It was a cold night in Boulder when Laura and I walked out of Rhumba, the three-year-old Caribbean stepchild of the Jax/Lola/Zolo Grill family. The sky was silvery-gray, like old steel, with clouds hanging close over the Flatirons and a mean wind whipping scraps of newspaper, cigarette butts and crushed…
Midway through my first meal at Vega — somewhere between cleaning up every scrap of delicious oxtail tamal and toppling a pretty but ill-conceived Napoleon of salmon ceviche, thin-sliced cucumber and jicama, and moving it around the plate to make it look like I’d enjoyed it — I had one…
By my twelfth cup of coffee, the walls were starting to vibrate. My tongue tasted like a leather strap dipped in Pennzoil. Through the big front windows, I could see the lights of Romantix glowing through the fog hanging close over I-25, interrupted now and then by the dirty white…
One more bean sprout, Jay, and I swear to God, I’m gonna shank someone.” I laughed. Not out loud, though, because Glen’s threats aren’t always idle. “You gotta trust me,” I told him. “You’ll like the place. And it’s better than the bird food you’ve been eating lately.” Glen’s doctor…
Le Central is what most people picture when they daydream of lunch at the perfect French cafe — the perfect French cafe this side of France, that is. Whitewashed walls and sunlight streaming in through the windows. A cozy grouping of small dining rooms, with ten seats here, fifteen there…
The List at Lola was long and dignified. Long, because my name was about twentieth from the top — at 6 p.m. on a Saturday night on South Pearl Street. Dignified, because it seemed like every man, woman and child in the city of Denver who was cooler, richer, hipper…
When most Americans think of Russian food, they think of frozen gray latitudes, trudging babushkas clutching bags of turnips and beet roots, and giant cauldrons whose sour-colored contents are glopped out onto chipped plates in cramped, dark apartments. They picture borscht — that most recognizable of old Soviet cuisine –…
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. — Henry Hill, GoodFellas And as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to find the perfect Italian restaurant: the kind of place where goodfellas would go for linguini and clams, some sausage and…
So here’s Laura and me, handling the logistics of dinner: I call; the phone rings; she picks it up. Me: “Okay, sweets. How’s dinner tomorrow at Tante Louise?” She: “On a Friday night?” Me: “Yeah, tomorrow. Nice romantic dinner on a Friday night.” She: “French food….” She sounds…unenthused. Me: “Denver’s…
Never draw to an inside straight. Never pet a burning dog. Never use margarine if there’s butter in the house. And never, ever call your restaurant a New York deli unless: a) It’s actually within the boundaries of New York City; or b) You’re from New York City yourself, as…
Two things you should know about Opal right from the start. One, it’s expensive. Not quite once-in-a-lifetime, mortgage-the-condo expensive, but to do it right — to really kick out the jams with appetizers, flights of sushi, wine, entrees and dessert — it’s gonna cost you. And two, it’s worth every…
Lunch at Roy’s Cherry Creek was fantastic — comfortable, cheery, leisurely, and deeply, profoundly satisfying. Over my long history of long lunches, rarely have I had a better one. It helped that Roy’s space, just to the right of the valet stand at Cherry Creek Shopping Center, was made for…
Just go ahead and sit anywhere, guys. We’ll find you.” Happy hour at the Stout Pub. Cheap drafts and well drinks at recession-friendly prices, soggy blue corn nachos and an appetizer lineup borrowing heavily from the Midwestern “Everybody loves fried cheese!” school of menu design. Behind the bar, bottles lined…
One of the best reasons to eat at an ethnic restaurant is to sample another culture relatively risk-free, without the expense, hassle and occasional danger associated with actually traveling to far-flung corners of the globe in search of pigeon pie or the perfect shark taco. You don’t have to pack…
The wine room at Adega Restaurant + Wine Bar is made of glass and green light. It’s a powerful presence, beautiful in the way that cubist art can be, or a ’50s-era Hugo Gernsback-inspired Greyhound bus station. There’s an undeniably weird majesty in the geometric arrangement of its towering shelves,…
All through the run-up to this holiday season, people were asking what I’d be doing for dinner: on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day, on New Year’s Eve and the day after. They asked expectantly, assuming that I’d be doing something fabulous. Maybe they thought that, as a restaurant critic, I…
Brunch is almost always a bad idea. For consumers, it spans the dullest, most grinding hours of the day — that weird, timeless space between a leisurely late breakfast and the early start of happy hour — and brings to the table nothing but the worst of two meals that…
Kim’s is not the kind of place where anyone goes on purpose the first time. It’s the kind of place you almost always find by accident. A happy accident, as it turns out. Maybe you discovered it through that annoying vegetarian ex-girlfriend, who always seemed to have a takeout box…
On a perfect mild afternoon before the last cold snap, I found myself perched on a stool before the small, half-moon bar at Bistro Adde Brewster, contemplating a late-day snack. I’d been poking around Cherry Creek looking for something interesting to do in the neighborhood, with a vague notion of…
I watched her walk away. I watched her come back again, smudging the glass on the display case with perfectly manicured fingers. I watched her walk away again, high heels clicking on the tiles, her basket empty but for one lonely glass jar of Stonewall Kitchen raspberry-peach champagne jam. For…
Sean Kelly is no celebrity chef. His hands give him away. They’re big, strong, the wrists thick from handling sauté pans, fingertips mauled, palms rough as untreated leather. Cooks know cooks from the feel of each others’ hands, and they can gauge how long someone’s been in the business from…
There are moments in a chef’s life that forever define him. The first taste of foie gras; the oily reek of anchovies; the crisp, celery-stalk snap of a rabbit’s neck being broken; the explosion on the back of the tongue set off by the full, huge, deep-brown flavor of a…
