Rats! The top five ways to cook rodents, Food TV-style

For food news in 2009, it’s hard to beat this rat’s tale: The Australian version of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here put an Italian chef and a British actor in the Outback, where they saw dinner scurrying by. They pounced on the rat, ate it — and were…

Kazmos Lounge to close this weekend

It’s inevitable: On January 1, some restaurant suddenly closes its doors, leaving customers wondering what happened and employees wondering where they’re going to collect their paychecks. But Kazmos Lounge is not skulking off into the night. Instead, it’s throwing a helluva goodbye party this weekend. “It was a heartache,” owner…

Year in review: One perfect meal in 2009

It was the year of the gastropub, the year of the gourmet hamburger joint and cupcake shop, the year of the noodle bar. For me, it was the year of the book, the year I lost my father, the year I found out it was to be my last year…

The Mexican picks his Mexican restaurant in Denver

This week, Gustavo Arellano reveals his list of must-visit Mexican restaurants across the country. And n Denver? “Go to the Original Chubbys,” he advises. “What makes it so bueno? It’s a real paisa with buen diente the one who is making the suggestion and not a pinche bolillo who thinks…

Last Denver Trail Dust bites the dust

It’s now safe to wear ties in the southern ‘burbs, because Denver’s last Trail Dust Steak House has bitten the dust. A call to the restaurant at 7101 South Clinton Street in Centennial nets you just this: “The South Denver Trail Dust has closed for business.” The north Denver Trail…

Guess where I’m eating?

The menu where the above snap was shot is full of pastabilities, including the housemade pappardelle with shrimp, saffron and arugula. Who has their noodle wrapped around my little finger? Special bonus: Every Friday, anyone who gave the first correct answer to any of the week’s Where am I drinking/eating…

What will you eat, drink, make and learn in 2010?

In less than four days, we’re going to be guilted into making a bunch of New Year’s resolutions that most of us will undoubtedly break, which is as good a reason as any not to make any resolutions at all. Nonetheless, as I was reading through the posts on www.egullet.org,…

Jill’s Restaurant in Boulder welcomes two new French chefs

If a day at the spa, followed by a meal prepared by French chefs that finishes with a dessert tasting of four flavors of crème brulee — Bailey’s, chocolate truffle, pumpkin, and Tahitian vanilla bean — sounds like something you might deserve after all of the holiday madness, then head…

Changes in Cherry Creek

Today is the last day for Chez Jose, and the seventeen-year-old restaurant at 3027 East Second Avenue is going out with a bang — a final fiesta that Lori Midson describes here. Meanwhile, the Egg Shell kept to its schedule, closing up the space at 300 Josephine Street that it…

Update: Whiskey and pig’s feet at Colt & Gray

Colt & Gray has had a helluva year. First, it opened — which, as anyone who’s ever gone through a restaurant opening can tell you, is no small thing and never guaranteed until the first paying customer actually steps through the door — and then it got slammed with business…

Ask the Critic: The perils of blind e-mails

I get a lot of e-mails from marketing people. A lot. Amid all the tales of bad service offered by people who demand that I tell their stories to the world and ads for discount Vicodin through the mail are pitches from boutique marketers blindly pimping their clients — many…

Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill makes it an octet

Garbanzo beans by the bucketload, couscous by the cart, pita in packets of five, bright lights and clean lines and free samples! That’s been the successful formula for Alon Mor, the owner of Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill, who just added an eighth location to his multiplying Mediterranean feast houses. The Highlands…

Suspect likely answers to the name of Jared

This just in from Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson: On December 27, 2009, at approximately 1:54 P.M., Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office Deputies responded to the Subway restaurant located at 18525 East Smoky Hill Road, Unit L, on the report of an armed robbery. Witnesses stated that the male suspect left…

Chez Jose bids adios to Cherry Creek with a final fiesta

“It’s been a good run, a fun run, but the landlord wanted us to pay twice what our rent has been,” laments Dan Oholson, owner of Chez Jose, the Cherry Creek burrito joint at 3027 East Second Avenue that’s been busting the seams of flour tortillas with meats, beans, rice,…

Guess where I’m eating?

Next week, I’m heading south to Santa Fe for a few days of eating, drinking and stuffing my trunk with all of my favorite foodstuffs from Trader Joe’s. (Jealous, aren’t you?) And in anticipation of my journey down the flat stretch of asphalt that’ll eventually lead me to the land…

In sickness and in health, ’til tuna do we cut

Non-traditional weddings are the new black. The bride wears whatever she wants, the wedding party jams to Kanye as they bebop down the aisle and beaches, backyards, and city parks have replaced chapels and churches. But a couple in Japan recently took the cake (or the sashimi, more appropriately) for…

Top ten Chef and Tell quotes of the year

To continue to spread holiday cheer, we present the most memorable quips, words of wisdom, epiphanies, jabs, wisecracks and digs of the year culled from the last five months of Chef and Tell interviews. Chef and Tell with Goose Sorensen, exec chef of Solera What’s never in your kitchen: Chefs…

Cruising for baklava: a honey of a mission

Not long ago, I wrote an ode to the joys of the baklava at Ali Baba Grill in Golden. Soon after, we had another piece — a Sugar High report — concerning the baklava at Jerusalem. And then I got this note from Jeff, the baklava maker at Phoenician Kabob…