Five amazing fast-food holiday treats for 2012

The holidays bring out the very best in fast food restaurants (and sometimes in their customers who can be more easily shamed into not behaving like dingleberries in long lines), especially when it comes to seasonal drinks and desserts of the minty, eggnoggy and gingerbread-y type that we don’t have…

Photos: Park House a true neighborhood tavern on East Colfax

The old house at 1515 Madison Street has gone through several incarnations since it was the elegant Normandy, a French restaurant run by Pierre Wolfe. Among other ventures, it housed both PS 1515 and the Pink Elephant — where cops busted burlesque dancers. Recently, there were plans to open a…

Reader: Schnitzel is my number-one comfort food

Do people care about schnitzel? You’re darn Teuton! As a side to her review of Cafe Berlin, Gretchen Kurtz served up the five best restaurants for a schnitzel fix — and her list has taken a pounding. Where is Cafe Prague? Sobo 151? And where’s that umlaut? See also: -…

Exclusive first look: Jelly Cafe is now open in the DU neighborhood

And…the wait is over. This morning, Christina Smith and Josh Epps opened the second Jelly Cafe, a year and a half after bestowing the Capitol Hill neighborhood with the original Jelly Cafe, arguably the hamlet’s most popular breakfast joint for pancakes, eggs Benny, hashes and bloody Marys. See also: -…

Baba’s Falafel takes to the street with fried vegan goodness

Falafel is like fried chicken for non-meat-eaters. It’s crunchy and flavorful and filling. And there are many, many different ways to serve it. Dalia Hannah and Chris Hernandez are experimenting with as many of those ways as possible in their new food truck, Baba’s Falafel, which took to the streets…

Guess where I’m eating a fancy breakfast burrito?

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…

Hapa Sushi — sexy rolls, raw fish and edamame

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…

Round two with Mitch Mayers, exec chef of Black Pearl

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…

The teenage Cafe Berlin is in need of an intervention

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,…

Five best restaurants for a schnitzel fix

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…

Guess where I’m eating tamales?

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…

Mitch Mayers, exec chef of Black Pearl, on Mohawks and Agio

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…

Yoko’s Express is now Sakura House…and ramen is the new draw

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…