Bite Me

Inmates at Denver County Jail are in for a change later this year, when the traditional “three hots and a cot” are replaced by two hots, a cot and a bologna sandwich. In accordance with MayorWellington Webb

‘s proposed 7 percent cut in departmental operating budgets, the jail plans to eliminate its hot-lunch program and replace it with a brown bag full of sandwiches.

“This is not a surprise to inmates who’ve been in other facilities,” says Sergeant Daryl Brown, public-information officer for the Denver Sheriff’s Department. Other jails in the area have had their populations brown-bagging it for quite a while, he points out, and Denver County was an exception with its hot-lunch program, which fed close to 2,000 inmates each day. Did that make this city a more popular destination with criminals hankering for a noontime sloppy joe? More to the point, have any hoosegow gourmands complained that their third hot meal is being taken away? “Not really,” Brown replies. “As long as they eat, they rarely complain.”

The new program — which is still in the proposal stage while details such as where the city is going to find the roughly 14,000 bags needed each week are worked out — will save the jail about $150,000 annually while continuing to provide the same calorie count and nutritional value of the hot lunches. Instead of being given burgers or pasta, however, each inmate will be provided with a sack containing two sandwiches, fruit, milk and a small snack — just like any kid going off to school, although I imagine that when Jimmy the Shiv sits down and tries to trade his apple for someone’s second sandwich, the negotiations are going to be a bit more intense than those conducted under the monkey bars on your average playground.

As with the morning and evening meals, the bag lunches will be assembled in the jail’s kitchen by food stewards hired by the city, who also oversee some misdemeanor inmates working as dishwashers and prep cooks.

There’s already no such thing as a free lunch for jail deputies and other city employees working at the Havana Street facility. While they were once allowed to enjoy — gratis — the same noontime meal offered to prisoners in a separate cafeteria, under a system introduced earlier this year, they began paying either a dollar a day or $15 a month for the meals.

While that was still a deal for hot lunches that cost 87 cents per prisoner to prepare, the bag lunches will run only 52 cents per inmate. Given the budget and caloric restrictions, I’m not sure any chef could fill that bag much better; fortunately, city employees are not a captive audience and can break out of the box at lunchtime.

There’s no free lunch, redux: I’ve gotten a few e-mails from readers left in the lurch by the sudden closure of Papillon (250 Josephine Street). Mostly, the hue and cry has been about gift certificates that are impossible to use now that the doors are locked. Ever conscious of the plight of the dining public, I looked into it, and here’s what I found out.

First, they won’t be any good at Opal, the new place rising from the ashes of Radex, the restaurant that Papillon owner Radek Cerny started several years ago at 100 East Ninth Avenue and which was later taken over by Bucky Parker. I talked with Parker, who will be a partner in Opal, too, and he said that while Radex was still open last month, it was taking reservations and walk-in clientele from Papillon but had no arrangement for honoring gift certificates (Bite Me, August 15). For the record, Opal has scheduled dry runs and VIP parties for September 9-12 and anticipates opening to the public immediately after.

Second, those certificates aren’t any good at Le Chantecler, Cerny’s place out in Niwot (“Chef and Tell,” August 15), either. But someone there I talked with told me that people should hold tight to those gift certificates because (drum roll, please…) Papillon will be reopening. When, you ask? In about a month, allegedly.

I subsequently spoke to about a half-dozen restaurant insiders around town and got a half-dozen different stories about what’s going on at 250 Josephine. Some said no, the place wasn’t reopening; others said they knew who was taking the place over but wouldn’t tell me; and still others said they didn’t know who was moving in — but they were more than willing to drop names, anyway. The only thing I know for sure is that the realtor handling the property has no signature on the dotted line yet, but the field of potential buyers has narrowed considerably.

The return of no free lunch: A couple of weeks ago, Westword received a call from the confused manager of Thai Basil (540 East Alameda Avenue), who’d just received a threatening call from some woman angry that her lunch delivery was late — and threatening that since her husband (by which she meant me, I guess) worked at Westword, she was “going to make sure he writes something about how horrible you people are.” The woman then dummied up Westword letterhead and faxed a fake review to Thai Basil, claiming it was about to be published.

Don’t try this at home, kids — particularly if the number from which the alleged article was faxed leads not to Westword, but to an investment company in Cherry Creek, where the boss was plenty steamed to find out an employee was sending out bogus stories on his machine — and his time. Maybe she can do a review of the sack-lunch program at the county jail when it goes into effect. From the inside.

My big question is this: If you’re going to go to all that trouble — engage in telephonic hooliganism, write a fake review and engage in outright fraud in order to threaten a place into giving you some free food, why not try to bamboozle Adega or Clare de Lune? Not that there’s anything wrong with the egg rolls at Thai Basil, mind you, but I’m just saying that the next person who gets the bright idea of trying to use my name in vain should set her sights a little higher.

Leftovers: Even with all the effort we go through here at Bite Me HQ to get you all the restaurant dirt quickly and accurately, mistakes can still be made. Due to some troubles with crossing faxes, the new chef at Parlour (formerly Basil, at 846 Broadway) was misnamed. The new guy in the kitchen is actually Jeremy Wilson, not Paul Stickler (he’s Basil’s former chef). Sorry ’bout that, Jeremy, and good luck in your new gig.

The recent closure of Gussie’s Restaurant and Lounge (2345 West 112th in Westminster) leaves a big hole in the casual fine-dining cosmos for those living north of I-70. Since 1978, Gussie’s had been known for its expansive salad bar, which included everything from iceberg lettuce to caviar, and for its impressive roster of game and seafood specials. As many people have been saying, this rash of big-name closings is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

Still, the Magnolia Hotel (818 17th Street) will be opening a new bar called Harry’s in that long, narrow space recently vacated by a brokerage firm. As Magnolia’s Mike Pratt explained it (and I’m paraphrasing here), the theme for Harry’s will be a slick kind of take-you-back-to-the-’50s-and-’60s feel — not like a diner, and not in the music being played, but more just in terms of colors, like those retro greens and oranges, those ugly colors, kinda like lime, but not plaid…

Really?

“Yeah,” Pratt told me. “We’re all still working on how to describe it.”

I can tell.

All I could ascertain for certain is that Harry’s will seat 75, have its own roster of specialty drinks and a limited bar menu, be open in mid-November, and offer wireless Internet access provided by Qwest as part of a new program for which Harry’s will be a test property. So essentially, it will be a hip but comfy, retro but modern green and orange Internet bar. I think.