Most of the city’s Korean restaurants, much like our Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese dining dens, are marked by their transparent strip mall center facades, bare interiors and stoic service. That’s not how Shin Sa Dong, a new Korean restaurant at 10293 East Iliff Avenue, rolls…

“Delicious – divine – delectable.” It’s comments like these that just landed Fruition, Alex Seidel’s tiny temple of gastronomy, in a list of ten restaurants that begins with New York City’s Le Bernardin, includes Alinea in Chicago and ends with Screen Door in Portland…

When Pollyanna Forster opened Eat! Drink!, an artisan cheese boutique, charcuterie parlor, chocolate stop and wine shop in Edwards, just outside Vail, in 2004, Valley residents immediately embraced it, and now Forster is hoping that Denverites will do the same when she unveils Eat+Drink in Denver next month at 1541…

“When did Denver’s climate become Kenya?” quipped a friend, who was dripping — as we all were — with sweat. The heat, by just about anyone’s standards, is insufferable, but a cold glass of rosé, or, in this case, four, in an air-conditioned bar, provided a bit of temporary relief,…

“It’s my husband’s fault,” declares Terri Lack. “All of it.” Still, there could be worse things than getting the blame for your wife’s infatuation with Italian food, to which Lack admits a serious addiction. “My husband comes from an Italian family, and when I first went to his parents’ house,…

You’ll have to wait another day or two before clamoring for a space at the Squeaky Bean, which had hoped to open today in its lovely new digs in LoDo. “We have our certificate of occupancy, and the city has signed off on our liquor license, but we’re waiting on…

The family who owns this Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese/sushi restaurant had congregated at a table in the middle of the dining room to share lunch, and the food they had in front of them was far different from the food we had in front of us; they were eating the stuff you find…

Last week, Cafe Society dished up six Guess Where? contests, including a magenta-hued beet cocktail from Root Down, a tropical Caribbean cocktail from Adrift, a tomato pie that hails from Zydeco’s and an unworthy plate of camarones a la diabla from El Coyotito #3, a long-standing Mexican joint where the…

Tomato season is starting to take root, and here, at this restaurant, the tomato pie is a perfect way to celebrate the fruit of the vine. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to the week’s Guess Where posts is entered into…

“The Bean is back.” That was the overriding footnote last night at the Squeaky Bean, the tongue-in-cheek restaurant that Bean king Johnny Ballen originally unleashed in Highland in May of 2009. And during the three years that the Squeaky Bean resided in Highland, it generated a cult following, thanks to…

It’s been several months since Bravo’s Around the World in 80 Plates was filmed in cities spanning the globe, but the memories for hometown chef and contestant Jenna Johansen, who made it through seven countries — and countless challenges — before she was given the boot in last night’s Thailand…

All of us — chefs included — gasped in awe when this arrived at our table. And despite the flood of fresh herbs and rivers of soy, the fresh calms tasted like they’d just been plucked from the sea. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives…

Hugo Matheson The Kitchen Boulder & [Upstairs]; The Kitchen Denver 1039 Pearl Street, Boulder; 303-544-5973 1530 16th Street, Denver; 303-623-3127 www.thekitchencommunity.com This is the second installment of my chat with Hugo Matheson, exec chef of The Kitchen. Read part one of Matheson’s interview. Favorite restaurant in America: After all these…

Last week, we revealed the name of the new fast-casual meatball emporium that Row 14 executive chef Jensen Cummings and his partners, Johnny Coast and Alex Comisar, will open later this year: They’re calling it the Slotted Spoon Meatball Eatery. But we left it up to you to guess the…

The sign on the window ballyhoos the joint’s Mexican food and seafood, but it shouldn’t be pimping either — certainly not its camarones a la diabla…unless you’re pining for shrimp that tastes like freezer burn masked (unsuccessfully) by an insipid sauce. #Just say no…

This, declares Pete VanItallie, gazing around his new pub, is “exactly what I had envisioned when I dreamed of opening a neighborhood place.” He points to a photograph on the wall, a gift from his uncle and godfather, that’s a framed shot of the old Finley homestead in Ireland. “He…

Hugo Matheson The Kitchen Boulder & [Upstairs]; The Kitchen Denver 1039 Pearl Street, Boulder; 303-544-5973 1530 16th Street, Denver; 303-623-3127 www.thekitchencommunity.com This is part one of my interview with Hugo Matheson, exec chef of The Kitchen Boulder and The Kitchen Denver. Part two of our chat will run in this…

The last thing I needed to do after four whirlwind days of eating and drinking myself silly at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, was to drink and eat myself silly within hours of arriving back in Denver. My body needed a detox, but instead, I abused it with…

“So, I’m officially fired,” read the text from Samir Mohammad, the now former executive chef of the Village Cork, who took the job — and a risk — when he first stepped behind the butane burners in January of 2010. “I knew this was a job that would either make…

We’ve got all sorts of takeaways from the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, which just celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in Glitter Gulch over the weekend, and we’ll be posting stories throughout the week about the new Chefs Club in the St. Regis, along with surprising observations and confessions from…

“We’re not chefs; we’re cooks,” insists Derek Dietz, the 23-year-old Philadelphia native who will open Bocadillo, a Spanish-influenced sandwich shop, tomorrow with partner Andrew Minhinnisk. “When we’re fifty, we can call ourselves chefs — that’s what we’re striving to become — but this restaurant is our playground, our secondary schooling,…