Food & Drink

Popular chain restaurants may have their faults, but they also have their benefits — consistency primary among them. It’s comforting for customers to know that they can count on uniform, no-surprise dishes at certain chains. And I definitely have my consistent favorites. Here’s a list of my top five full-service…

Considering the heat, the mere thought of eating anything hot makes me want to dive into a sea of blue, but since that’s not an option, I’ll take a bowl of cool three-bean, lemon-kissed hummus instead, paired with housemade Parmesan crisps and raw vegetables. Can you guess where I’m eating?…

Pete Marczyk (who’s interviewed in in this chef and tell) and Barbara Macfarlane do not leave their work behind when they leave Marczyk Fine Foods and head for their great old Denver house with the big, new kitchen. They often bring some of their market’s choicest ingredients home with them…

Thomas Salamunovich Larkspur 478 Vail Valley Drive, Vail 970-754-8050 www.larkspurvail.com Larkburger www.larkburger.com This is part one of my interview with Thomas Salamunovich, exec chef of Larkspur and Larkburger, Part two of our chat will be posted here tomorrow. “Food wasn’t a big deal in my life, but music? Music was…

Most of the city’s Korean restaurants, much like our Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese dining dens, are marked by their transparent strip mall center facades, bare interiors and stoic service. That’s not how Shin Sa Dong, a new Korean restaurant at 10293 East Iliff Avenue, rolls…

Yours Truly, Cupcake is now open on Upper Larimer, with a novel business plan: The bakers inject booze into every confection, creating combos like a Coors Light cake and a Whiskey Sour lemon cake with whiskey icing…

“Unfortunately, we’re losing about $5,000 a month right now and it’s starting to really hurt my pocketbook,” explains Jan Bezuidenhout, who openedComfort Cafe, a non-profit, pay-what-you-can eatery at 3945 Tennyson Street two years ago. “It’s been a wonderful two years here, but this location is just too expensive. We decided…

Red Robin’s new spinoff concept, Red Robin’s Burger Works, is a smaller, less-dramatic-and-more-metallic version of the original, meant for smaller urban spaces. It has less hustle and bustle than the original stores, and also much less less square footage, but the company put a handful of its most successful burgers…

“Delicious – divine – delectable.” It’s comments like these that just landed Fruition, Alex Seidel’s tiny temple of gastronomy, in a list of ten restaurants that begins with New York City’s Le Bernardin, includes Alinea in Chicago and ends with Screen Door in Portland…

When Pollyanna Forster opened Eat! Drink!, an artisan cheese boutique, charcuterie parlor, chocolate stop and wine shop in Edwards, just outside Vail, in 2004, Valley residents immediately embraced it, and now Forster is hoping that Denverites will do the same when she unveils Eat+Drink in Denver next month at 1541…

“When did Denver’s climate become Kenya?” quipped a friend, who was dripping — as we all were — with sweat. The heat, by just about anyone’s standards, is insufferable, but a cold glass of rosé, or, in this case, four, in an air-conditioned bar, provided a bit of temporary relief,…

The concept behind Modmarket is fresh, seasonal, farm-to-table food served up fast. And it’s caught on fast: After the original outpost opened in Boulder two years ago, the company quickly opened two more locations. We stopped by the restaurant at 8575 East Arapahoe Road in Greenwood Village yesterday, hoping to…

Along with her last review, of Fruition, last week outgoing Cafe critic Laura Shunk served up her list of “Denver spots I’ll miss most.” Colt & Gray and other bars in LoHi figured prominently…

It was love at first bite for me and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers. And even though as a teen working at a Red Robin in Albuquerque I was stuffed inside a giant “Red” bird suit and force to hand out free onion-ring coupons at the movie theater across the street,…

Denver’s had to say arrivederci to some of this city’s pizza pioneers this month. Hank Dire, whose parents founded the Bonnie Brae Tavern in 1934 and who worked at the family business for his whole life, passed away at the age of 84 in early June. And now Ben DiPietro,…

“It’s my husband’s fault,” declares Terri Lack. “All of it.” Still, there could be worse things than getting the blame for your wife’s infatuation with Italian food, to which Lack admits a serious addiction. “My husband comes from an Italian family, and when I first went to his parents’ house,…

You’ll have to wait another day or two before clamoring for a space at the Squeaky Bean, which had hoped to open today in its lovely new digs in LoDo. “We have our certificate of occupancy, and the city has signed off on our liquor license, but we’re waiting on…

The family who owns this Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese/sushi restaurant had congregated at a table in the middle of the dining room to share lunch, and the food they had in front of them was far different from the food we had in front of us; they were eating the stuff you find…