A lot of restaurants, including this one, have “secret” menus, and on this particular in-the-know menu, there’s a clone of the Big Mac, only this version, heaped with shaved steak, melted American cheese, lettuce, pickles and onions, is way better than anything that comes out of the kitchen from the…

Shoni Jones Root Down C Concourse, Denver International Airport 303-342-6959 rootdowndenver.com This is part one of my interview with Shoni Jones, exec chef of Root Down at DIA; part two of our conversation will run tomorrow. “Oops, I was way off,” says Shoni Jones, the executive chef of Root Down…

Four partners — Araceli Reynos, Ezzie Dominguez and brothers Isaias Poot and Juan Bootista, all of whom hail from the Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico — have joined together to open one of Denver’s only Yucatanian restaurants: Mayan Manjar Yucateco, which unlocked its doors last Friday, taking over the space…

This year’s Best of Denver — make that “Beast” of Denver — is behind us, but we’re already starting to think about next year’s issue, and while Lower48 was our pick for this year’s Best New Restaurant, the photo above, a marvelous dish of wood-fired octopus, comes from a restaurant…

Inga’s Alpine Lounge, says owner Leigh Jones, “is our ’60s and ’70s version of a swinging kind of apres ski lounge, an over-the-top place where, if it were a lodge on a ski mountain, would have a fur bikini-clad female villain or vixen of the moment on the slopes skiing…

“I want that!” insisted my kid, frantically wagging his finger toward the table adjacent to ours, the center of which was dominated by a plate that had flames erupting from the center. I have never had a pu pu platter in my life, so this was our golden opportunity, and…

“I like a good impromptu dance party,” Rachel Kesley acknowledged last year when I asked her to reveal something about herself that most people weren’t aware of. And while Kesley got the boot last week from WaterCourse Foods, the venerable vegetarian restaurant in Uptown, whose kitchen Kesley spearheaded for nearly…

Cafe Society served up five Guess Where? contests last week, ranging from a do-your-body-good vegetarian plate from the Kitchen Next Door (Glendale) to a whiskey-potent cocktail from Work & Class to big bowl of fleshy mussels bobbing in a saffron-smooched broth…

If you have only 24 hours in New York, “You can’t go wrong with Grimaldi’s, a coal-fired pizzeria under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge,” wrote Time magazine in a story detailing ten things not to miss in the Big Apple. “Not only will you get a memorable pie, you’ll…

After several months of eating everything from headcheese to lamb vindaloo (blame it on Best of Denver, people), I took a much-needed break from digesting animals to focus instead on stuffing my gullet with vegetables, and while this restaurant does serve meat dishes, it does a bang-up job of saluting…

I drink coffee — a lot of it — but I don’t drink caffeine, and finding great decaffeinated coffee beans isn’t easy. But at this roasting facility that also doubles as a “java room,” the interior of which looks a lot like a tap room, the decaf beans are chock…

Earlier this week, in the kitchen of Metropolitan State University’s Hospitality Learning Center, two Colorado chefs showcased their fish scaling, fileting, pin-boning, butchering and cooking skills as part of the Seattle Fish Skuna Bay Kentucky Derby Challenge, a two-hour timed battle that earned one of them the opportunity to compete…

Last night, to say the least, was a late-night food-and-drink prowl, starting at Biker Jim’s, weaving across the street to Marco’s Coal-Fired Pizza, closing the bar down at the Squeaky Bean and stopping into this restaurant for a cocktail somewhere in the middle of the haze. I knew I wanted…

Westword’s Best of Denver issue is starting to hit red kiosks all over the city, and will soon be up on westword.com. The indispensable issue, our thirtieth anniversary edition, is our yearly sonnet to the people, places and things that we love most about this city, thick with page after…

You’ll find plenty of foodniks singing the praises of Oak at Fourteenth, the lauded restaurant that Steve Redzikowski and Bryan Dayton opened in Boulder in 2010 — and again in 2011, following a crushing fire. And you’ll find just as many ardent admirers of Acorn, the sequel to Oak that…

Late last November, when Matt Selby exited his executive chef post at the Corner House, an irresistibly charming restaurant in Jefferson Park co-owned by James Iacino, president of Seattle Fish, he stepped away from the spotlight, quietly doing time in the kitchens of Beast + Bottle and Jonesy’s EatBar and…

An older man walks into a restaurant, all gussied up in a suit, a tie and the kind of hat my grandfather used to wear. “This is the best food in the world!” he exclaims to the owner, who nods in agreement. The proclamation is a gigantic overstatement…with the exception…

“I started washing dishes when I was fourteen,” recalls Royce Oliveira, who’s 34…and still washing dishes. But now he’s scrubbing pots and pans in the confines of his own kitchen in his own restaurant, a teensy-weensy fourteen-seater — that includes the four seats at he chef’s counter overlooking an open…

You’d expect a restaurant that touts a raw bar to showboat good seafood, and this restaurant lives up to that expectation, especially when it comes to the plump mussels bobbing in a saffron-laced broth. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to…

Cafe Society served up four Guess Where? contests last week, ranging from a spring plate of house-crafted burrata from Cafe|Bar to a plate-spanning slab of juice-dribbling steak from the Red Rooster Cafe to a terrific salmon burger from a new neighborhood hang…

“With a fresh market, café, wine shop, fine dining and more all at street level, you and your guests may never have to leave home,” promises the website of One Observatory Park, a new retail, restaurant and upscale apartment development at University and Evans, across the street from the University…

Just about everyone dining in Denver yesterday was taking advantage of the sunny spring patio weather, including me and a chef, who had the the day off and was enjoying his freedom from the kitchen with glasses of “girly” (his word, not mine) wine and a plate of housemade burrata…