Although I dedicated nearly 2000 words to Rioja in my review this week (and an additional grand to Larimer Square, where Rioja is located, plus a few more hundred to a blog teasing my review of Rioja), I forgot to use any of those words to mention my favorite thing…
The Bonnie Brae Tavern turned 75 on Sunday, and celebrated by serving 75 cent beers and plates of spaghetti for $1.75. “It was crazy in here,” says Michael Dire, who co-manages the place with his cousin, Rick. Michael and Rick are the third generation of Dires to work at the…
It’s already got four bars, a full menu, big crowds and, in my opinion, the best Guinness pour in the city. It has a prime location (at 1550 Court Place) for foot traffic, a big patio and an entire hotel’s worth of captive customers. So what else could Katie Mullen’s…
A reader recently e-mailed me a good question: Whether the Chinook Tavern — which left its longtime home at 265 Detroit Street last June, in hopes of reopening at the Landmark last fall — was ever going to reappear.That e-mail got me thinking, because it seems like, well, forever since…
Just got off the phone with Anthony, who couldn’t have been any more polite — or any less forthcoming — about the story behind Simms Landing, the iconic Lakewood restaurant at 11911 West Sixth Avenue, a perch from which it has overlooked downtown Denver for more than thirty years, moving…
Real food. Sharp utensils. Big fire. A good cause. And Denver’s top chefs. That’s what’s on tap tonight, from 6 to 9 p.m., at Elway’s Cherry Creek, 2500 East First Avenue, when eleven of the town’s top cookers – Tyler Wiard (Elway’s, Cherry Creek); Sean Yontz (Mezcal, Tambien and Sketch);…
Kurobuta pork belly, seared on the surface, rubbed with cardamom, properly rested so that it isn’t wet with fat, and mounted atop a chunky mound of curry-spiced garbanzo bean puree, green like smashed peas, smooth as whipped potatoes. It’s a singularly delicious plate — the best of a whole, long…
Westword’s last office was across the street from the Wynkoop Brewing Company at 1634 Wynkoop Street — and in the early days of that brewpub, our staffers drank a lot of beers (and other things) there. “Westword kept us in business for two years,” former brewmeister/now mayor John Hickenlooper recalled…
Gomez, the Mexican pit stop at 3600 Park Avenue West, just off 38th Avenue and I-25, is beating the recession big time with all-day, every day 99 cent specials on the joint’s housemade pork-studded tamales and its egg, potato and cheese or bean and cheese burrito. If you want your…
Denver’s entry on The Bachelorette, “pizza entrepreneur” Mark Huebner, survived round three of the show last night. But while he’s wooing bachelorette Jillian — in TV time, at least — work continues at Huebner’s Denver Pizza Company, with the windows at 309 West 11th Avenue filled with city permits and…
From the hillside overlooking downtown, La Loma has been slinging green chile for close to four decades. It’s the recipe created by grandma Savina Mendoza, whose chile became so popular that the two families that opened La Loma in an old bungalow back in 1974 soon had saved enough money…
There’s plenty of action in the 2000 block of Larimer Street these days. The Gin Mill is finishing up the Barn Out Back, its backyard patio; the Three Door Bistro is looking at a July debut; and across the street at 2046 Larimer, Zanzibar Billiards Bar & Grill is getting…
Eleven East Colfax restaurants will take part in tonight’s Feast on the Fax, an annual event organized by the East Denver Colfax Partnership and local businesses that encourages foodophiles to walk, bike or hop on a free shuttle bus that takes patrons from restaurant to restaurant — where they can…
Westword’s Jonathan Shikes, who keeps all you serious bread heads in the know with his sandwich chat each week, doesn’t give a baguette’s butt that Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches, which started its sandwich monopoly in Illinois in 1983 and now has sixteen locations throughout the metro area, is a big-ass chain. …
If you give a hungry customer a happy hour… First came the patio, then the liquor license and now Catlin’s Café, at 4379 East Mississippi, is open for dinner from 4 to 9 pm on Thursday and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Owner Eric Abney says he decided to…
Being a somewhat reluctant advocate of the salads at Green Fine Salad Company and Mad Greens, both Colorado-based weed joints (in the gourmet lettuce kind of way, people), I thought I’d check out the new Choppers Custom Salad Works at 5302 DTC Boulevard, in Greenwood Village. It, like the others…
I didn’t make it to the Boulder Farmers’ Market this weekend, and to clear my karma I just may have to call Door-to-Door Organics. This local company has offered delivery of organic food for a while now, but in July it will reintroduce its “All Local” box, with delivery of…
Most Mondays, I waste time at my desk by posing a question asked by one of the dining public, then answer it in my own special way.This week, I’m doing something different. This week, the question is mine and I’m looking for answers from all of you out there in…
Colore Pizzeria Moderna, the latest in a line of Italian cafes owned by the folks who run Cucina Colore at 3041 East Third Avenue and Cafe Colore at 1512 Larimer Street, is scheduled to open June 15 at 2700 South Broadway. When I dropped in on Friday and spoke with…
The Gin Mill, at 2041 Larimer Street, has become an integral part of Denver’s oldest commercial neighborhood in just a few years, as this recent slide show makes clear. And now the watering hole is about to become even more indispensible: In a couple of weeks, it will open the…
While other chains contract, Baker St. Pub & Grill has been taking advantage of the economy by snapping up now-empty locations in the metro area. First it took on a Chili’s at 1729 28th Street in Boulder; now it’s adding the former Nine75 north space at 2831 West 120th Avenue…
Golden Grahams General Mills Rating: Two-and-a-half spoons out of four. Cereal description: Thin, rigid — and ridged — rectangles made of whole grain wheat and corn meal whose color corresponds with the brown-sugar syrup that’s largely used to flavor them. And strangely enough, that’s about it: There are far fewer…
