Food & Drink

The October 31 deadline that the Denver Department of Community Planning and Development had given the First Avenue Hotel came and went — without any new notices to vacate slapped on the building. On July 10 those notices, headlined with the word “Danger,” as well as five different letters signed…

There was a bit of miscommunication with my order — I’d asked for the sausage inside my breakfast burrito — and I wasn’t anticipating tomatoes and leaves on top, but once I dipped my fork inside the tortilla, I found beautifully scrambled eggs and sharp cheddar, and the wreath of…

I made my first foray into sushi at the relatively ripe age of twenty (I don’t count the gobs of bad California rolls that I squished down before that), and it was an instant, passionate love affair akin to the greatest romances of all time. Romeo and Juliet, Bogey and…

Mitch Mayers Black Pearl 1529 South Pearl Street 303-777-0500 www.blackpearldenver.com Part one of my interview with Mitch Mayers, exec chef of Black Pearl, an yesterday; this is part two of our conversation. Favorite restaurant in America: Morimoto, in New York City. When I ate dinner there, Morimoto was actually eating…

There’s been a lot of buzz about Tom’s Urban 24, the 24-hour restaurant at the edge of Larimer Square that opened just in time to become a hip Halloween haunt. But that was far from the only development on the dining scene in October. More than a dozen new restaurants…

Mitch Mayers always knew he wanted to be a chef, even when his parents insisted he go to Cornell. So he paired that with classes at culinary school, and after a stint with Hillstone — which sent him to Denver to run the kitchen at the Cherry Creek Grill –…

Hands on your buzzers, everyone! Here’s a trivia question: “High-school seniors share this in common with Cafe Berlin.” (Insert Jeopardy music here.) If you answered “What is 1995?,” you’d be right. In 1995, most of those seniors were in diapers, and Cafe Berlin, Denver’s longtime standby for hearty German fare,…

With seventeen years and three homes under its belt, Café Berlin (which I review this week) has become synonymous with German food in Denver (the jagerschnitzel is particularly noteworthy). But this restaurant is not the only place in town serving spaetzle and sauerkraut. Here are several more options for getting…

Here’s the good news: These are some of the best housemade tamales in the city. Now the bad news: You’ll have to wait until late next month to wrap your jaws around them, because the original off-the-eaten-path location of the restaurant that serves them has closed so that that the…

Wine may not be a typical gift for a first birthday, but Coohills will celebrate its first anniversary by offering a complimentary glass of Chandon Blanc de Noirs and an amuse bouche created by chef/co-owner Tom Coohill to all customers on Saturday, November 3. See also: – Coohills makes itself…

Mitch Mayers Black Pearl 1529 South Pearl Street 303-777-0500 www.blackpearldenver.com This is part one of my interview with Mitch Mayers, exec chef of Black Pearl; part two of our conversation will run tomorrow. Mitch Mayers wanted to cook; his parents insisted that he go to Cornell. He negotiated. “I made…

For all of the menu items that Burger King has come up with over the years, the Whopper has survived as a staple for good reason: The signature grilled hamburger tastes about as close as fast-food customers are gonna get to a flame-broiled, backyard burger. And even when ingredients are…

Yesterday Lori Midson reported that Frank and Jacqueline Bonanno, who already run Mizuna, Bones and Luca D’Italia at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Grant Street, will be taking over the space previously occupied by the Lancer Lounge, and turning it into Vesper Lounge, a bar that “won’t break the…

I get pummeled on a daily basis (usually in a good way) with restaurant recommendations from friends, readers, strangers and chefs, most recently Wayne Conwell, chef-owner of Sushi Sasa. And yesterday, Conwell, during a conversation about sushi and Japanese cuisine, mentioned that Yoko’s Express, a restaurant that occupied a storefront…