Getting the best of them: As usual, there are a few hotly contested awards in this year’s Best of Denver issue, which came out last week to cheers and jeers from readers and the restaurant community. The most controversial item (so far) seems to be my selection of Sonoda’s, with…
The voice leaving the message sounded sadder than that of a person whose best friend had just died. “I’m so, so worried that this place is going to close,” the caller said. “If you went there, you’d just fall in love with the food. Please visit it and see what…
Get three women together–two married with children and one completely unencumbered–for dinner and drinks, and it’s like a Vietnamese order-by-numbers meal: You never know what the heck’s gonna come out. Luckily, our trio was throwing the dice at Saigon Bowl, a two-year-old restaurant occupying a space in the Far East…
With Child: After an evening of red meat and red wine last week with Julia Child, sponsored by the Colorado chapter of the American Institute of Wine & Food (which Julia founded sixteen years ago with Robert Mondavi, Richard Graff and others) and held at Brasserie Z, I came to…
After eating at Kevin Taylor’s Brasserie Z, I have only one thing to say: Kevin, you can hold that banana between your knees. Correction: I have only one negative thing to say, because that banana was the only flaw I found during three otherwise stellar meals at Taylor’s new restaurant…
Book ’em: If you’re one of those people who loves chain food–and I know you’re out there, furtively wolfing down T.G.I. Friday’s potato skins–then Top Secret Restaurant Recipes will let you hide your problem in the privacy of your own home (and keep you from throwing any more of your…
Cutting the Cheesecake: Dixons Downtown Grill, reviewed above, isn’t the only restaurant affected by the new Cheesecake Factory, at 1201 16th Street. Part of a California chain, this big, splashy eatery serves big portions and some splashy food, but the Factory certainly isn’t good enough to warrant the multitudes lining…
Stop going to the Cheesecake Factory. I mean it. The food’s fine, but it’s not worth an hour-long wait at lunch. And if you keep going there, the few locally owned restaurants left in LoDo–the ones whose owners have been lamenting the long lines at the chain Cheesecake Factory when…
I once overheard a woman extol the charms of a local French restaurant. “The waitstaff is so rude, it’s great,” she said, not a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “It’s just like eating in Paris.” That’s a little extreme, but certainly the escape factor is one of the attractions…
When the Wynkoop Brewing Company started up back in 1988, no one had a clue how big the microbrewery business would become. Or, for that matter, how big the Wynkoop would get: Today it’s the nation’s largest brewpub. But on opening day, the crowds flocked to that lonely LoDo outpost…
If Denver were a starving Third World country, Noel Cunningham would be its Mother Teresa. At Strings, his eleven-year-old restaurant, he does his bit to feed the masses–at least, the relatively upscale masses. But Noel Cunningham’s generosity extends far beyond that. The longtime restaurateur helped create the decade-old Share Our…
A poke in the ribs: Sam Taylor’s Bar-B-Q, which relocated to 435 South Cherry Street a few months ago after a decade at the Links at City Park, used to serve my favorite bones in town. Now I’m not so sure. I stopped by Sam’s new location on Mother’s Day–a…
Ch-ch-ch-changes: Some restaurant maneuvers are executed so quietly you hardly know they happened, like last year’s “business divorce” of longtime partners Noel Cunningham and Pasquale Minicuci that resulted in Cunningham’s getting custody of Strings, at 1700 Humboldt Street, and Minicuci retaining Ciao! Baby, at 7400 East Hampden Avenue. Minicuci hired…
“Would it be all right with you if I killed you and ate you?” Had this been the first line of the letter, I might have been alarmed. But since it was the closing line, a rhetorical question that ended a diatribe documenting my obvious disdain for animal life, written…
Chile reception: More downhome Mexican food is where the hearth is, but darned if I can tell you much more than that after two visits to La Fogata, at 5670 East Evans. The name translates to “the fireplace,” but I’m the one who’s hot over a zillion unreturned phone calls…
“It would be an exaggeration to say that modern Mexican cooking is Aztec cooking plus pigs,” notes Mexican-food expert Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz, “but the statement is not far out of line.” That’s because, despite pork’s important role in so many contemporary Mexican dishes, the pig had to be dragged–kicking and…
Pizza the action: After my recent review of pizza places (“Pizza Mind,” April 10)–one of which, Enzo’s End, at 3424 East Colfax Avenue, is now on my list of favorites–several people called to say I should try Oblio’s Pizzeria, at 6155 East 22nd Avenue. And after visiting this charming Park…
Some restaurateurs lament the time they spend training employees, only to watch them take that experience and use it elsewhere. But not Blair Taylor, owner of Barolo Grill. He’s seen several good people come and go on to other endeavors–and each time, he acts like a pleased father when they…
After Carmen Jennings and Jean-Paul Beining sold Soren’s, their successful Cherry Creek restaurant, a couple of months ago, they opened a new place: Carmen and Jean-Paul’s Franktown Grill in Franktown. The obvious question, of course, is: Why? In case you’re not familiar with the bustling metropolis of Franktown, it’s a…
Mouth of the south: Suddenly, Parker and its small-town neighbors are hot restaurant locales. In addition to the spots reviewed above, the newcomers include Bandanas Cafe at the Bullpen, at 19552 East Mainstreet in Parker. (It’s next door to the Warhorse Inn, which, until recently, was one of the town’s…
It’s not easy improving on an old family recipe. That’s what Alice “Candy” Gonzales discovered when she tried cooking up a few innovations at M&G Cafe, the restaurant at 2706 Larimer that her grandmother, Pat Gaitan, founded 43 years ago. Gaitan grew up on a Colorado farm where, as a…
While the rest of the country was making its way to Denver for the Oklahoma City bombing trial, two boys from another Midwestern metropolis slipped quietly into town to open a restaurant. Paul Khoury and Bill Crooks already had six successful eateries in their hometown of Kansas City and another…
