Bellying up to celebs at the Barackbar

Still haven’t managed to wrangle yourself a floor pass for the Pepsi Center? Then the next best place for celebrity spotting is turning out to be Jesse Morreale’s Rockbar, renamed Barackbar for the festivities. (It’s located at 3015 East Colfax Avnue, on the ground floor of the All-Inn Hotel). Last…

Tacos Jalisco offers true southern comfort

Denver does a lot of foods well. We do steaks and potatoes out of historic, autonomic reflex. We do burgers because a man can’t eat porterhouse every day and live long at it. We do sushi because we happened to be the settling place for a handful of sashimi savants,…

Milking It: Keebler Cookie Crunch Cereal

Keebler Cookie Crunch Cereal Kellogg’s Rating: Two spoons out of four Cereal description: Cookie Crunch is built on two separate foundations. The majority of the pieces are rugged ovals made of corn and wheat flour and speckled white and brown. They’re supplemented by corn ovals that are meant to resemble…

Biker Jim could be a real big weiner at the DNC

Quick shout-out to Biker Jim Pittenger. who’ll be manning the hot dog cart down in Skyline Park during the inevitable clusterfuck of the DNC. Though he did put things off ‘til the last minute, even he has gotten in on the spirit of the thing and come up with a…

Candy Girls: Candy Deviled Eggs

Whenever Liz’s parent’s head up to the mountains and pass through Empire, there’s one destination that’s a must-stop. Lewis Sweet Shop is a great little store that’s been selling homemade candy in one capacity or another since 1951. Though the original owner, Dwayne Lewis, no longer runs the store, according…

Sugar House Lounge marks its first birthday

The Sugar House Lounge, at 1395 West Alameda Avenue, marks its first birthday this weekend, with a family and friends party Friday, August 23, and a more, well, adult party on Saturday night — “a huge, crazy, crowded scene,” owner Scottie Ewing promises. And there’s more sugar in store for…

From A to Z, Z Cuisine A Cote spells success

Wednesday is market day for Patrick Dupays, chef/owner of Z Cuisine and Z Cuisine À Côté; market day for the cooks, who lay into his ever-changing menu with a fervor, adding this, subtracting that, finding places for the new acquisitions; market day for the À Côté servers, who know exactly…

Le Central: everyday French fare you could eat every day

SAT prep question: Z Cuisine À Côté is to Le Central as apples are to blank. If you said toaster ovens, typewriters, shag carpeting or anything of the sort, you’re correct — because Le Central and À Côté (reviewed this week) could not be more different. While À Côté is…

National Sandwich Month has started, and I’m on a roll

The sandwich is the perfect American food because it appeals to our sense of independence and individuality. You can put anything you want between two pieces of bread — from peanut butter and bananas like Elvis, to rigatoni and marinara sauce like my college buddy, Patrick. And although the sandwich…

Oblio’s Pizzeria takes summer home

There is no better spot to be in Denver on a warm, late summer evening than at Oblio’s Pizzeria in Park Hill, where Suzanne, the bartender, mixes up batches of perfect sangrias, neighbors walk — or drive their golf carts — over for hot, scrumptious pizza, and the patio sizzles…

The Wine Loft uncorks on Wazee, Cru in Park Meadows

The Wine Loft, a link in a Louisiana-based chain that may have the most irritating web site in the world (unless you like a lot of techno music and little information – see for yourself here), just opened last week at 1527 Wazee Street, in the former home of Pharmaca…

French cooking, from A to Z at Z Cuisine A Cote

A Cote has all the quirky, dream-of-Paris charms of Z, and when it opened this past January, it quickly became a destination in its own right. Now the two restaurants fill in tandem — generally within an hour of opening – and stay that way. For hours. In the meantime,…

LoDo gets more red meat with Fogo de Chao

You’d think that one Brazilian steakhouse might be enough for all of LoDo — much less a three- block stretch of Wynkoop Street. But then you wouldn’t be thinking like Hines, the international real estate firm that just announced that Fogo de Chão Churrascaria has signed a lease for 12,610…

Milking It: Cap’n Crunch’s Treasure Hunt Crunch

Cap’n Crunch’s Treasure Hunt Crunch Quaker Oats Rating: Three spoons out of four Cereal description: The majority of the cereal consists of the building blocks (and they really do look like blocks) of the Cap’n Crunch brand: puffy yellow squares of delectability made from corn and oat flour. They’re supplemented…

Tony’s, Tony’s, Tony’s: A market on Broadway

Tony’s, Tony’s, Tony’s! The sign is up across the street: Tony’s Market opening early 2009. It’s a sight for sore eyes at Westword, where for a month now we’ve been staring across the street at 950 Broadway, with its boarded-up broken glass and the remains of the Planned Parenthood sign,…

In time for DNC, 8 Rivers comes to Lodo

Just in time for the near-inevitable clusterfuck of the DNC, 8 Rivers — the Caribbean/Jamaican concept that’s been pushed in Denver by chef Scott Durrah for years — is set to open the doors on its newest location on August 20th. The space at 1550 Blake Street, a former sporting-goods…

Troy Guard: cottage cheese pimp, general of the TAG army

Just got off the phone with Troy Guard, former crown prince of the Jim Sullivan restaurant empire. I him caught up in the mountains in the middle of his preparation for the Telluride Festival of the Arts, going on today through Sunday. He’s holding down the culinary side of things…

Candy Girls: Japanese Candy Extravaganza

A while back, two great friends of the Candy Girls went on an epic adventure through Japan and kindly asked if there was anything that we’d like them to bring back for us. We immediately thought of you, dear readers, and asked for candy! (That and we really really wanted…

Mel’s Anti-Bistro spills onto a patio

Welcome to Mel’s. July’s heat dried up the outdoor patios, but now that temperatures have cooled off, patios are heating up again. Promising to be among the hottest in town: Mel’s Anti-Bistro at 1120 East Sixth Avenue. Charlie Master reports that the new patio opened this week, and it’s already…