A special report by Amy Haimerl Ugly Americans. That’s the only way to describe the party that was celebrating a fiftieth birthday at Bistro Vendome last night. Of course, if we’d really been sitting on the patio of a Parisian bistro, we’d be saying “Ugly Americans” with an accent and…
This was not the kind of place I was likely to review. It was not the kind of place where I was ever likely to eat, much less steal a menu from. And yet here I was, puzzling over a menu that I lifted from Reiver’s a week or so…
People are always trying to bring a taste of somewhere else to whatever place they now call home. Immigrant cuisine, nativist cuisine, fusion cuisine, recipes passed down through generations — they’re all attempts at preserving across time and distance memories that are tied up in food. This is a noble…
I know, I know… this is twice in one week that I’m making fun of the New York Times (see “$115,000 Worth of Pointless Revenge” a few blogs below for my first shot at the Old Gray Lady), but I just couldn’t let this one go without a comment. In…
We’re midway through Denver Restaurant Week, and reports are coming in. Restaurant Kevin Taylor? Full to capacity. Barolo Grill? Booked solid. Luca d’Italia? Ditto. Owner Frank Bonanno (above) has said that he couldn’t find a table for even his mother if she were to wander into Mizuna one night this…
Denver Restaurant Week, Day 2. A report by Amy Haimerl: I have a new culinary love. Not fois grae, not sweetbreads, not chili-infused chocolate or any of the other delicacies I’ve had the good fortune of trying while dining with Jason Sheehan and my other foodie friends. No, this is…
Big-time international restaurant owner Jeffrey Chodorow — who owns a couple dozen name joints in New York, Vegas and elsewhere, but who you may remember as Rocco DiSpirito’s money guy from that unconscionably awful reality show The Restaurant — got his name in the papers again last week. This time,…
If you are where you eat, a lot of people are Benny’s, since the Denver institution is usually packed with fans, including Leslie Fry, who offers this: Benny’s is my all-time favorite Denver restaurant. I have been there with family, friends, boyfriends, blind dates, out-of-towners, foreigners, children, grandparents, co-workers and…
Here’s Kate’s take on the quintessential Denver restaurant: It would have to be My Brother’s Bar at 15th and Platte. My stepdad has been taking me there since I was six and we would play “I Spy” while waiting for our gooey JCBs; he’d sometimes let me have a sip…
Another smart response to “You Are Where You Eat,” this one from Steve Poquette of Parker, touting Mezcal: It should be a restaurant where you would proudly take friends and family from out of town (as opposed to business associates). It should be a restaurant that you feel embodies the…
What does Denver taste like? In Bite Me, I’ve been writing about my hunt for the quintessential Denver restaurant, and readers have served up plenty of food for thought. The following, from Scott, aka “The Mayor,” is particularly choice: There is nothing more Denver than the Executive Lunch at the…
Denver restaurateurs have never been very good at taking the long view, but they’re going to get there eventually. And when they do, the mistakes of the past will seem ridiculous in hindsight. Someday, prospective chefs will be taken on a tour of the failed restaurant playgrounds of Denver’s gullible…
On any day of the week, Sherpa’s is waiting like a familiar, comfortable neighborhood bar — one that just happens to be staffed by sherpas and run by a former Everest guide, and serves momo, thupka, dahl bhat and aloo paratha. It’s a foreign restaurant yet oddly comforting, confined as…
Suddenly, Chi Bistro was being hailed as a restaurant featuring ‘American classics with a flavor of French Indochina’—which ought to have meant Cafe du Monde and cr�me caramel, pho, fish heads and pigs roasted and redolent of gunpowder and Zippo lighter fuel, but didn’t, of course, except for an Asian…
My recent musings about the archetypal Denver restaurant, “You Are Where You Eat,” inspired several people to send in their own tastes of Denver. Here’s the slightly ball-obsessed response from Christine Sipple: Well, you might be right — finding a restaurant that truly speaks to you in this city could…
Okay, so the rumors have been flying about some big shakeups happening at Mel’s in Cherry Creek, and I’m here to tell you that the bad news is true. I just got off the phone with owner Mel Master a few minutes ago, and he told me that Mel’s will,…
This Just In: Late word from Stephen Anson, who is now the ex-owner of Wholly Tomato up on the hill at 9th and Lincoln. On Wednesday, Anson announced that his two-year-old “healthy fast-food restaurant” was closed as of immediately, and that he’d been bought out by the guys from Deli…
Here’s my problem with fusion cuisine: No white cook has ever learned how to properly use galangal. No black cook, either. Or Latino or Spanish or French or what-have-you. Or me. We’ve all tried it — experimented the way others might with smoking weed or light bondage — but none…
Les Delices occupies what could be the most inconvenient location on Leetsdale, but on its best days, this is the best-smelling spot in the entire city of Denver. Walking into the warm, bright, well-scrubbed interior of the little pastry shop — which is decorated almost exclusively with the diplômes and…
Fusion is the devil’s cuisine. I’ve been saying that for a long time. And I’ve believed it ever since those dark days of my own forays into the seductive world of galangal, lemongrass and frisee. A chef has to be an absolute genius to make any sort of fusion work…
I was surprised as anyone that I loved the Palace Arms, the Brown Palace’s most august restaurant. Here’s a recent letter on that review. Typical Sheehan. This article typifies why I read Jason’s stuff, why I look forward to his next crafted statements. When I read Sheehan, I want to…
Chef Michel Wahaltere has parted ways with the owners at Seven Eurobar in Boulder. And though he didn’t go into a lot of details on the split, Wahaltere did tell me that his reasons were pretty simple. First, he wanted to create a restaurant — whereas the majority partner was…
