India’s Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal for his wife–sorry, for his favorite wife–in the mid-1600s. But while the ornate mausoleum in Agra has since become the ultimate symbol of opulence, in Persian the words “Taj Mahal” simply mean “the best of buildings.” Denver’s Taj Mahal, however, may be in…
Food in the news: First a LoDo bar tour spilled out in testimony during last month’s Peter Schmitz trial. (Schmitz partied at Enoteca LoDo, among other bars, after the not-guilty verdict came in.) Then Stephen Jones, attorney for Tim McVeigh, threw ravioli into the mix while criticizing an article by…
My two cents’ worth: Ever since Denver’s Best Restaurants, by Susan Permut, came out this past fall, local critics have been offering their own Top Ten lists. But as one caller pointed out on my voicemail, these lists are nearly identical and consist almost exclusively of high-end joints. Please, she…
When Coors Field set up residence by LoDo, the area came down with a bad case of baseball fever–as evidenced by an outbreak of sandwich-serving sports hangouts and frat-boy brewpubs. Several years later, these symptoms show little sign of abating. Considering the sheer number of eateries that have opened in…
A half-foot high, the tower of alternating raw onion and underripe tomato slices was dripping with balsamic vinegar. The first bite was like doing a shot of vinegar. The second bite was like doing a second shot of vinegar. There was no third bite. Until that salad, every dish I’d…
High steaks: Steak places are stampeding into town faster than cattle getting a whiff of water. Of Denver’s many meat-eaters, the truly fickle have already moved on to Del Frisco’s (8100 East Orchard Road, Greenwood Village), but does Del Frisco’s have that wide-eyed comic-strip boy Dondi hanging from a wall?…
Some chefs have such distinctive styles that you can tell when they’ve got their hands on a certain restaurant–they leave their fingerprints all over the place. Still, Oodles was the last place I expected to encounter a familiar face. This noodle joint is the umpteenth restaurant in a fairly enviable…
To see or not to see: The joint was jumping last Monday on the opening day of Peter Schmitz’s vehicular-homicide trial. No, not the courthouse, although there was plenty of action there, too. At lunchtime the new power place to be is Thuy-Hoa’s Bar & Grill, the Vietnamese restaurant that…
Religion has a few simple benefits. By regularly attending a place of worship, one gains not only a sense of deep, abiding faith, but a clearer understanding of the difference between right and wrong. Families that observe religious traditions together make it through tough times together. So I hear, and…
The more things change: The rough-and-tumble restaurant business leaves few eateries untouched. Except, perhaps, Club 404, a longtime oasis for cheap steaks at 404 Broadway (and a low-cost favorite of the meat-eating Chotzinoff family, above). Asked recently whether the restaurant had made any changes that should be reflected in its…
Beer today, gone tomorrow: On Saturday the three finalists in the Wynkoop Brewing Company-sponsored “Beerdrinker of the Year” contest came to town for a grueling round of questions by a panel of bewigged and wigged-out judges. And the winner (who receives untold fame and, more important, a year’s supply of…
Fine dining is out, family dining is in. Horseradish mashed potatoes are out, expensive steaks are in. Iceberg-lettuce salads are out, soups are in. Most food fads fly, then flounder like a hooked trout. So who would would have thought that more than a dozen years after the eat-it-raw craze…
Noodlin’ around: Rhonda L. Damraur, whose letter to the editor appears on page 6 of this issue, works at Basil Pasta Bar–and no one’s going to say she’s not a loyal employee. Damraur wrote to complain about my review of the place at 30 South Broadway (“Oodles of Noodles,” January…
Want more bang for your dining buck? Forget those theme-park “concepts” and million-dollar designs, the 350-seat restaurants that serve the same food you’ll find in any other 350-seat restaurant. Instead, take aim at a neighborhood joint with character and innovative eats. Bang! shoots a big hole in the theory that…
Begin again: Finnegan’s in the Adam’s Mark Hotel, 1550 Court Place, is now closed, bringing the number of food-serving Irish pubs in the area down to two (that I know of)–Nallen’s Irish Pub, at 1429 Market Street, and Clancy’s Irish Pub, at 10117 West 37th Place in Wheat Ridge. When…
When the food is spectacular, bad service can be forgiven and forgotten–once. Maybe twice. But three strikes and you’re out, baby, because few diners have either the time or the patience to spend two hours on a meal that should take one, no matter how good the food is. And…
The Pilgrims may have landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 simply because they’d thrown one too many keggers on the Mayflower and their beer supply was low. Hey, they may have been Puritans, but they had their priorities straight. “For we could not now take time for further search or…
Hopping mad: There’s a right way to do a brewpub (see above) and a wrong way. Anyone interested in the latter should drop by the year-old Hops Grill and Bar Restaurant, at 149 Steele. The only nice thing I can say about this link in a Tampa-based chain is that…
In the dog-mangia-dog world of Italian restaurants, local eateries must work hard to create something that sets them apart. No longer is specializing in the food of Northern Italy or offering a wine roster of small regional vineyards enough, because someone else has already thought of it. “We noticed that…
Fighting fire with fire: Sally Rock and Dale Goin have had more than their share of ups and downs with the space at 1585 South Pearl originally occupied by their Philadelphia Filly–several attempts to sell the restaurant or have someone else take it over have fallen through, and the group…
Bone of contention: Sam Taylor, former proprietor of Sam Taylor’s Bar-B-Q at City Park and maker of the best ribs in Denver, came under fire this past year for alleged non-payment of commissions to the city through the restaurant–an amount Denver auditor Don Mares tallies at $50,000. Taylor claims it…
So we went to the cafe named for the famous writer known for his terse, staccato sentences and we marveled at the credible reproduction of a Key West restaurant down to the exposed bricks and breezy marina decor and we ate the food and it was bland. As the menu…
