Protesters gathered outside the First Avenue Hotel late yesterday afternoon, waving signs and asking the city to allow Sketch and El Diablo to reopen — and for employees of those restaurants to start collecting paychecks again. They’ve also started a petition on the web — at www.saveeldiabloandsketch.com — asking the…
Mayor Michael Hancock will deliver his State of the City address at 10 a.m. today, a year after he took office. The setting for the speech, City Park, was chosen over a month ago, but it symbolizes two of the major (and overlapping) challenges he’ll face over the next three…
On August 19, Pagliacci’s — which has been owned by the same family since 1946 — will serve its last bowl of minestrone. “It’s been an awesome experience,” says Mark Langston, whose mother bought the place from other relatives in 1977. “It’s just time to move on.” A developer has…
Colorado-boy-made-good T.J. Miller was back in Denver this week, for a five-show run at the Improv after dropping by Red Rocks Tuesday night for the premiere of the video for “Denver,” a rap on his new extended play e.p. In the Nix Bros. video, filmed at landmarks across Denver dives…
Happy hour will not be very happy today at El Diablo and Sketch tonight. The restaurants remain closed, after the city slapped the building in which they’re housed, the First Avenue Hotel, with a notice to vacate very early on Tuesday, July 10. According to the city, the structure is…
Rocky Ford cantaloupe took a big hit last year, unfairlyfingered by the FDA in the early days of the listeria outbreak in a September 14, 2011 release that warned consumers not to eat Rocky Ford cantaloupes. And never mind that the real culprit, Jensen farms, was more than a hundred…
There’s lots of action on the Denver restaurant scene — the ongoing controversy over Frank Bonanno’s fight with the health department, the upcoming Tavern Platt Park…and today, the opening of a new Bubba Chinos downtown, just steps away from City Hall, which will be serving up free chile cheese fries…
Erik Osborn wanted to be a big-time developer, but his plans almost landed him in the big house. In 2009, a group of high-profile investors — including Dealin’ Doug Moreland — accused Osborn of stealing $255,000 intended for the pricey One Lincoln Park condominium complex downtown and another project in…
The wheels are still turning over our Cruiser bikes suck/Cruiser bikes rule debate, with aesthetes and athletes alike weighing in on the debate. And the discussion isn’t limited to cruisers…
Former local boy Steele Platt has made very, very good: Darden Restaurants — an Orlando-based company that operates Olive Garden and Red Lobster, among other chains — announced today that it has agreed to buy Yard House USA Inc. for $585 million — cash, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. There…
All systems are go for Tavern Platt Park, which will transform the former home of India’s Pearl (and Lola, Micole and Greens before that) at 1475 South Pearl Street. Tavern Hospitality Group, which bought the building, had a hearing with the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses on July 2…
More than two decades ago, Curt Fentress got Denver International Airport off the ground, designing the iconic tent-roofed terminal after the Perez Group’s plans crashed and burned. But when the city decided to expand DIA, it snubbed Denver-based Fentress, going with starchitect Santiago Calatrava…
Two prominent restaurateurs are involved in very public spats with the city. Frank Bonanno, owner of Osteria Marco, among other restaurants, admits he can be a “dick.” Especially when fighting the Denver Department of Environmental Health: posting missives on his blog aimed at Danica Lee, the department’s food program manager…
Cool or crap? Yesterday two Show and Tell writers offered a point/counterpoint on cruiser bikes. But while Britt Chester has been cruising with his “Cruiser bikes rule” piece, Josiah Hesse’s “Cruiser bikes suck” seems to have hit a brick wall…of criticism…
El Diablo does not look like this tonight. There are no crowds. In fact, the restaurant is closed, as is Sketch, its sibling next door. Very early yesterday morning, the city slapped the entire First Avenue Hotel building with notices to vacate the premise — immediately…
If city officials find a hundred members of a gay men’s chorus picnicking in front of City Hall today, they have only themselves to blame. The cast of Von Trapped, a coffee concert at the Buell this morning, were to have lunch at El Diablo — but that was before…
Nearly a decade after it buzzed off from its home in central Denver (the spot now occupied by Table 6), the Beehive is back. But this time, chef/owner Janice Henning has landed in Boulder — where her farm-to-table approach isn’t nearly as novel as it was in Denver a decade…
Colorado’s splendid scenery seems like an ideal backdrop for movies. But while a handful of films have been made here over the past few decades, many movie crews actually use stand-ins for scenes allegedly set in Colorado. Melanie Asmer detailed some of these stunt doubles in “Ten movies and TV…
Danger. That’s the sign on the door of Sketch, which is supposed to host an opening for a showing of 9News reporter Kirk Montgomery’s photographs tonight. The sign — as well as five different letters signed by Michael Roach, Building Official with Development Services in the Denver Department of Community…
Our colleagues over on the Backbeat music blog have been pouring themselves into watering holes all over town, to determine Denver’s ten hippest bars — or is that hipster bars? See that list here: Denver’s ten biggest hipster bars. Follow @CafeWestword…
The second of three new sushi joints just opened in LoDo. After a series of preview parties, Blue Sushi Sake Grill opened yesterday in the former home of Dixons on the 16th Street Mall (or at least some of it; the other portion is now Lucky Pie)…
Vance Johnson, once a key member of the Three Amigos, moved to the Western Slope years ago and is putting his second restaurant in Grand Junction, which he plans to call Vance’s Epicurious. But some people aren’t impressed by the former Bronco’s choice of locations…
