Sergio Romero, executive chef at Argyll Gastropub, will face off against Jay Spickelmier, executive chef at Jing, in the Mile High Chef Competition at Dish-the Westword Menu Affair at the Fillmore tonight. Before the cooking competition gets too heated, we asked both chefs to dish out some thoughts on Denver’s…
Sean Kelly, chef/partner at LoHi SteakBar, at 3200 Tejon Street, calls the board at his new place “plain American bar food,” even though that’s far from an apt description. It’s not like he’s just sitting in the back, drinking the cooking wine while a bunch of nose-picking fuckups dump frozen…
“I want people’s eyes to roll into the back of their heads when they eat my food,” says Elise Wiggins, the über-talented executive chef of Panzano, a Northern Italian restaurant in the Hotel Monaco. Food, like sex, should always be sensual, she explains. The Louisiana native would put her hands…
Pete Marczyk 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 usually bring a selection of some of their market’s choicest ingredients home with them, and cook up a feast…
Zaidy’s Downtown Deli/ Fusion Cantina has closed — officially. The final blow came on September 16, at a bizarre liquor license hearing on Zaidy’s application to change to a cabaret license, which would have allowed the restaurant to host salsa nights and dancing. The application was dismissed, in part because…
Across the street from Swedish Medical Center, Roast, once a coffee and paninni shop, is going through a face lift and concept change. And how do I know this? Because I happened to see this sign hanging in the front door of the space at 500 East Hampden Avenue. Now,…
June 25 –that was opening day for LoHi SteakBar. But prior to that? Owners Joe Vostrejs, Jeff Hermanson and Rod Wagner had spent months talking and plotting — and after they hired Sean Kelly, who’d already parted ways with Mark Berzins and the Little Pub Company, they all talked some…
Yesterday, I started culling the best answers I’d gotten from my deliberate rip-off of Grub Street’s 2009 Grub Report foodie poll. Today, I am continuing to pimp for my own 1st Annual Cafe Society Poll about Food and Chefs and Stuff by picking another fantastic response that has come in…
We’ve long lamented the lack of dives in downtown — and now comes this request from KLJ in California, which was posted at the end of an old item about Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. I’m heading to Denver next week for business. I’ll be staying downtown on California Street. Anything…
How’s this for a coincidence? Beginning Thursday, October 1, Hosea Rosenberg — Bravo’s Top Chef: New York conquistador and Jax-Boulder exec chef — is launching www.whereishosea.com, to more or less announce his five-month sabbatical from the house of aquatics that made him famous. The new site, explains Bryce Clark, marketing…
Over the weekend, I posted a half-grumpy power-to-the-people blog in response to a poll of famous food writers done recently by grubstreet.com. It was, I’ll admit, a barely concealed ploy to get the people of Denver talking about how they see their food scene right now and what they would…
I may be a little premature with this, but because it’s all rainy and (at least in my neighborhood) snowy this morning, I couldn’t help but start thinking about fall and winter menus. This, of course, led immediately to my daydreaming about eating fall and winter menus, and the first…
The Festival Italiano at Belmar, which took place this past Saturday and Sunday, has quickly become one of the best festivals in Denver. Not only was there great food and wine, as well as very little shlock for sale, fewer stroller and dogs, and lower temperatures (September beat August hands…
Today, between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. and 4 to 8 p.m., the Lone Tree Pasquini’s Pizza at 7431 Park Meadows Drive, is doling out free slices of pizza to anyone who wanders through the doors. And lest you think that your free slice is just cheese, please, think again…
GB Fish & Chips, the lively British chippie at 1311 South Broadway whose “In cod we trust” motto has generated a loyal following of ex-pats, will soon be battering that fish in its second location at 2175 Sheridan Boulevard, directly across the street from Sloan’s Lake. But while the sign…
Low Fat Granola with Raisins Kellogg’s Rating: Two-and-a-half spoons out of four Cereal description: What isn’t in this stuff? There’s whole oats and whole grain wheat, some of it fused together in random wads, like meteorites collecting fragments during the trip through space, other parts shattered into jagged fragments. Add…
Breakfast, my mother used to say, is the most important meal of the day. And while she was probably right about that, one of the details not precisely fixed by that nugget of motherly wisdom was when, precisely, breakfast had to fall.Me? I like a nice middle-of-the-night breakfast. I like…
A couple of weeks ago, the esteemed folks over at grubstreet.com (the daily internet food organ of New York Magazine) published their 2009 Grub Report — a survey of the state of our food union (their words, not mine). And while I generally enjoy the work done by those web-crazy…
Everything I ate at dinner last night was astonishingly perfect, but the high-rise of pork belly and watermelon threatening to tumble into a pool of fragrant, sambal-spiked broth stole the show. I hadn’t even finished the first bite before I propped the plate on my lap, shuffled my chair off…
Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill, a Centennial fast-casual concept restaurant chain, opens its fifth store today in Park Meadows, at 8225 South Chester in Englewood. Created in 2007 by Alon Mor, Garbanzo’s serves pitas, shwarma, falafel hummus and other mixed Mediterranean specialties with a healthy (no trans fat, no preservatives) bent. Its…
Normally gum wouldn’t be the first thing we’d grab for a review, but the fact that this one starts off as cotton candy certainly captured our attention. Droobles Best Blowing Gum is one of the Harry Potter products that began its life as a literary invention of J.K. Rowling and…
This is part two of Lori Midson’s interview with Paul Reilly, executive chef of Encore. You can read the first part of Midson’s interview with Reilly here. Culinary inspirations: My mom and my Aunt Sharon, both of whom were amazing cooks and really sparked my interest in cooking. As for…
