In the sun-splashed dining room of La Praviana, a neat-as-a-pin Salvadoran restaurant on South Broadway, the shy waitress sets down two cold bottles of Suprema beer, and Roque Guillermo Luna begins to talk very quietly, very gently — in fact, he begins to talk the way a grownup talks when…
Action” describes the dough you wager in a bet, and the pot’s overflowing at the all-you-can-eat Kitchens of the World Action Buffet at the Black Hawk Casino — Hyatt’s recent entry in the crowded casino market. While some other casinos are content with prime-rib specials, the Hyatt’s buffet offers seven…
Lucile’s Creole Cafe brought just-squeezed orange juice, quality coffee and good, fresh food to Boulder back in the days when decent restaurants were few and far between. It continued to supply the same delicious and generally homey dishes through the era of excess — the conceptual decors, the menus selected…
Time waits for no man, but it sure does wonders for a good bar. The Bull & Bush opened back in 1971 in the heart of Glendale as a cozy-but-campy re-creation of the famed English pub in Hampstead Heath. Thirty years later, the timeworn B&B is one of the metro…
Chef John Duran, then in charge of the kitchen of Bradford Heap’s Full Moon Grill in Boulder, was teaching a workshop last summer at the Cooking School of the Rockies. While most of the school’s visiting chefs provide detailed recipes for the dishes they demonstrate, Duran’s written directions were minimal…
Change is good. Very good, judging from a few recent meals at Solera. That’s the restaurant now occupying the East Colfax Avenue space that housed the Firefly Cafe for many years and in 1999 became the much more sophisticated Ambrosia Bistro. Mark Gordon, Ambrosia’s chef and co-owner, honed his grill…
After four meals at Decisions, I still can’t decide if this restaurant knows what it’s doing. The basics are there: Decisions serves breakfast, lunch and dinner in an area that’s lacking in good options for all three meals, it’s in a good location for downtown business crowds, and it offers…
Exceptional eateries spring up in the most unlikely places. Most visitors to Golden stick to the main drag of Washington Street, the Boettcher Mansion and anything within walking distance of the Coors Brewery. But it’s time for the town to mark more landmarks in its tourist guide, including the small…
Concentrating on Mateo’s classic food while sitting in Mateo’s trendy dining room was like trying to read The Grapes of Wrath in a strip club: Both the food and the setting were worthy of attention, but the combination drove me to distraction. You can’t blame chef Seamus Feeley for trying…
Denver diners have been waiting for the right twist on Mexican food, and Lime just might be it. Over the last year, a number of eateries have opened that feature either upscale Latin-derived cuisines (Cuban, Peruvian) or upscale Mexican fare, with prices to match (ten bucks for tacos). Although such…
Recently I’ve had to face the fact that I’m never going to climb Everest. First, there’s the problem of my day job, which doesn’t exactly allow for the time commitment — or, for that matter, the tens of thousands of dollars needed to have a guide carry me up there…
Lentils may be good for you, but they taste like the dried paste from a kindergartner’s Popsicle-stick project. They sort of taste like the Popsicle sticks, too. Since lentils are a staple of Indian food, resourceful Indian cooks long ago figured out how to spice up the legumes. Enough cloves,…
Lynn Smith’s to-do list is a little longer than most. She’s a mom; she runs a restaurant; she also goes to graduate school. “Some days I wonder, ‘What was I thinking?'” Smith says. “But most days I love it. I’m always being challenged, and so far, everything’s working out.” It…
Between its answering-machine message, its local advertising and the way staff members drop the news every chance they get, Sacre Bleu wants to make it clear that the place is under new ownership and new management. And — mon Dieu! — that seems to have made all the difference. When…
The word chautauqua is Iroquois for either “two moccasins tied together” or “jumping fish,” depending on which historical linguist you believe — and its first use by non-Native Americans was to name a lake in western New York. Later the word referred to an institute for Sunday-school teachers, one that…
When I was a growing up in a very white-bread section of Pittsburgh, our choices for an ethnic dining experience consisted of a pizzeria, a Chinese restaurant that nobody went to because, well, who knew what they were doing in that kitchen, and Isley’s, which poured a red sauce that…
Kevin Taylor has a challenge on his hands: filling one of the most gorgeous, but difficult, restaurant spaces in town. When Taylor first took on the elegant old 17th Street bank lobby back in 1997, he turned it into Brasserie Z, an upscale French bistro that served Mediterranean-inspired New American…
Thank heavens we’ve almost shed the Year of the Snake. As in most cultures, Chinese lore rarely regards snakes as a good sign. In China, the snake represents cunning and evil, which pretty much sums up our 2001 (or the Chinese year 4698). On February 12, the year 4699 begins,…
What do a salesman from Texas, John Elway and a pot of New Mexican green chile have in common? They were all instrumental in convincing Jack Martinez to turn a little chile shop on Federal Boulevard into his own New Mexican eatery, Jack-n-Grill. “I was supplementing my income by selling…
Eat a bloody steak or couple with a cowboy: Those are the two things that suddenly seem eminently appealing every January when the National Western Stock Show rides into town. I’m otherwise involved in a relationship, though, so a bloody steak it was, and I started looking around for where…
Thai cooking celebrates freshness, flavors, textures and colors, and nowhere is this more evident than in the street food of Thailand. Eating on the street is so popular in that country — for natives and tourists alike — that entire guidebooks are devoted to the possibilities (Thai Hawker Food, It…
What’s in a name? Plenty, as the owners of the Havana Diner quickly discovered. “People who came here regularly were getting to know us well enough that they’d just tell other people, ‘Hey, we’re going over to Kathy and Bill’s,'” says Kathy Frangiskakis. “The problem was, we weren’t listed as…
