Denver Pizza Company opens July 3

Mark Huebner didn’t get the girl — he was eliminated from The Bachelorette two weeks ago — but he got a pizza joint instead. His Denver Pizza Company, at 309 West 11th Avenue, opens tomorrow at 11 a.m.; it will be selling medium pies for $5 (one topping) and large…

Get fired up for a hot weekend of food and wine events

From 5 – 10 p.m., Friday, July 3, the Infinite Monkey Theorem Urban Winery, 931 West Fifth Avenue, is participating in the Golden Triangle’s First Friday Art Walk by hosting “Art Under the Influence,” a grape stomp in the courtyard that includes wines by the glass, great grub from Masterpiece…

Jason Sheehan is ready to face his critics

I did my first few turns through Sketch while working as an anonymous restaurant critic. Not anonymous to Jesse Morreale or Sean Yontz, necessarily. Not to Charlie Master who works their bar, or to some of the staff to whom I’d been introduced. But generally speaking, I was still a…

Sketch has a simple premise that leaves no room for mistakes

Almost everyone at Sketch Food and Wine knows me. The above-the-line guys for certain, some of the bartenders. I have acted well and poorly in their establishment, used it for celebrations and decompressions numerous times since it opened in March. And I have experienced the all-too-classic result of blown critical…

Ginger Gimlet at LoHi SteakBar

The minute LoHi SteakBar opened its doors in the transformed North Star Brewery space last week, I was there to try a few of the cocktails that bar manager Dan Guaydacan has concocted. And no sooner had I sat down than Joe Vostrejs, the COO of Larimer Associates who’s behind…

D Bar Desserts is too good to save for dessert

On the one hand, you have Sketch, which is trying to make a restaurant out of nothing more than a salumi bar and the best intentions. On the other, you have D Bar — Keegan Gerhard’s attempt to take some people’s favorite part of dinner (dessert) and build a restaurant…

Where are we drinking, redux

This hunka hunka burning love got his sunburn in the line of duty: Standing in the sun on the 16th Street Mall, hawking the very venue where we are now drinking…and gambling through the night, thanks to the passage of Amendment 50…

Live from Sheehan’s book signing

We’re at Katie Mullen’s for the official release of Jason Sheehan’s book, Cooking Dirty, and get this: There are actual people here! And they have his book! And they want him to sign it! And someone just took a picture of him! Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s always…

What’s Cooking? The Marczyks’ fried chicken and potato salad

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 usually bring a selection of some of their market’s choicest ingredients home with them, and cook up a feast…

Squeaky Bean squeezes out a test run on Friday

Squeaky Bean, the Highland restaurant at 3301 Tejon Street that’s been serving breakfast and lunch since the second week of May, will open for dinner Wednesday, July  8, but you can get a sneak preview of the night-time menu during a test run on Friday, July 3, when exec chef…

From gastropubs to dinerants

Pete Karpinski is a good guy.  He’s a smart guy and a talented guy and a smirkingly, playfully evil guy when it comes to designing and launching certain types of restaurants.  From his post on the restaurant side of the Sage Hospitality Group’s corporate structure, he has brought to Denver both…

The demise of the Tabor Center’s food court

There’s no shortage of places to get food along the 16th Street Mall. But if you’re after a grab bag of mediocre grub served from metal basins behind glass barriers — a food court, in other words — things are grim and getting grimmer. Last Friday’s closing of Panda Express…

Where am I eating?

Because I’m feeling especially generous today, here’s a hint list to help you nail this one:1.  Urban2.  Max3.  Bag4.  Not Brazil5.  Jump6.  Counter7.  Germination8.  Hill9.  Jack10.PorkThis should be easy…

The Restaurant Roll Call for June

RESTAURANTS OPENING IN JUNE Giovanni’s Italian Cafe, 3355 South Yarrow, Lakewood Pho-Yo, 2179 South Parker Road, Aurora Simm’s Steakhouse, 11911 West Sixth Avenue, Lakewood Johnie’s Bar-B-Que, 5280 West 25th Avenue, Edgewater Choppers Custom Salad Works, 5302 DTC Boulevard, Greenwood Village Einstein Bros. Bagels, 200 Quebec Street 3 Sons, 14805 West…

Tonight: Meet the very tall, dark and handsome Jason Sheehan

So…if you haven’t already heard about Jason Sheehan’s new memoir, Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen, then your reading catalog clearly consists of titles that you should keep between yourself and your therapist. Oh, please. Shameless Sheehan has pimped his book here, here…

Simple things at Sketch Food and Wine

I was several whiskeys to the good on a recent school night when I found myself propped up against Sketch’s salumi bar, canting sharply like a ship taking on water.  I asked for the menu, gave it a cursory glance, then pushed it back across the dark, polished wood, slapped…

Guess where I’m eating?

I didn’t eat today until 3:15 p.m., and while it was certainly late enough in the afternoon to forgo real food in lieu of something like, I dunno, chicken fingers, french fries and lots of liquor, which was yesterday’s lunch, I was desperate for breakfast, except I didn’t want a…

Stranahan’s gets ready to toast its new building

After two months of moving – and twelve- to fifteen-hour work days – Jess Graber, Jake Norris and the rest of the Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey crew are just about up and running in their new digs inside the former Heavenly Daze Brewery at 200 South Kalamath Street. And they’ve leased…

California fast food more In than Out in Colorado

Colorado has plenty of homegrown fast-food and fast-casual chains to keep locals happy. There’s Chipotle, Qdoba, Smashburger, Einstein Bagels and Quiznos just to name a few. But Coloradoans also love their California fast food, and we’ve made some gains in the past few years, including a couple of new Del…