Calling all couch potatoes! Check out the Food Network this Sunday at 7 p.m. for the Iron Chef America battle between Bobby Flay and Martin Rios of the Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe. Why? Because Chef Rios brought along his brother Daniel Rios as one of his two…
I used to be afraid of going into new places. And not just regular afraid. This was real terror — the kind of knee-knocking, heavy-breathing, anxiety-ridden fear that some people (like me) feel when forced to go to the dentist and others (unlike me) would experience if, through some unfathomable…
No sooner had Jason Sheehan’s review of Encore and its crooked tables hit the streets than those tables disappeared. The timing was pure coincidence, Sheehan reports in the current Bite Me. But the new hats on the chefs — replacing their Strawberry Shortcake: The Musical toques — was no coincidence,…
GB Fish & Chips used to be a computer store before owner Alex Stokeld got his hands on it last year. But the place really looks more like the kind of place where computers might’ve been operated in secret, like maybe during the run-up to a nuclear war. It is…
We are gathered here today to mark the passing of one of the oldest Chipotle restaurants in Denver, the location at 13th and Pennsylvania streets. One of the original, 15-20 pre-McDonald’s Chipotles, the store opened in 1998, back before the big-burrito chain — founded in Denver five years earlier –…
Neighborhood Flix Cinema & Cafe, which opened in November in the Lowenstein project, is a combination movie theater and cafe with a menu gleefully designed by gallivanting knife-for-hire James Mazzio and a full bar, a place where a man willing to lay down the coin can drink his way through…
If Neighborhood Flix is an independent, high-end exemplar of the dinner-and-a-movie concept, then Movie Tavern — part of a multi-unit, food-and-movies chain out of Texas — is the McDonald’s, Olive Garden and T.G.I. Friday’s of the industry all rolled into one. While the basic idea of combining food and film…
They say that everyone — even the guy with the best gig in the world — dreams occasionally of doing something else with his labors. I know chefs who dream of being musicians, musicians who’d love to be chefs, real estate brokers who spend their nights writing strange novels, and…
I’d been looking forward to seeing There Will Be Blood. It had been nominated for about a hundred Academy Awards, and my more serious film-nerd friends talked about it like it was a singular work of staggering genius that would shape the way Hollywood made movies for decades — the…
Last week, I received this e-mail (reprinted verbatim) from a Mr. Jason Mason: Sheehan (Mr Anthony Bourdain wannabe) Can you or will you ever give a true review w/stars, forks, diamonds, pokadots, liquor bottles, etc? I’ve been in the business a long time and have never seen anyone like you…
Here’s my favorite story about the Mexico City Lounge — a great neighborhood joint that was in the ballpark neighborhood long before Coors Field ever entered the picture. Back in the days when Denver having a Major League Team was just a pipe dream, Pete Coors was having lunch with…
It was my dining companion who noticed the weird thing about the tables at Encore. “Look at that,” she said, pointing to the round four-top next to us, noting how uneven the table was, how crooked. It was warped so badly that the flat outside edge had cracked and split…
In the Best of Denver 2007, I touted Yo Philly, the sandwich shop inside a Conoco station run by Jerry Cheryl, and followed up a few weeks later with this warning: “If you haven’t yet made the scene, you should. My only fear is that someday this gas-station counter will…
Of the many contributions of the Irish to world culture—from colcannon and those silly snap-brim tweed hats of which my father is so fond to the music of the Pogues and the films of Jim Sheridan—I don’t think anyone would argue with my saying that whiskey is the best. There’s…
My friend and the waitress were still talking about recycling, about the re-use and re-application of found objects, cast-off materials. And though I was concentrating on the food, some of their conversation must’ve penetrated, because I found myself thinking about recycling, too. About the salvage and reclamation of forgotten things…
While most of the Best of Denver 2008 fallout has been outside the office, there’s been plenty of talk here at Bite Me World HQ regarding my Best Green Chile award for Jack-n-Grill. Backbeat editor Dave Herrera takes it very personally when I say things about Colorado-style verde being just…
For the first time in 25 years, Westword’s readers showed the collective good taste to choose something other than McDonald’s french fries as the Best French Fries.Their choice? Bistro Vendome, which makes its delicious fries even more addictive with a salty/sweet sprinkle of spices. The editorial choice for Best French…
Every year, our work on the Best of Denver reminds us of not just what’s new and wonderful in this city, but what we’ve lost — although you don’t see the latter in the final issue. We just take note of the dearly departed as we research, then discard, potential…
When I was growing up, my family and I spent most weekends at our summer cottage in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York. When I tell people this, they imagine a tanned and happy nuclear unit cavorting on the manicured lawn of a nice Cape Cod on the…
Both spots were serving the same purpose, separated by two dozen years and a million miles of desire. That old grocery store was dedicated to its community of farmers, drunks, rednecks and fishermen, just as Fisher Clark tends to the needs of the yuppies, old folks, new money and urban/suburban…
While Denver itself frequently ranks in national polls for having one of the biggest St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, none of our local Irish pubs ever get so much as nod from out-of-towners. Whatever, we don’t need some national booze critic to tell us where to get soused. For a town…
The host at French 250 is young — new to the business, I think, because as he walks me down the narrow space between tables, I can see that he doesn’t yet have the smooth grace of the servers, who move like dancers: smoothly, fluidly, and with the confidence of…
