The Ballpark neighborhood is hot. Last week I raved about Marco's Coal-Fired Pizza, at 2129 Larimer Street.
And just up the street at 2233 Larimer, in the old home of Kokopelli's (and Manny's Smokehouse before that), the lower-cased twelve restaurant will open on Tuesday, November 4. The chef/owner is Jeff Osaka, an L.A. native who did time at One Market in San Francisco and Wolfgang Puck’s Chinois, cooked at Restaurant Terroir and Koshu in Jackson Hole, then went back to California to open his own place, Chloe, and work at Melisse, a Michelin two-star. (The mystery of who's claiming to be the owner, as Patricia Calhoun wrote here, has yet to be solved.)
As the name implies, twelve will be changing its menu monthly (a dozen changes a year, get it?) and the sample menu I saw looked impressive: foie gras and lobster cakes, leg of lamb with thyme jus, beef cheeks with parsnips and horseradish gremolata, and donuts for dessert.
Mmm…donuts. -- Jason Sheehan