Matt Mine delivers his bacon brittle to Bourdain

For the chef at a seafood restaurant — Oceanaire — Matt Mine sure loves his bacon. He often features a slab of it on Oceanaire’s menu, and he recently cooked up a batch of bacon brittle with Anthony Bourdain in mind, which was included in the pre-talk meal that Oceanaire…

Barbecue: It’s what’s for breakfast at Cabin Creek

Colorado has recently gone through something of a barbecue boom. Sure, there are places like M&D’s that have been around since forever, but over the past five years, Colorado in general (and Denver in particular) has seen a surge in joints that exist for the greater worship of the smoker…

Update: Ondo’s sets a new opening date

Just got off the blower with Curt Steinbecker (that’s him in the funny hat up there, standing beside his wife, Deicy) of Ondo’s, the Spanish tapas restaurant that I’ve been waiting forever for at 250 Steele Street (in the former home of French 250). Okay, so maybe it hasn’t quite…

Waffle-pocalypse!!! An open letter to President Obama

Dear Mr. President. As you are no doubt aware, the Kellogg Company recently announced that it is experiencing a catastrophic waffle shortfall owing to a sort of “perfect storm” of circumstances: scheduled maintenance and upgrades to their army of waffle-making robots, flood damage in the vast waffle fields of the…

Guess where I’m eating?

I love flapjacks as much as the next person (maybe even more), but the smoked salmon, red onion and caper pizza that you see in the above snap is seriously, deliriously delicious. And it’s just one of several breakfast pizzas on the new brunch menu at a Denver restaurant that’s…

Chef and Tell with Brian Laird of Barolo Grill

“It was a step off the cliff for sure, but at the same time, I just knew that I was a good fit for the job,” says Brian Laird of Barolo Grill, the Northern Italian restaurant whose kitchen Laird has cooked in for the past twelve years — the last…

Guess where I’m eating?

Sometimes what we like is a little comfort food, even when the sun’s shining. This homey macaroni and cheese dish might seem small, but it packs a satisfying wallop of creamy goodness set off by a crunchy topping. The side salad is just a bonus. Can you guess where I’m…

Getting personal at Paradise Asian Cafe

It’s what you like that matters. And I like science fiction movies and books about sailing ships and celebrity memoirs and amateur pornography. I like music made in the years that music really mattered to me — those years I spent in high school and in kitchens and had very…

Anthony Bourdain photo-cutline winner revealed!

Twenty-eight hours and sixty-five entries later, we know one thing for sure: You people out there in Hotcakesland certainly do love your dick jokes. And your Colfax jokes. And your vegan jokes. And your vegan-on-Colfax dick jokes… Still, we had to go with just one caption for our last set…

Serious Eats chimes in on Denver’s “unique food trends”

Denver got a shout-out last week on the food blog www.seriouseats.com, which listed what they believe to be four unique food trends in our fair city. Our fast casual chains, microbreweries, green chile, and Beau Jo’s all get mentions. But while we appreciate that they resisted mentioning Rocky Mountain oysters,…

100 Favorite Dishes: Pho from Pho 95

As a countdown to the Best of Denver 2010, coming April 1, Cafe Society is serving up a hundred of our favorite dishes in Denver. Send your own nominations to cafe@westword.com. No. 96 Pho – any pho — from Pho 95…

Den Deli and Seafood aims to open the day after Thanksgiving

Rotisserie ducks and chickens, traditional Asian noodles bowls, a fresh fish counter, pastries, ready-made sushi and rolls, sandwiches, prepared foods, bento boxes and fresh-blended juices come to Platt Park the day after Thanksgiving. That’s when Den Deli and Seafood Market is slated to open at 1501 South Pearl Street, directly…

Ten ways you can improve your server’s life (and your service)

The New York Times blog “You’re the Boss,” ruffled the apron strings of restaurant servers nationwide when it ran Bruce Buschel’s two-part list of things restaurant staffers should never do. As someone who worked the FOH for 14 years, I have two words for Buschel: Bitch, please. While Buschel made…

Do you know the muffin women, who live in Manitou Springs?

There’s a contest for everything, including, as it turns out, muffins. And for Sharon Smith and Wendy Goldstein, owners of the Two Sisters Inn — a bed-and-breakfast in Manitou Springs — it was their muffins that took the cake on Monday, November 9 at the Bed & Breakfast Innkeepers of…

Oliver’s Meat Market to honor cops, including Ranjan Ford

Working in the food industry has its hazards. Today at 11 a.m. at Denver Police Department headquarters, five Denver police officers will be honored with the Citizens Appreciate Police award. On June 9, these officers responded to Oliver’s Meat Market “on the unfortunate report of an employee who lost her…

Boning up on our Anthony Bourdain contest

Tomorrow night, Mayor John Hickenlooper will give Anthony Bourdain a fork to the city when he introduces the travelin’ man at “An Evening with Anthony Bourdain” at the Buell Theatre. Of course, Bourdain has already forked this city: After visiting Denver on a book tour in 2002, he said he…

The chaos is over: Kaos opens tomorrow on South Pearl Street

After months and months and months of delays, Kaos, the take-out pizza shack from Patrick Mangold-White and Jon Edwards, will finally fire up its oven tomorrow at exactly 11:30 a.m. Mangold-White and Edwards, who also own Gaia Bistro, 1551 South Pearl Street, had hoped to open Kaos in the former…

Update: Last chance for Anthony Bourdain tickets

Yes, we’ve scored two more pairs of tickets to the Anthony Bourdain event that we’ve been so relentlessly hyping for the past several days — and earlier today, we asked all you slavering readers to come up with interesting ways in which we might give them away. And since my…

Breadhead alert: Udi’s is rolling out dough in Arvada

Udi’s Bread Cafe, which already has locations in Stapleton (7357 East 29th Avenue); Louisville (185 South 104th Street); Aurora (12700 East 19th Street); and north Denver (101 East 70th Avenue), officially opens its fifth location today at 7600 Grandview in Olde Town Arvada, directly across the street from Archive Room,…