What will be the big culinary trends in 2013? As we prepare for a new year in gastronomy, we posed that question to dozens of people in the local food business, everyone from chefs and pastry magicians to restaurant brokers and PR consultants, from brewers and grape gurus to brokers…

What will be the big culinary trends in 2013? As we prepare for a new year in gastronomy, we posed that question to dozens of people in the local food business, everyone from chefs and pastry magicians to restaurant brokers and PR consultants, from brewers and grape gurus to realtors…

On March 9, 2011, Steve Redzikowski, co-owner and chef of Oak at Fourteenth, stood on the street in disbelief. The restaurant that he and his partner, Bryan Dayton, had opened four months prior in Boulder, was smoldering, the thick surges of smoke emblazoning the downtown Boulder skyline. It would take…

After nearly four years on Seventeenth Avenue’s Restaurant Row, Olivea, the intimate Mediterranean restaurant owned by husband-and-wife duo Stephanie Bonin and Keith Arnold, who also oversee Duo in Highland, will close in mid-January. The couple, who opened Olivea in May 2009, are moving to the East Coast in June. See…

Everyone and their brethren seemed to be celebrating the holidays at this culinary house of comedy, where the theatrics outshine the food. That said, there’s absolutely nothing with what these dynamic jokesters serve, although I’m especially sweet on the addictive fried rice, shaped in the form of heart. Can you…

In early February, Spuntino, the Highland restaurant and dessert palace overseen by betrothed couple John Broening (he’s the chef) and Yasmin Lozada-Hissom (she’s the pastry chef) will close for a week — maybe two — to undergo a major makeover, and when it reopens, guests will not only be treated…

All this week, I’m featuring my favorite culinary stocking stuffers and presents for the fervent foodnik, cook and restaurant fiend in your life, including the indulgent hot chocolate and salted caramel marshmallows from Spuntino, and EatDenver’s gift that keeps on giving — the 2013 EatDenver dining deck. These are all…

No, I didn’t eat the gingerbread house, which is created from graham crackers by the chef, who spent more than forty hours on this project…but, like me, I betcha he was drinking margaritas and snacking on chips and salsa in between plastering his masterpiece with candy canes, icing and gumdrops…

Daniel Ramirez Gaetano’s 3760 Tejon Street 303-455-9852 www.gaetanositalian.com/ Part one of my interview with Daniel Ramirez, exec chef of Gaetano’s, ran yesterday; this is part two of our chat. Favorite food city in America: San Francisco is unrivaled when it comes to food diversity, and it’s also the home to…

Pete Marczyk and Barbara Macfarlane do not leave their work behind when they leave Marczyk Fine Foods and head for their great old Denver house with the big, new kitchen. They often bring some of their market’s choicest ingredients home with them and cook up a feast. “People, people, people:…

I like green chile as much as the next person — probably more — but this burrito, ordered with steak (non-existent), was swamped with the stuff, wasteful inches of it, and for all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the green chile at this joint, it flat-out sucked, as did…

Daniel Ramirez Gaetano’s 3760 Tejon Street 303-455-9852 www.gaetanositalian.com/ This is part one of my interview with Daniel Ramirez, exec chef of Gaetano’s; part two of our chat will run tomorrow. Daniel Ramirez was just shy of twenty when he left Acapulco for Los Angeles to pursue a career in architecture…

All this week, I’m featuring my favorite culinary stocking stuffers and presents for the fervent foodnik, cook and restaurant fiend in your life (yesterday’s pick was the indulgent hot chocolate and salted caramel marshmallows from Spuntino). These are all gifts that are available locally — and locally made or produced…

Never mind that the guy behind the bar, a self-described beer geek since 1995, had never heard of sour beers. Weird, but forgivable, particularly since he suggested I try The Abyss, an inky special reserve Imperial stout, from Deschutes, with hints of caramel and licorice. Get it now, before I…

Back in September, we spilled the very good news that Paul Reilly, the former chef of Encore, which closed early this spring, would open a new dining mecca called called Beast + Bottle, a restaurant, he told me, that would be nose-to-tail and “much more about the food and food…

Cafe Society served up four Guess Where? posts last week, zigzagging from a rich — and rewarding — bowl of Malaysian shrimp laksa from Phat Thai, to a healthy kale salad from True Food Kitchen, to a dish with sliced lamb, scallions and chiles from a suburban Chinese joint, whose…

All this week, I’ll be featuring my favorite culinary stocking stuffers and presents for the fervent foodnik, cook and restaurant fiend in your life. These are all gifts that are available locally — and locally made or produced — and they’re all things that I hope to find in my…

Last Friday, we broke the news that Dave Query, the mastermind behind Big Red F, the Boulder-based restaurant group that already lays claim to eight restaurants in Boulder, Denver and Fort Collins, is adding a new chicken joint and brewery to his repertoire next year, this one in Lafayette. But…

One of my all-time favorite street foods is Malaysian shrimp laksa, and here, at this playful noodle and curry house that doesn’t play by the rules, the rich, thick coconut soup is perfumed with herbs, textured with cashews and slurp-worthy with slithery noodles. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special…

For the past several weeks, the brass from Big Red F — owner and chef Dave Query, culinary director Jamey Fader and Brett Smith, the current exec chef of Zolo Grill — have been on a chicken crawl, traversing the country in search of America’s best fried chicken and rotisserie…

The above dish — sliced lamb with a garden of scallions — hails from a Chinese restaurant with a lengthy menu (aren’t they all that way?), much of it Americanized, but if you dig a little deeper and study the last two pages, you’ll be rewarded with authenticity. Can you…