Restaurants

The Denver Zoo hosted its twentieth annual Do at the Zoo last night, and Denver’s party animals were out in force, sampling tidbits from dozens of restaurants and getting wild! See for yourself on our slideshow…

You didn’t miss all this good stuff, did you?  No problem, we’ve rounded up the best of the Cafe Society week for you below.Hot dog eating champs battled it out in a Denver qualifier for the big 4th of July competition in Coney Island.  Jason Sheehan sought your opinion on…

This week, I talked about Dougherty’s — a fantastic neighborhood bar that’s perfect for getting into all kinds of lightweight trouble, which just happens to have a very decent restaurant attached and a chef in the back who knows his way around the cuisine of the whiskey-sodden Micks.I followed that…

Yesterday, I got a very nice note from loyal reader Jason Marsell, hipping me to some killer street food in one of the most unlikely of places.Pad Thai on the 16th Street Mall.I was both intrigued and highly skeptical — my first blush of overwhelming enthusiasm giving way to some…

Could be a fight to the finish to see which storefront pizza joint opens first: Denver Pizza Company — whose owner, Mark Huebner, can focus on finishing his Golden Triangle spot now that he’s been booted off The Bachelorette — or Mary Jane’s Pizza. Mary Jane’s is located at 2013…

See more photos at westword.com/slideshow.As expected, the first night of the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen was a culinary red carpet of celebrity chefs and the giggling, starstruck fans who couldn’t stop pawing them. And then there were the blowout parties, like the charity event hosted by Mario Batali,…

We’ve spent a lot more time looking at the home of the new Denver Pizza Company — a few blocks away from the Westword office at 309 West 11th Avenue — than we have watching The Bachelorette, even though one of the swains vying for Jillian Harris was from Denver:…

Head to the hills of Frisco this weekend for the mountain town’s annual two-day Barbecue Challenge, a heated event that brings together competitive grillers from across the country. The riotous pig races are always a big draw, as is the pancake breakfast, live music and parade of barbecue grills, barrels…

This just in from observant reader Jason Marsell: There’s a somewhat new cart on the 16th Street Mall (at Stout) that’s a one-woman Thai food operation, and it’s fantastic. I consider myself a Thai food fanatic and her pad thai gai is some of the best in town. I know,…

Prickly Pete’s, which bills itself as Denver’s “newest outdoor sports bar,” opened June 16 at 5151 Leetsdale Drive, in the space formerly occupied by Oli’s Café. And what is an outdoor sports bar? The main qualifier appears to be a massive patio that seats about a hundred people. That patio…

It was only a matter of time before the pull of Tony’s Market and its selection of imported candies drew us in. We spied the bright blue bar from a checkout lane and snagged the dense treat as an impulse buy.The wrapper told us the Jaffa Bar is from Scotland…

At Elway’s, the usual drug of choice is botox. But on June 1, it was ecstasy. That’s the night that Marcus Long took his girlfriend to dinner at the Cherry Creek restaurant. Meanwhile, out in the parking lot, Jamie Medina was allegedly selling ecstasy out of Long’s car — to…

Today marks the beginning of the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, a three-day food orgy and wine romp that lures all sorts of grape stompers and rock-star chefs — you know, big names like Mario Batali, Jacques and Claudine Pépin, Ming Tsai, Nancy Silverton, José Andrés, Bobby Flay, Michel…

Devil’s Food Bakery, the bake shop and java joint at 1020 South Gaylord Street, is welcoming Denver-based food stylist and cookbook designer Erica McNeish from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. tonight for a down-home dinner featuring barbecue, sandwiches, grilled sweet corn, Southern-style salads (many of which are vegetarian), cobblers and…

I’d walked past twice before figuring out that this unmarked door on Broadway was, in fact, the place where I was going. By the host stand inside that door stood a dapper young gentleman dressed to the nines. Me? Dressed to the fours, at best. “Hour wait,” he told me…

The Fainting Goat is just nine blocks up Broadway from Dougherty’s — and less than a block away from my office. As a result, I’ve been to the Goat, which just opened last November, more times than I can count, and have occasionally left it in no condition to be…

Primebar, the new restaurant in the old home of Palamino at 1515 Arapahoe Street, opened last month — but it threw its big grand-opening bash, a benefit for Food Bank of the Rockies, last night. The very pretty space was packed with pretty people — but looking even better than…

Ah, yes.  Another installment in my favorite time-wasting afternoon game: Can you guess where the critic is eating? On my first visit to a restaurant as a non-anonymous restaurant critic?Here’s a clue: I chose this place specifically 1) because I love it and have been eating here almost obsessively for…

Just drove by the soon-to-be-pancake-land over at 700 Colorado Boulevard, where the second Snooze is scheduled to take up residence sometime in August.And from the looks of things, owner Jon Schlegel isn’t wasting a lick of time. Tear-down seems to be proceeding nicely (as evidenced by the clouds of dust…

Panzano, 909 17th Street, already lays claim to one of the best happy hours in town — especially from a foodnik’s point of view — and now comes word that exec chef Elise Wiggins has raised the bar even higher by introducing some terrific weekly specials. On Sunday nights, the…

The sandwich: Cee-Lo What’s on it: Country ham, turkey, bacon and Swiss on French toast-battered, waffle-grilled potato bread Where to get it: Lakeside Waffles (4335 West 44th Avenue) How much: $7 I’ve got two words for you: guilty pleasure. Or how about: hangover cure. Either one fits the Cee-Lo, a…

For reasons that are now unclear to me, I thought that attending the anniversary bash of Black Pearl, the classy Platt Park restaurant at 1529 South Pearl Street that celebrates its fourth birthday this month, would be a night off from the typical debauchery that follows me just about everywhere…