How do you order right? I wish the answer were as simple as saying, “Order the simple stuff, forget the complicated” — or the reverse, “Order the authentic, the difficult to pronounce, and ignore the rest.” But at Ali Baba, it’s not that easy. This place has a learning curve,…
Every time I go to Ha Noi Pho, I stop for a moment in front of the doors and look at the hours, painted in white on the glass. They say the place opens at 8:30 a.m., but I’ve never made it here anywhere close to that early. In fact,…
There was a time when my favorite Korean restaurant was the one housed in the shell of a former McDonald’s on Parker Road in Aurora — a massive place that still had uncomfortable plastic McDonaldland seats in the dining room and big Ms embossed on things like the napkin dispensers…
The January 10 issue includes part of a letter from David Hahn of Denver. Here it is in its entirety, along with Jason Sheehan’s response:…
Editor’s note: sorry about that headline. I’d had duck’s blood before, had used it in my own kitchens, but until I came to Ha Noi Pho, I’d never cared for it beyond its capacity to mount a voluptuously glossy sauce. Here the blood is one of the main points of…
Hanging above the entrance to Osteria Marco is a brass pig. It’s a smallish thing that you could miss if you weren’t looking for it. As a matter of fact, you could easily miss the entire restaurant if you didn’t know where it was — behind a dark door, down…
After a trip, my first meal back in Denver is almost always at Little Panda. Why? For starters, it’s always open. Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Christmas Day, St. Paddy’s: I’ve never once called the joint when someone wasn’t there, waiting (though sometimes grudgingly) to take my order for steamed…
Seek the pig, ye foodie snobs, ye noble gastronauts, ye bewildered and befuddled and besotted masses. King Pig, hanging under the lights like a beacon, like a promise. Find Osteria Marco, go down into its embrace and eat until you pop. That kinda says it all, doesn’t it? Osteria Marco,…
I’m looking back at the year from a twelfth-floor suite across from Carnegie Hall, on the quiet side of 57th Street. I’ve got a bellyful of ridiculously overpriced beer, cheeseburgers and Cuban chicken from the Brooklyn Diner, and have just returned from a nice digestive stroll through the Christmas market…
Mexico, Christmas 2001. Laura and I, in a fit of wild-goose inspiration, had quit the bright, dusty and idiot-ridden confines of Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a quick run through Truth or Consequences, Las Cruces and Vado, aiming the blunt nose of yet another in a long line of used $400…
Some of the world’s worst restaurants come out of a restaurateur’s attempts to define a cuisine, a mood or himself. Some of the best come as an answer to a problem or a declaration of intent. When it opened exactly four years ago, Mezcal could have gone either way: become…
It was almost midnight when I left Izakaya Den. I muscled my way out the big, unmarked front doors, turned to face a bracing, cold breeze whipping down the street and staggered just a little. I shook my head to clear away the cotton, patted down my pockets for a…
As evidenced by the strange but incredibly successful tapas menu being done izakaya-style at Izakaya Den (see review), the Japanese know a thing or two about small plates. But other Asian cuisines have taken to the notion of little tastes of several dishes, too. The Chinese have dim sum; the…
My waiter came by, brought me a warm towel for my fingers, a stack of menus, a beer. Then we started talking — about the menu, about the Izakaya concept, about how to order and what I should order and how much of everything I should order. “How hungry are…
I’d spent most of a lazy Saturday avoiding the commitment of deciding where to eat that night. Laura kept asking, kept pestering me to make a decision — wanting to know what kind of freaky, dumb-ass experience her darling husband would settle on this time: raw fish, testicles, chicken-fried steak,…
While I may always have a soft spot for the Bagel Deli (see review) with its cramped displays of Jewish deli essentials (Dr. Brown’s soda, bagel chips, Halvah and schmaltz), those looking for a wider variety of sundries could do a lot worse than the East Side Kosher Deli. Open…
Laura does not eat breakfast out. Ever. She’s one of those people who dreams of someday living in a hotel penthouse — not for the housekeeping or the views or the glamour of being the sort of person who lives in a hotel penthouse, but just for the room service:…
I’ve heard it said a thousand times, by tourists and by natives, by local chefs and national food writers — said ironically, in jest, in cold seriousness, in rage. When your new, million-dollar French-Asian fusion restaurant goes under in a flood of bad debt and worse reviews, it’s what you…
When they use the “cow town” descriptor, what most folks mean is podunk, provincial, lacking in the sort of taste and culture found in the big cities on the coasts. They’re saying that while we, the people of Denver, may be urbane enough to understand that going out for a…
I asked the Mexican what he wanted to eat during his visit to Denver. In addition to being the author of Ask a Mexican, a weekly column now published in 31 papers, Gustavo Arellano is the food editor at our sibling paper, OC Weekly, in Southern California. So finding the…
On Friday at five-thirty, six, seven at night, The Corner Office is less a restaurant than a three-ring circus filled with liquored-up yuppies doing all their best tricks, elephantine captains of industry getting hot under the collar, fierce and beautiful female executives stalking the bar like lionesses in heels, and…
There are easy lunches and then there are really easy lunches. At the Corner Office, lunch is easy enough — a good menu (chicken and waffles!) in an interesting room, with excellent service. But lunch is even easier at McCormick’s Fish House & Bar, a place where you can stop…
