Given the miserable survival rate of new restaurants, Willie Nelson could have sung a different tune: “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Restaurateurs.” Better the babies should grow up to be businessmen who buy a key piece of real estate and fill it with kitschy, pricey eateries…
The first Thai restaurant in the United States opened in 1961–in Denver, of all places. La-Iad “Lily” Chittivej fell in love with the area when her husband was serving in a Thai military unit stationed at Fitzsimons during the Korean War; she returned years later to open the Chada Room…
Ethiopian food makes me think of sex. Really sloppy, messy, no-holds-barred sex, the kind people in the movies have with things like clay and old Righteous Brothers tunes as marital aids. Sure, almost any food can be sexy (especially with the right dining companion), but few cuisines invite such total…
Pizza is not the first thing that pops into your mind when you think about the food of New Orleans. Oysters, sure. Crawfish, you bet. But pizza? Like most cities, of course, New Orleans has some decent pizza places (my favorite is Mama Rosa’s on Rampart Street), but few people…
Food can be an icebreaker, an educational opportunity, even a great social equalizer. Never was this more apparent than on my first day of college, when my new roommate Kelli and I came face to face and realized that she is black and I am white. Up until that point,…
Opening a new restaurant is always a crash course in diplomacy, but there can’t be a much more trying ordeal than telling a diner the valet just smashed his car. Nonetheless, China Cowboy manager Rebecca Sparks (a veteran of the Aspen Ritz-Carlton) made all the right moves, up until the…
By A waitress’s first day on the job is never easy. It’s worse when the food she’s serving is hit or miss. And it’s sheer hell when her first customer is an anonymous restaurant critic. Still, the poor woman we encountered at Vella’s Italian Restaurant was a sweetheart who did…
We were craving great Mexican food–great cheap, greasy, hot Mexican food–and there seemed just one place to go: Larimer Street, where the shadow of Coors Field falls on a strip of pawnshops, vacant lots, shelters, bars and a few fabulous, if modest, Mexican restaurants. With an eye to the baseball…
It was the best of foods, it was the worst of foods. At Mr. Steak’s Firegrill, the Omnivest Corporation’s first attempt at an upscale, hipper version of its Mr. Steak chain, the difference between the good dishes and the bad is as obvious as the night-and-day light show played out…
The French use the term “la casbah” as slang for “party.” It’s fitting, then, that La Casbah is the name of a festive new North African restaurant. La Casbah is only the second restaurant to bring the foods of the Arabian west–Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, with a heavy emphasis on…
We never made it to Jim Morrison’s grave, but that was because we were determined to find an authentic Parisian bistro during our trip to France several years ago. After wandering for almost an hour in Montmartre–past all of the places that suck up most tourists–we stumbled up a side…
As a kid I did not trust the cuisine of India. Hey, there could have been anything in there–monkey brains, for all I knew, or even worse: green peppers. Because ethnic food had not yet reached our little pocket of suburbia (pizza was as exotic as it got), we had…
If you thought Lower Downtown didn’t need another hangout, stop by Wazoos on Wazee some Friday night and watch as hundreds of people jostle for elbow room. Where were they before this cavernous beer/pool/music hall opened in October? The answer can’t be that they were frequenting another LoDo hot spot,…
The first step in dealing with an addiction to Thai food is admitting that you have a problem. The second is accepting that there are no more steps — because who can contemplate a cure that bans curry?Chile peppers can be physically addicting, according to recent medical evidence. The reasons…
‘ve eaten at Le Central many times over the past six years, and I’ve always encountered some kind of problem. Often they’ve been production-oriented glitches, ranging from tardy courses to overcooked seafood (“Waiting for Gateau,” October 17, 1996); sometimes servers have failed to refill water glasses or replace silverwear. Out…
