Like the stones in a tennis bracelet, little ethnic eateries stud strip malls throughout suburbia. Some are genuine treasures, some are fakes–but most are flawed. Innocuously named–New Jade Garden Dragon, Happy Saigon Palace Bowlarama–and sporting hand-lettered signs proclaiming cheap lunch buffets, “No MSG” and authentic food, these spots usually change…
Personal bests: This town isn’t exactly overflowing with places that cook up Southern-style eats–see the review of Hugo’s above for one nice option–so it hurts when a good one goes down. And you can say goodbye to So-Fully Kosha Res-runt, which had been making some mean soul food in a…
After biting into Lanelle Young’s sweet-potato French fries–such caramelized confections they should be served in a candy dish–you’d swear she was born and bred in a part of the country where the humidity is thicker than split-pea soup and the unrelenting sun makes a body feel as Southern-fried as a…
Striking out: So if Denver’s such a major-league city, why was much of LoDo closed up tighter than a drum by 1 a.m. after the All-Star Game? As the clock struck twelve, we left Above the Dove, the roof of the Soiled Dove (1949 Market Street), which not only had…
Although Middle Eastern communities fight over everything from politics to religion, the similarity of their cuisines shows they at least agree on something. Yoghurt is yaourti is madzoon is yurt; parsley is bakdounis is azadegh is jafari is maydanoz–the names differ, but it’s the same ingredient whether you’re from Armenia,…
You say tomato, I say to-mah-to: Sure, everyone snickered when Ronald Reagan’s administration tried to declare school-kitchen ketchup a vegetable back in 1981. But now the Agriculture Department has decreed that salsa has nutritional value, and no one’s laughing. Maybe that’s because they realize salsa is the country’s leading condiment…
In this town, Cuban food is rarer than a humid day. That’s why, on Thursday nights, I make a break for El Azteca Grill & Cantina. Sergio Hernandez, a Cuban immigrant, and his family have already proven themselves proficient with Mexican food–in fact, they serve some of the best in…
Submitted for your consideration: two fairly similar restaurants, at least as far as food quality, efficiency and atmosphere go. But while one keeps packing them in, the other waits for the phone to ring. The busy restaurant, Il Fornaio, is like that girl who moved from New York to your…
The rest of the best: Every year as we approach the Best of Denver finish line, some hot contender suddenly comes up short. This time around we lost our early favorites for Best Cheap Breakfast (although Speedy Gourmet, at 1430 Arapahoe Street, still has great fast lunches, it’s dropped its…
There’s such a thing as being treated a little too much like family in a family-owned restaurant–such as when the server’s son sits himself down at your table and for two hours proceeds to pelt you with verbal bullets the way only a six-year-old can. That was our fate recently…
School’s in: Suddenly, Colorado has a lot of cooking schools. This spring, New York’s French Culinary Institute decided to open a national recruiting office in Colorado: L’Ecole des Chefs is an international program that calls for students to tail the chefs of three-star and four-star Michelin-rated restaurants in France for…
Best place to spend half a day doing lunch: In my never-ending Best of Denver quest, last week a friend and I stopped by Willie G’s Seafood Restaurant, at 1585 Lawrence Street. We’d eaten Willie’s excellent clam chowder on a previous visit, and I wanted to know if it was…
I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan–but not on a day when I’ve got two sick kids, no clean clothes to wear to work, a deadline to meet and nothing in the refrigerator to go with that bacon but a stale piece of string…
In most other cities, a restaurant with a name like the HandleBar & Grill would immediately evoke images of leather, lowriders and lots of tattoos. It’d be the place the cops visited nightly to break up fights, where the drink of choice was beer with a shot of tequila and,…
Missing links: Happy third anniversary to the Cracker Barrel at 350 West 120th Avenue in Northglenn. It’s one of four Cracker Barrels in the Denver area–and the corporate office says at least four more will open by the end of next year. Yikes! To mark the august occasion, I suggest…
Lookin’ good: What do a ceramic clown, a stuffed fox, baseball trophies, a houseplant, a couple of statues of mariachi musicians and a plastic parrot have in common? They’re all on a shelf lining the entry to the dining room of El Tejado, a Mexican restaurant (complete with live mariachis…
The owners of Budapest Bistro are having fun. “Yes, we are absolutely having a good time,” says Rudi Hellvig, reiterating a sentiment he’s already mentioned several times during this phone conversation. “We are having a good time. Yes, we are.” And it shows. The comfy little Hungarian bistro has a…
Critic’s choice: After eight months of searching for a new restaurant critic, the Rocky Mountain News finally decided on Greg Moody, Channel 4’s critic at large and, until recently, the restaurant reviewer for 5280 magazine. Okay, see if you can follow this: Moody replaced Thom Wise at 5280 last year…
Not all vegetarians are happy to kiss meat goodbye. “Sometimes I miss meat,” says Dan Landes, owner of Denver’s latest vegetarian eatery, Watercourse Foods. “I love good food, and I love for it to have flavor. So even though I’ve been a vegetarian for the last four years, I can…
Here today, gone tamale: Diners making their weekly pilgrimage to the Mexico City Lounge, 2115 Larimer Street, for last Wednesday’s steak-taco fix were shocked–shocked!–to find the doors chained shut, with a note announcing that the restaurant was temporarily closed and offering the Bamboo Hut at 2449 Larimer as a taco…
Kevin Taylor’s trying hard to make Denver a real city. He was one of the first to introduce this old cowtown to New American cuisine at his gone-but-not-forgotten Zenith American Grill. Then he took the concept up the road to Boulder with Dandelion, where business is still growing like a…
I’ll never forget my first Irish breakfast. I was sitting in a small Dublin pub whose bartender looked startlingly like a well-known painting of Jesus, reproductions of which hung in the dining rooms of my parents, my grandparents, my cousins and every other good Irish-Catholic family in Pittsburgh (usually with…
