This is part two of my interview with Brian Laird, exec chef of Barolo Grill. You can read part one of my interview with Laird here. Best food city in America: San Francisco. It’s all about what I love most: fresh ingredients, seafood, farm-raised animals, vegetables, cheese, wine and beer,…
For the chef at a seafood restaurant — Oceanaire — Matt Mine sure loves his bacon. He often features a slab of it on Oceanaire’s menu, and he recently cooked up a batch of bacon brittle with Anthony Bourdain in mind, which was included in the pre-talk meal that Oceanaire…
My favorite movie of all time is Blade Runner. It gave me a serious yen for the intersection of Japanese and American culture that’s flavored my tastes for years but still, I think, comes off as a bit more wholesome and less creepy than an obsession with Japanese schoolgirl uniforms…
Colorado has recently gone through something of a barbecue boom. Sure, there are places like M&D’s that have been around since forever, but over the past five years, Colorado in general (and Denver in particular) has seen a surge in joints that exist for the greater worship of the smoker…
Just got off the blower with Curt Steinbecker (that’s him in the funny hat up there, standing beside his wife, Deicy) of Ondo’s, the Spanish tapas restaurant that I’ve been waiting forever for at 250 Steele Street (in the former home of French 250). Okay, so maybe it hasn’t quite…
Dear Mr. President. As you are no doubt aware, the Kellogg Company recently announced that it is experiencing a catastrophic waffle shortfall owing to a sort of “perfect storm” of circumstances: scheduled maintenance and upgrades to their army of waffle-making robots, flood damage in the vast waffle fields of the…
I love flapjacks as much as the next person (maybe even more), but the smoked salmon, red onion and caper pizza that you see in the above snap is seriously, deliriously delicious. And it’s just one of several breakfast pizzas on the new brunch menu at a Denver restaurant that’s…
As a countdown to the Best of Denver 2010, coming April 1, Cafe Society is serving up a hundred of our favorite dishes in Denver. Send your own nominations to cafe@westword.com. No. 95 Assiette de charcuterie maison from Z Cuisine À Côté…
“It was a step off the cliff for sure, but at the same time, I just knew that I was a good fit for the job,” says Brian Laird of Barolo Grill, the Northern Italian restaurant whose kitchen Laird has cooked in for the past twelve years — the last…
Sometimes what we like is a little comfort food, even when the sun’s shining. This homey macaroni and cheese dish might seem small, but it packs a satisfying wallop of creamy goodness set off by a crunchy topping. The side salad is just a bonus. Can you guess where I’m…
It’s what you like that matters. And I like science fiction movies and books about sailing ships and celebrity memoirs and amateur pornography. I like music made in the years that music really mattered to me — those years I spent in high school and in kitchens and had very…
Twenty-eight hours and sixty-five entries later, we know one thing for sure: You people out there in Hotcakesland certainly do love your dick jokes. And your Colfax jokes. And your vegan jokes. And your vegan-on-Colfax dick jokes… Still, we had to go with just one caption for our last set…
Denver got a shout-out last week on the food blog www.seriouseats.com, which listed what they believe to be four unique food trends in our fair city. Our fast casual chains, microbreweries, green chile, and Beau Jo’s all get mentions. But while we appreciate that they resisted mentioning Rocky Mountain oysters,…
As a countdown to the Best of Denver 2010, coming April 1, Cafe Society is serving up a hundred of our favorite dishes in Denver. Send your own nominations to cafe@westword.com. No. 96 Pho – any pho — from Pho 95…
Rotisserie ducks and chickens, traditional Asian noodles bowls, a fresh fish counter, pastries, ready-made sushi and rolls, sandwiches, prepared foods, bento boxes and fresh-blended juices come to Platt Park the day after Thanksgiving. That’s when Den Deli and Seafood Market is slated to open at 1501 South Pearl Street, directly…
The New York Times blog “You’re the Boss,” ruffled the apron strings of restaurant servers nationwide when it ran Bruce Buschel’s two-part list of things restaurant staffers should never do. As someone who worked the FOH for 14 years, I have two words for Buschel: Bitch, please. While Buschel made…
There’s a contest for everything, including, as it turns out, muffins. And for Sharon Smith and Wendy Goldstein, owners of the Two Sisters Inn — a bed-and-breakfast in Manitou Springs — it was their muffins that took the cake on Monday, November 9 at the Bed & Breakfast Innkeepers of…
Working in the food industry has its hazards. Today at 11 a.m. at Denver Police Department headquarters, five Denver police officers will be honored with the Citizens Appreciate Police award. On June 9, these officers responded to Oliver’s Meat Market “on the unfortunate report of an employee who lost her…
Tomorrow night, Mayor John Hickenlooper will give Anthony Bourdain a fork to the city when he introduces the travelin’ man at “An Evening with Anthony Bourdain” at the Buell Theatre. Of course, Bourdain has already forked this city: After visiting Denver on a book tour in 2002, he said he…
After months and months and months of delays, Kaos, the take-out pizza shack from Patrick Mangold-White and Jon Edwards, will finally fire up its oven tomorrow at exactly 11:30 a.m. Mangold-White and Edwards, who also own Gaia Bistro, 1551 South Pearl Street, had hoped to open Kaos in the former…
We have been shamelessly shilling for Anthony Bourdain for the past few days, talking about his upcoming trip to Denver, giving away tickets to his lecture and Q&A on November 18, throwing up pictures of him whenever we can. Shameless? Absolutely. Not for nothing, the man is very popular –…
Yes, we’ve scored two more pairs of tickets to the Anthony Bourdain event that we’ve been so relentlessly hyping for the past several days — and earlier today, we asked all you slavering readers to come up with interesting ways in which we might give them away. And since my…
