A quick update on ex-Café Star chef Rebecca Weitzman’s New York adventure. When I checked out her work at Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain in Manhattan, I loved the food and hated just about everything else. Now I just got word that Weitzman has put in her notice and is once…
Driving through the new Landmark development in Greenwood Village is like moving through an incomplete Hollywood backlot. Eight out of ten storefronts are empty, but they’re varnished with promises: a salon here, coming spring 2008; a bar there, pledged for 2009. There are parking garages and street signs, lights in…
My meals at Jing (see review) convinced me that the problems at Charlie Huang’s other restaurants come not from the rigors of cuisine or the classic chef’s tug-of-war between art and commerce, but simply from age and popularity. And in the interest of science, last week I stopped by his…
When the wind blows just right, kissing the exhaust vents on top of Charlie Huang’s new restaurant, Jing, all the oxygen on the street seems to be replaced, for just the space of a single breath, with the greasy, earthy, candied scent of garlic roasting, garlic frying, garlic oil gleaming…
About twenty minutes into our first meal at Ali Baba Grill, I leaned across the table and whispered to Laura, “What’s the big deal? I just don’t get it.” For years, we’d heard glowing endorsements of this little Middle Eastern restaurant in a Golden strip mall from people who refuse…
How do you order right? I wish the answer were as simple as saying, “Order the simple stuff, forget the complicated” — or the reverse, “Order the authentic, the difficult to pronounce, and ignore the rest.” But at Ali Baba, it’s not that easy. This place has a learning curve,…
Every time I go to Ha Noi Pho, I stop for a moment in front of the doors and look at the hours, painted in white on the glass. They say the place opens at 8:30 a.m., but I’ve never made it here anywhere close to that early. In fact,…
There was a time when my favorite Korean restaurant was the one housed in the shell of a former McDonald’s on Parker Road in Aurora — a massive place that still had uncomfortable plastic McDonaldland seats in the dining room and big Ms embossed on things like the napkin dispensers…
The January 10 issue includes part of a letter from David Hahn of Denver. Here it is in its entirety, along with Jason Sheehan’s response:…
Editor’s note: sorry about that headline. I’d had duck’s blood before, had used it in my own kitchens, but until I came to Ha Noi Pho, I’d never cared for it beyond its capacity to mount a voluptuously glossy sauce. Here the blood is one of the main points of…
Hanging above the entrance to Osteria Marco is a brass pig. It’s a smallish thing that you could miss if you weren’t looking for it. As a matter of fact, you could easily miss the entire restaurant if you didn’t know where it was — behind a dark door, down…
After a trip, my first meal back in Denver is almost always at Little Panda. Why? For starters, it’s always open. Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Christmas Day, St. Paddy’s: I’ve never once called the joint when someone wasn’t there, waiting (though sometimes grudgingly) to take my order for steamed…
Seek the pig, ye foodie snobs, ye noble gastronauts, ye bewildered and befuddled and besotted masses. King Pig, hanging under the lights like a beacon, like a promise. Find Osteria Marco, go down into its embrace and eat until you pop. That kinda says it all, doesn’t it? Osteria Marco,…
I’m looking back at the year from a twelfth-floor suite across from Carnegie Hall, on the quiet side of 57th Street. I’ve got a bellyful of ridiculously overpriced beer, cheeseburgers and Cuban chicken from the Brooklyn Diner, and have just returned from a nice digestive stroll through the Christmas market…
Mexico, Christmas 2001. Laura and I, in a fit of wild-goose inspiration, had quit the bright, dusty and idiot-ridden confines of Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a quick run through Truth or Consequences, Las Cruces and Vado, aiming the blunt nose of yet another in a long line of used $400…
Some of the world’s worst restaurants come out of a restaurateur’s attempts to define a cuisine, a mood or himself. Some of the best come as an answer to a problem or a declaration of intent. When it opened exactly four years ago, Mezcal could have gone either way: become…
It was almost midnight when I left Izakaya Den. I muscled my way out the big, unmarked front doors, turned to face a bracing, cold breeze whipping down the street and staggered just a little. I shook my head to clear away the cotton, patted down my pockets for a…
As evidenced by the strange but incredibly successful tapas menu being done izakaya-style at Izakaya Den (see review), the Japanese know a thing or two about small plates. But other Asian cuisines have taken to the notion of little tastes of several dishes, too. The Chinese have dim sum; the…
My waiter came by, brought me a warm towel for my fingers, a stack of menus, a beer. Then we started talking — about the menu, about the Izakaya concept, about how to order and what I should order and how much of everything I should order. “How hungry are…
I’d spent most of a lazy Saturday avoiding the commitment of deciding where to eat that night. Laura kept asking, kept pestering me to make a decision — wanting to know what kind of freaky, dumb-ass experience her darling husband would settle on this time: raw fish, testicles, chicken-fried steak,…
While I may always have a soft spot for the Bagel Deli (see review) with its cramped displays of Jewish deli essentials (Dr. Brown’s soda, bagel chips, Halvah and schmaltz), those looking for a wider variety of sundries could do a lot worse than the East Side Kosher Deli. Open…
Laura does not eat breakfast out. Ever. She’s one of those people who dreams of someday living in a hotel penthouse — not for the housekeeping or the views or the glamour of being the sort of person who lives in a hotel penthouse, but just for the room service:…
