Although a rumored Krispy Kreme outlet failed to appear, the casino boasts a Starbucks and a Wolfgang Puck Express, the same mini-Wolfgang operation that you can find at Denver International Airport. While the scaled-down Express lacks the sumptuous bar, hip atmosphere and complete menu (and service) of the full-sized Wolfgang Puck at the Denver Pavilions, this place could be your best bet for speed, consistency and taste -- not just in Black Hawk, but in any of Colorado's three gambling towns. And if you're a member of the Hyatt's Players Advantage Club -- or simply hint that you're thinking about becoming a member -- you get 25 percent off any eating tab. That means that a healthy slab of Puck's meatloaf with mashed potatoes, for example, clocked in at just $6; ditto for the spicy chicken pizza that a friendly helper delivered to our table in the cafeteria-style dining area.
For fancier dining, the casino boasts the Hickory Grill, open only at dinner, where the rustic-lodge ambience -- marked by antler light fixtures and peeled-log chairs, and not the bright lights (and bossy piped-in soundtrack) of the slot machines -- holds forth and the fare is meaty.
Meat your maker: For intense meatiness, of course, there was no beating last weekend's Blues & Bones Festival, the event's sixth incarnation and the first held on the south lawn outside Invesco Field at Mile High. Because the bones portion of the festival is now sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbecue Society, the rules for competitors -- both backyard and professional -- were strict. For example, all of the meat had be officially inspected before it could be rubbed, pounded, marinated and so forth -- and injections were out altogether. The inspection job fell to Pete Marczyk, whose Marczyk Fine Foods (770 East 17th Avenue) opened last month. And while Marczyk had to look closely at receipts, etc., to make sure everything was kosher -- so to speak -- he didn't dun contestants who failed to use Niman Ranch pork, the award-winning meat stocked at Marczyk. He did have to toss out a few pre-injected Butterball chickens, but he still gave high points to the ingenuity of the devices some people created to do the cooking, including an old icebox turned into a smoker. "The amateurs' area looked like the food court for Mad Max's Bartertown," Marczyk says.
If rules for competitors were tough, so were the guidelines for judges, who were kept in line -- and sober -- by the KCBS's Bunny Tuttle. And the winners this year?
Danny Q was named grand backyard champion at Saturday's event (Danny also placed first in chicken and second in pork ribs); Salt Lake City's Brews, Blues & BBQ won first place in both pork ribs and sauce. And at Sunday's Mile High BBQ Championship, Brews, Blues & BBQ took the grand prize, with Rini's Bar & Grill coming in second (Rini's got a gold star for its perfect first-place chicken).
Under KCBS rules, the people no longer get to pick their fave, but previous People's Choice winner Rini's Bar & Grill -- "Where every hour is happy hour!" -- did its best to uphold the tradition, welcoming folks to its festive red, white and blue tent (love those Bud beer-can lights!) and offering free samples. The only thing zestier than Rini's sauce is the attitude of its proprietors, Ken and Dawn Rini -- because Rini's Bar & Grill exists only in their imaginations...and their Aurora back yard.
Lucky neighbors.
Old friends: The passing of Sue Dire, the family matriarch who co-founded the Bonnie Brae Tavern (740 South University Boulevard) with her husband back in 1934, means there's no time like the present to visit some of Denver's more long-lived eateries.
Club 404, at 404 Broadway, is a relative newcomer compared to Bonnie Brae's seven decades; Jerry Feld opened his tavern a scant 51 years ago. It's still going strong, though: This modest hole in the wall serves up some of the town's best diner-style food, in friendly -- if slightly bizarre -- surroundings. The pool table, for example, serves not just as a storage area for salad dressing and desserts, but also as a merchandise rack for hats, T-shirts and jewelry offered for sale.
But the real bargains are the specials: Not only does the 404 offer a variety of lunch specials daily for just $4.04, but it also features prime-rib specials on Wednesdays and Thursdays, T-bone specials on Wednesday and Saturdays, even a Super Sunday Special. It also has a generous, if offbeat, happy hour: From 3 to 5 p.m. weekdays, selected draws are a buck, with a free feed to go with. Last Friday, the spread featured tacos -- with the standard fixings of ground meat, black beans, cheese and lettuce -- and hotdogs. (No buns.) One fan stuffed a litter of pups into his pocket.
For a more upscale happy hour, hit the expanded "Atomic Cocktail Party" at Dazzle (980 Lincoln Street). The time for these very happy hours has been expanded to 4 to 6:30 p.m. daily, and the amenities include not just call drinks for $4, but $4 appetizers that range from mussels in lemon-caper-butter sauce that's so good you could slurp it solo, a full-sized hamburger, and the Best of Denver 2002 award-winning macaroni and four cheeses. Dazzle's booking live music several nights a week now, too.
Put a cork in it: In sharp contrast to the 404's more, um, casual clientele was last week's fifth annual Women and Wine night at The Palm (1201 16th Street). A benefit for SafeHouse Denver, "Passport to France" paired four Palm-concocted courses with appropriate wines. (We could have drunk a bottle of the five-onion soup alone.) Still, the unexpected highlight of the evening was not what was being poured into the glasses, but the action on the giant screen in a corner of the dining room: an Avs playoff game.
And if it seemed a little odd to be cheering Patrick Roy, who scored his own domestic-violence beef in the fall of 2000 (those charges were later dropped), at a benefit for SafeHouse, no one brought that up. The dinner raised over $3,200 for the battered-women charity.
Spring cleaning: Café Cero (1446 South Broadway) celebrated its fourth birthday this month with a new menu created by chef Brian Senft, formerly of Carmine's on Penn (92 South Pennsylvania Street). Paladio's Italian at Café Cero will be serving ambitious Sicilian and Southern Italian-style cuisine from 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The hours at Café Cero's ultra-cool bar will continue to extend into the early morning.
There won't be any hours at all at the Wynkoop Brewing Co. (1634 18th Street), at least not for a week. Denver's biggest and oldest brewpub, which opened back in 1988, closes on June 2 for some housecleaning; at the same time, the 'koop will install a new deck along the alley, just past where the old one stood (The Bite, May 9). Look for the Wynkoop to reopen around June 9. Closing temporarily on June 3 is the Denver Press Club (1330 Glenarm Street), which will undergo a major renovation that will return the building to its 1925 floor plan; when the DPC reopens in three months, Adde Bjorklund, of Bistro Adde Brewster (250 Steele Street), will be running the kitchen and bar operations, and the place will be open to the public. And Tommy's Thai (3410 East Colfax Avenue) has closed for a major remodeling project; it's slated to reopen in August. Bye-bye, pad Thai.
