The Beef Council couldn’t have put it any better than Mark Twain did in A Tramp Abroad: “Imagine a poor exile, and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering…
There’s no surer way to send an executive chef running for the aspirin bottle than to tell him that the pastry chef served forty slices of pie burned black on the bottom, or that the prep cook forgot to grill the shrimp required for that evening’s special, or that the…
So you want to open a restaurant? The recipe for success has gotten quite simple: pasta and whatever. The beauty of something made from flour and water and a little egg is that it goes with everything. Pasta with jalapenos! Pasta with 75 kinds of cheese! Pasta with a microbrew!…
Looking through the open window into the closet of a kitchen, the first thing you see is the top of her black-haired head, and before the front door closes, her smiling face pops up in greeting. Someone else takes you to one of the tables in an adjoining room, but…
Cement with a side of cabbage. That’s the way most of the world sees German cuisine, the fat, jolly cousin of the food family. We’re talking heavy, heavy, heavy here: potatoes and dumplings and thick, greasy sausages and–ach du lieber!–next thing you know, you’re laying down a foundation for a…
Like the reptile it was named for, the Rattlesnake Grill began making noise long before it struck. The hum started about a year ago when rumors ran rampant that, yes, the Jimmy Schmidt would be opening a new version of his Rattlesnake Club, the tony, very expensive (and therefore much-maligned)…
Dad was “in Vietnam”–the polite way my family referred to that whole mess of a war–for three years, so it was only natural that some of the country rubbed off on him. I didn’t realize how much, though, until years later, when I began to recognize that Vietnam had flavored…
In the virtual reality of the future, we won’t need to leave our La-Z-Boys to travel (much less venture out to Denver International Airport)–we’ll just insert tapes in our video monitors and play tourist without suffering through the hassles of sore feet, lost luggage and stolen wallets. In the meantime,…
For years Village Inn has encouraged people to drop on in at Cherry Creek–and no one complains. But let some of the newer, hipper chain restaurants move into the area and all hell breaks loose. Chains rattle other restaurants for two reasons. The first, and most galling, is that the…
It usually starts with the word “ribs.” Maybe someone tickles me there, or a television commercial talks about something sticking to them, or I’m at church and the preacher mentions Adam. No matter how the word gets there, though, once it’s in my brain, it begins turning over like a…
The bleached blonde wet her lips, leaned forward and pressed her hand dramatically against the mammoth mammary glands that were on the verge of busting out of her black evening dress like two fat kids escaping an overheated car. “The problem with DIA,” she said, “is that a minority mayor…
Either they’re uptight about wearing pajamas in public, or that salmon was the last friend they had, because the guys behind sushi bars rarely smile. They solemnly wield their knives like sculpting tools, quietly creating works of art and then handing them over like so much dead fish. But then…
Good things come in small packages. And truly exceptional things are coming out of a tiny, nine-table restaurant in northwest Denver. Reservations have been a must almost from the moment the clumsily titled Today’s Gourmet Highland’s Garden Cafe opened seven months ago. Its modest size was only part of the…
My husband was born in the United States, but trust me–that doesn’t make him qualified to open an American restaurant in another country. Yet many restaurateurs who move here would have you believe that the only credential they need to establish a credible kitchen is a birth certificate from a…
The north Boulder neighborhood has always seemed slightly out of step, a modest Fifties enclave in a town that’s otherwise consciously–and constantly–at the cutting edge. But the area took a great leap forward with the update of the North Broadway Shops and the adjacent Community Plaza. The design company on…
Although I’ve done time in several major cities, I’d never before encountered the number of so-called Mexican restaurants I found in Denver. Miami certainly has more than its fair share, but at least in that city the repertoire stretches far beyond the standard beans and rice. Sure, you’ll find those…
It’s a brilliant concept: Let diners cook their own food. Not only does the restaurant save the cost of a grill man, but it also erases any annoying misconceptions about how long it takes food to cook–and how fast a kitchen should work. The idea is not exactly new, though…
My family was always known for its progressive thinking, but never more so than on New Year’s Eve. Every year, instead of driving downtown and getting drunk, we stayed close to home and got drunk. This happened during the annual progressive dinner, a tradition that originated in Britain but took…
It’s that time of year when your company, which is filled with employees who normally can’t stand each other, hosts a festive luncheon outside the office where those same employees can overindulge and exchange such enchanting, thoughtful gifts as coffee mugs shaped like breasts or cows. It’s also that time…
This is the way many of my conversations with owners of small Asian restaurants start out: “Hi, this is Kyle Wagner from Westword newspaper. I have visited your restaurant and would like to ask a few questions for the review.” “Newspaper? We don’t have advertisement.” “No, I’m not selling advertising…
Only the rigors of founding a new nation could have kept infamous foodie Thomas Jefferson from doing what one out of every four restaurateurs in this country (and what seems like one out of every two in this city) feels compelled to do: open an Italian restaurant. In fact, Jefferson…
Living out in the boonies has its advantages: There’s no pollution (we see Denver’s brown cloud from a healthy distance), people shoot each other only after they’ve listened to too much country/ western music, and you can run around the house naked, because the neighbors are too far away to…
