My buddy Gracie and I were sitting at the end of the bar, drinking whiskey and talking about Kurt Vonnegut. Gracie is a beer snob, a Rust Belt kid like me in town for some computer conference; he’s also incredibly well-read and a Vonnegut fan. I’d made some passing mention…
Chef Adam Mali’s also a floorwalker, which bothered me a little. When I see a chef working the room, shaking hands, making nice with the customers, all I can think is that with him on the floor loving up the crowd, who’s in the galley watching my agnolotti or expo-ing…
Where I grew up, in upstate New York, there was no Mexican food. No tacos. No burritos. Just a Taco Bell down on Ridge Road (which did not count at all) and a few square feet of shelf space at Wegman’s dedicated to Latino foods: a couple bags of stale…
Rosie’s Diner 14061 East Iliff Avenue, Aurora 303-752-3663 www.rosies-diner.com I have never been a morning person. Most days, it would take a major crisis to get me out of bed before 10 a.m. And if I’ve had a late night, a rough night or been forced to self-medicate with black-cherry…
Okay, so the last place I ever expected to find a fantastic sandwich was at Montecito — the new restaurant from the Master family, open since December at 1120 East Sixth Avenue. Some great fish? Yes. Great apps? Absolutely — and constantly being tinkered with by chef Adam Mali. And…
Estillo Mexicano—those were the magic words at Tacos D.F. Mexican style: just spice and meat—rough-chopped grilled steak, marinated in God knows what, with caramelized onions in the case of the asada, and naked chopped pork, redolent of char for the carnitas. If you had to gussy up the tacos, there…
Via has had a tough run. In the summer of 2005, it took over the former home of Brasserie Rouge, whose sudden death is still spoken of in hushed tones by those in the industry — no doubt for fear of bottom-feeding lawyers overhearing the stories and then trying to…
The week after the Best of Denver 2007 is the perfect time to revisit Chama for a Second Helping. Why? Because at Chama, chef Sean Yontz proves that coming in second is not a bad thing. Chama has been a perennial runner-up since it opened almost eighteen months ago (“Dirty…
That’s when James Mazzio left Colorado for Chicago, where he took on a chef’s gig for a restaurant that didn’t yet exist and spent a year waiting for its owner to get his shit together before giving up and coming home. And then what line did he walk onto? Via’s—with…
In the next Bite Me, you can read all about the rest of the Best of Denver. But in the meantime, I have a major correction on the Best Free Chips and Salsa. I gave the award to Los Carboncitos, which definitely has the Best Free Salsa. Just one problem:…
We can’t do this anymore.” “We can. I know we can make this work.” “We can’t. This has been a problem for too long.” I sighed. “Look. We’re both smart people. We’re college-educated grownups.” “Well, one of us is, anyway.” “We can figure this out.” Laura crossed her arms and…
Let’s agree from the start that no new incarnation of Lucile’s will ever compare with the first at 2124 14th Street in Boulder. The original has a kind of magic, a musty, irregular charm that can only be earned, never bought. That said, the Denver Lucile’s has only improved since…
At the end of a good night, I often have more takeout stacked in the front seat of my car than I can carry up the stairs in a single trip. Some of my to-go compulsion is work-related. When I need to know exactly what ingredients were in the ravioli,…
I have long held that Buffalo, New York — where I spent a few formative years of my cooking career — is a city unjustly labeled as a one-hit food town. Chicken wings, chicken wings, chicken wings, right? Nothing but deep-fried bird parts and snow. But this is wrong. Well,…
“Look, Rhumba was never a restaurant that I was fully, culinarily happy with.” That’s Dave Query telling me this. Dave Query, owner of the now defunct Rhumba (above), of the very much funct Lola and Jax and West End Tavern and Zolo Grill. Dave Query, who I took to task…
Here’s everything I ate at Red Tango in one sitting last week, an enthusiastic order so large that the dishes could not fit on the table at one time, forcing the kitchen to stagger courses, the floor manager to wonder aloud if six or seven more people would be joining…
While South and Central American restaurants like Red Tango (see review) are just starting to get serious traction here, Denver has long been blessed with many fantastic Indian restaurants — and those Indian restaurants have been blessed with a very supportive and reasonably educated clientele. I can’t even count how…
Ceviche…fresh chips and chipotle salsa…empanadas and arepas con something-or-other with goat cheese…fried plantains, thick-cut and buttery, crisp at the edges and gooey in the middle. Plantains are hard to do even moderately well, and these were the best fried plantains I’ve had in Denver. Since I eat fried plantains everywhere…
A brief list of stuff I don’t like: Poetry, with the exception of a few pieces by the likes of William Carlos Williams and T.S. Eliot and the shell-shocked blasphemy of Siegfried Sassoon. The musical stylings of the Grateful Dead or any of their legions of hippie imitators. Vegetarianism used…
I’ve always been a little creeped out in empty restaurants. There’s that uncomfortable sense of being watched — because there’s no one else in the dining room to attract any of the staff’s attention. I feel like I ought to whisper, so as not to distract the bored cooks and…
The lineup was always heavy on jam bands and, eventually, Adam, Jeremy and Matt realized one of their fundamental problems: the fans of that trippy, spacy, Grateful Dead style music were all showing up stoned and stoned hippies don’t drink. Or at least not enough. What stoned hippies do have…
Fruition, which opened last month in the former Somethin’ Else space on Sixth Avenue, opted out of Denver Restaurant Week because owners Paul Attardi and Alex Seidel wisely decided that the crushing DRW scrum might be tough on such a new place. Still, it’s doing a respectable business this week…
