockies, has announced the list of 2014 medal winners. During the event from March 1-2 at the Omni Interlocken Resort in Broomfield, fourteen spirits professionals tasted almost 200 spirits in a double-blind tasting. See also: Highlights from last…
Guinness and Jameson are the undisputed kings of St. Patrick’s Day drinking, but Irish coffee comes in a close third — and makes a good hair of the dog for the day after. Westword’s Bailey Geoghan talked to two masters of the drink, bartender Kari Cummings of Vesta Dipping Grill…
Two more restaurants are joining the brunch bunch tomorrow. Just over a year after it opened in LoHi, Old Major will launch a Saturday and Sunday brunch menu. And down the hill in Riverfront, La Biblioteca — a Sandoval Restaurant concept that took over for Al Lado last fall –…
St. Patrick’s Day is almost upon us, and since the holiday falls on a Monday this year, it means a whole weekend’s worth of celebrations. Whether you want to down some pints of Guinness or explore Irish cuisine and culture with your family, there are plenty of options. Here are…
The Denver Pavilions has big celebrations planned for St. Patrick’s Day, with a Celtic celebration set for noon to 5 p.m., when DJ Aaron,the Celtic Steps and a leprechaun stiltwalker will entertain the crowd; there will also be an outdoor Irish photo both. Many of the businesses in the complex…
Last winter, Peter Ryan, former executive chef/instructor at Cook Street School of Culinary Arts, inked a deal on an out-of-the-way space in North City Park that he felt was just right for the neighborhood eatery he dreamed of opening — in what happened to be his own neighborhood, just west…
It’s 3/14 — pie day! All three Patxi’s locations in metro Denver are celebrating with a $3.14 lunch special: a slice of signature Chicago-style stuffed pizza or hand-pulled thin crust pie, with a choice of salad and a non-alcoholic beverage. The offer is for carry-out only. See also: All aboard!…
The craft-brewing industry has been around long enough now that some of the older beer makers — the ones that can remember being called “microbreweries” — have started celebrating their histories by digging up old favorites that they no longer make. The latest to do this is Great Divide Brewing,…
The second annual DSTILL conference is bringing distillers, bartenders and garden-variety boozehounds to Denver to celebrate the burgeoning art of Colorado craft distilling. Before the big players of alcohol start pourin’ at tonight’s big Showcase event at the McNichols Building, DSTILL invited participants to tour a handful of Boulder distilleries,…
With the grand reopening of Denver Union Station less than four months away, Larimer Associates and its partners in the project just announced eight more retail and restaurant tenants for the renovated facility set to debut on July 12. And not only are all of these tenants from Colorado, but…
Yesterday, I bumped into a local chef slurping oysters at a restaurant that sells thousands of them every month, and the platter of briny bivalves sitting in front of him, he gushed, where magnificent. In fact, he went on to say that all the oysters he’d seen over the past…
I’m a sucker for a good hot and sour soup, and when the kitchen tosses in a foie gras dumpling or two, it’s definitely an added bonus. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to a Guess Where post is entered into…
Jake’s Brew Bar in downtown Littleton is expanding into the building next door, doubling its indoor capacity and adding a 1,500-square-foot beer garden in back. See also: Loveland’s Grimm Brothers Brewhouse will start canning beer…
Restaurant stages, i.e. unpaid apprenticeships, are very different from the useless internships many of us endured in college. Far from killing time making copies, kitchen interns gain real-time, real-world experience that translates directly to necessary skills. For example, Peter Ryan says he wouldn’t be where he is today without the…
Eric Cimino Luca D’Italia 711 Grant Street 303-832-6600 lucadenver.com This is part two of my interview with Eric Cimino, chef of Luca D’Italia; part one of our chat ran yesterday. What’s the best food- or kitchen-related gift you’ve been given? I love getting new cookbooks, especially the odd, quirky ones,…
Wafflich, the neighborhood breakfast-and-lunch joint at 4166 Tennyson Street that chef Benny Kaplan opened after closing Shazz two years ago, had some problems from the start — chief among them the fact that it didn’t serve waffles. Now the tiny spot on Tennyson Street has been turned over to the…
