After my first meal at Hamburger Mary’s, I went next door to Marczyk Fine Foods to poke around and see what was going on behind the market at Marczyk Fine Wines, since this was the first Sunday when it could sell liquor. The clerk seemed happy to be working on…
How do you like your summer internships, kids? The jobs have to be better than the one assigned to Cassandra Callaghan, who’s apparently acting as a piece of meat all summer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. A piece of meat who can write, as Cassandra proves with…
Just now, a dude called and said, “Jason Sheehan wrote a review about some Vietnamese restaurant last week.” I said, “Uh-huh. Pho 99.” He said, “Was it?” I said, “I’m pretty sure. Yup.”…
It’s lights out, nobody home at Scott Tallman’s Gaslamp Grill. After eighteen months in business, Tallman decided last week that he just couldn’t keep his restaurant at 9199 West Alameda Avenue open any longer. (He’d been paying some of the bills out of his own pocket for the past several…
One of the most awesome things about this job is that I never have to worry about who’s buying the cheeseburgers. I just have to worry about finding new cheeseburgers for my boss to buy. That’s no knock against Denver — God knows, this city has more burger joints than…
Moon Time, at 846 Broadway, is the second office of Westword’s editorial department, the nearby bar where we go when we need peace and quiet and…um…beer. But while the beer is cold, the air there rarely is — and so we had mixed feelings when we stopped by at 5:30…
In the most recent Bite Me, I mentioned that Brasserie Felix would open soon at 3901 Tennyson Street. But since the restaurant’s windows were covered with paper, I didn’t know much more. Last week, though, I got word from owner Danielle Diller, who said she and her husband, Gilles Fabre,…
Chocolate Honey-Comb Post Rating: Two stars out of four Cereal description: Corn and oat flour mashed into the ingenious Honey-Comb shape — a modified hexagon, thickly constructed, with six holes geometrically arrayed around the perimeter and another drilled at the center. Then, the professors at Post sprayed the bits brown,…
While other restaurants are cutting back on hours, Billy’s Inn is expanding. Open just over two weeks (that’s reopened — the original Billy’s opened more than 75 years ago, and just shut down earlier this year for a change in ownership and a massive renovation), Billy’s will add lunch to…
The new issue of Westword includes excerpts of a letter from one R. Rubio of Phoenix, which offers a flavor of a visitor’s view of the city — as well as a taste of what bad service can do for a town’s reputation. Here’s the entire letter: I am visiting…
TV or not TV? Top Chef season four contestants Antonia Lofaso and Ryan Scott will be in Cherry Creek tomorrow as the seventh stop on “Top Chef: The Tour,” a nationwide promotional trip featuring a customized traveling “Top Chef” 18-wheeler semi-truck with a state-of-the-art kitchen. The former chef/contestants will offer…
Burger King is rolling out a test-market product here in Denver this month: Apple Fries. Basically, they’re slices of apple — or perhaps slices of an apple-like product. For all we know (and based on the long and dependable history of ridiculousness in the fast-food industry), they could be processed…
We first encountered Desiderio Chocolates at the Chocolate Expo in May. A line snaked around the booth where row upon row of elegantly crafted chocolates were on display. Though they were offering samples of several flavors, the crowd favorite was clearly the salted caramel. So, later, when we were offered…
Reporters are renowned for how much they can drink. But not coffee, apparently. Yesterday, Starbucks Corp. posted the list of 600 stores it will close by early next year: nine of those in Colorado, three of those in Denver, and exactly one of those in the Denver Newspaper Agency building,…
I found myself wandering around the south ‘burbs last week, lost and chasing down a vague tip about some Vietnamese place in Parker that does killer pho and bahn xiao (kinda like a Vietnamese pizza — a rice-flour crepe covered in black bean sauce, sprouts, a little pork, maybe some…
My dentist hits the button and slowly brings the chair back to vertical. “All right,” he says. “We’re done. How ya doing?” I nod, say something about being okay, all good, splendid. “Really done?” I ask. “That was…” Gross. Annoying. Disturbing. Double-gross. “…not so bad.” He smiles, turns half away…
Pho 99 serves a surprisingly authentic, working-class, streetside kind of pho that, while not exactly rare in Denver (what with its million numbered pho shops and half-million more unclassifiable Vietnamese restaurants), is not the most common iteration of the classic Vietnamese breakfast-lunch-dinner-midnight-snack food, either. Its focus on ingredients and plain…
Inside Pho 99, there are more fish than people – fish in tanks by the door, on the counter, by the register. This is a simple space — comfortable and open and bright, friendly but not much more than functional. People come to Pho 99 to eat, nothing more. Which…
Cap’n Crunch’s Home Run Crunch Quaker Oats Rating: Three and a half spoons out of four Cereal description: Home Run Crunch is dominated by the same corn-and-oat pieces that have been the foundation of original Cap’n Crunch since time immemorial — yellowish squares that do unimaginable mayhem to the roofs…
Can Juicy Lucy’s overcome the curse of 250 Josephine Street? Despite the fact that the address comes with a parking lot — a rarity in Cherry Creek — restaurants that take on this spot never seem to last too long. Papillon had a fairly long run here, but after that…
Billy’s Inn, at 4403 Lowell Boulevard, opened quietly last week — but don’t expect it to stay quiet for long. With a great location, smart menu (dinner only for now, but that will change) and big selection of tequilas, Billy’s — which was a northwest Denver mainstay for more than…
When the Candy Girls caught wind of a chocolate therapist in town, we knew this was something we were destined to investigate. Turns out Julie Pech is an author and lecturer living in Denver who has launched a career speaking to groups about the health benefits of chocolate. Additionally, once…
