Although five staffers are milling about Cucina Leone, no one seems interested in helping us — and we’re the only takeout customers in the place. A cook paces back and forth in front of the grill in case some item must be prepared to order — not that he’s about…
Imagine the last dinosaur, its heavy, lumbering body unable to find enough sustenance to meet its vast energy requirements, all of its kind gone, nothing to do but hang around until the environment ultimately becomes so unfriendly that it finally dies a slow, painful death that’s torture to watch for…
No sooner had Sean Kelly opened his Aubergine Cafe, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this month (“The Eggplant and I,” July 5, 1995), than the pressure to expand began. Over the past five years, Kelly has considered adding on, moving to a bigger space, even opening a second Aubergine. But…
For a beginning chef, the scariest unknown isn’t whether you can get a job (particularly not in this market). No, when you’re starting a culinary career, your worst fear is who will be your first boss. Horror stories abound about head chefs — screaming chefs, hard-to-please chefs, pot-throwing chefs, fit-throwing…
Nicole and Rick Fierro fell in love at first bite. The two met one night while noshing at Chinook and immediately found they had food in common. Rick was managing the Washington Park Grille (for years before that, he’d been a front-of-the-house man at various Berardi ventures, including Juanita’s Uptown);…
It was a weeknight in Cherry Creek North, and two Italian restaurants were open for business a few blocks away from each other. One was so crowded that at the check-in desk, the matre d’ looked like a tourist surrounded by street urchins waiting to pick his pocket outside of…
It takes about ten minutes to get to the table, walking slowly and deliberately, with two or three items dropped along the way, which means other diners are bumping their heads trying to help. Once we reach the table, there’s much deliberation over whether this time we need booster seats…
From the day Teri Rippeto opened Potager in May 1997, her restaurant has been ripe for the picking. So why don’t more diners stop in and smell the roses? “We’ve been a tough restaurant to understand and adjust to, I think,” says Rippeto. “Our menu is different every month, we’re…
Some professional chefs never intended to cook professionally. Exhibit A: Marvin Bronstein, who won Denverites’ hearts as well as their stomachs with his brief stint at the coincidentally named Marvin Gardens in the mid-’90s. Fifteen years before, he’d been a nurse practitioner working in the pediatrics department at the University…
We’re just two steps inside the front door, and immediately the host and a couple of employees lounging around the foyer start working it hard, trying to turn “Hi, there. How many this evening? Smoking or non?” into an Abbott and Costello routine. Then our seater takes over, and he’s…
In the early to mid-’90s, Carmine’s on Penn was the first restaurant to bring an updated take on family-style dining to Denver (“Love, Italian Style,” August 17, 1994). The concept was all about big flavors and big portions and, in Carmine’s case, some big egos. But now, six years later,…
As anyone who’s seen Demolition Man knows, the only eatery with the ability to survive the Apocalypse — a kind of culinary cockroach, you might say — is Taco Bell. And the way things are headed right now, it’s quite possible that, even though we’ve survived Y2K (so far), at…
The Denver dining scene in 1999 continued to be as confused as a salmon filet swimming in blueberry sauce. Exactly what are we going for here — and where do we think we’re going? Ingredients from around the world are arriving faster than chefs can look them up in a…
It’s been a long year for Kevin Taylor — and he has only himself to blame. The chef who earned his national reputation with just one Denver restaurant is now juggling five establishments in the metro area. And while Dandelion in Boulder and Palettes at the Denver Art Museum are…
Romantic lighting, live jazz, cozy seats, adult food: This is my kind of club Med, an eatertainment concept I can live with…maybe even grow to love. The four-month-old Sambuca Jazz Café features Mediterranean-themed fare and jazz, jazz, jazz. This is the fifth such supper club, all named for the Italian…
For good Indian food, the nose knows. The right spices are critical to Indian cuisine; in fact, the meats, vegetables and breads coming out of the kitchen primarily serve as delivery vehicles for all those heady flavors and aromas. So if you don’t get a whiff of something wonderful the…
Business was going swimmingly at Starfish in the months after busy restaurateurs Mel and Jane Master opened their second Cherry Creek place (Mel’s was the first) back in 1996 (“Fishing for Compliments,” May 30, 1996). But in the wake of Starfish’s sale to John Richard two years ago, rumors kept…
When autumn is unseasonably warm, ski areas can at least make enough snow to satisfy hardcore skiers, and retailers counting on Christmas sales know that the holiday spirit has to hit sooner or later. But how do you get people to eat a steaming-hot bowl of chicken noodle soup in…
Dealing with the press isn’t part of the curriculum at the Culinary Institute of America, where leeks take precedence over leaks. So CIA grad Daniel Block had to learn his lesson the hard way. Block, now the executive chef for The Swan at the Inverness Hotel, was nineteen when he…
The raspberry sauce was the icing on the rice cake. For two decades, Mori Japanese Restaurant held down the fort on the very edge of the urban frontier, in an actual veterans’ outpost at 20th and Market streets. And until just a few months ago, to step into Nisei Post…
The first time I reviewed Brook’s Steak House (“Prime and Punishment,” September 9, 1996), I was with Barry Fey, who spent much of the meal cursing, mainly because the meal was not very good — with one notable exception: his porterhouse, which was so heavenly, so richly flavored and textured,…
It was the third time the woman had asked the server to give her a few more minutes. “I just can’t decide,” said the thirty-something gal, who was obviously getting no help from her equally perplexed date. “Could you just come back one more time?” The server graciously agreed, returning…
