The First Avenue Hotel in 1917. Denver restaurateur Jesse Morreale (Mezcal, Tambien, La Rumba, Rockbar) recently announced he was taking the next step in building the nascent hotel empire that started with the All-Inn at 3015 East Colfax Avenue by purchasing the historic/empty/decrepit 1st Avenue Hotel building at 101 Broadway…
High School Musical cereal Kellogg’s Rating: Two spoons out of four Cereal description: Round-cornered corn-and-oat stars evenly split between a robust yellowish-brown and a ripe red — and all of them are speckled with white sugar pustules seemingly ready to erupt with sweetness. It’s a look that raises expectations soon…
Chef Frank Bonanno. I think we all knew that it was only a matter of time before Sparrow Market Café (701 Grant Street) tanked, since Sparrow restaurant had already flown the coop. And guess who’s picked up the space? Frank Bonanno, who already owns the restaurants on either side of…
Morreale is feeling confident after his makeover of RockBar at the All-Inn. Remember a couple years back when Jesse Morreale, out for one of his morning constitutionals, just up and decided he was going to buy the aging transient hotel at 3105 East Colfax, so he walked into the All-Inn…
There’s a new Asian spot in Aurora, and it’s dishing up a wide variety of Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese cuisines with a menu that includes an extensive array of sushi, bento boxes and teppanyaki. Purple Orchid Asian Bistro, the vision of owner Rui Shang, opened about two weeks ago at…
Now, I’m a huge fan of caramel candy. Something about the rich, deep sweetness of good cooked sugar is pure candy heaven to me. On a recent trek to Big Lots to find strange and unusual candy, I spotted two filled caramel options that looked intriguing. Goetze’s “Original” Caramel Creams…
Construction — or, rather destruction — began this week on Sean Yontz’s old Chama space in the Belmar development, which is scheduled to become Phoenix chef Mark Tarbell’s second Colorado restaurant, following the success of his first, The Oven, in that same Lakewood project. One complication: Tarbell doesn’t yet have…
“No more root beer for me, bartender. I’m driving.” Happy Hour: It’s no longer just for alcohol. That’s the idea behind the Red Trolley ice cream shop’s root beer float happy hour. The phrase alone inspires giddy excitement; saying it aloud will certainly leave a childish grin on your face…
Goodnight, Mel’s. I got word last night from Charlie Master that the last location of the Master family restaurant empire is finally closing. Mel’s Bistro, at 1120 East Sixth Avenue, has been on the block for some time now, and while many of Denver’s big names were rumored to have…
Either it’s the best kept secret in town, or other Denver-ites just don’t appreciate the restorative qualities of a good soyrizo-and-egg burrito and an icy cold Chelada after a night of too many indulgences as much as my husband and I do. When we first stumbled upon the abundance of…
After just a couple of years as Leenah’s Deli, the long-standing Greek market at 1035 Lincoln Street has changed ownership and is now called Melit’as Greek Cafe & Market. New owner Maria Gibson took over the deli about six weeks ago from Nader Wadhen, and while the menu does have…
After reading Adam Cayton-Holland’s hilarious (and quite principled!) column, “How Adam Cayton-Holland survived a cougar attack!,” which chronicles his fending off a cougar at a recent comedy event, I found myself Googling “cougar.” I came across a hilarious web site devoted to the subject. Among other features, the site, urbancougar.com,…
I’d intended to waste the bulk of this column on a vain, poorly researched, smarty-pants essay about the cuisine of the ’80s and Denver’s best practitioners thereof — but then actual news had to happen and wreck my plans. Remember just seventeen days ago, when things seemed relatively tranquil? Well,…
I took my first cooking job in 1988. Fifteen years old, I walked into a neighborhood pizza shop knowing precisely nothin’ about nothin’ and proceeded to prove it at every opportunity. That I wasn’t fired after my first night was odd. That I survived my first week, near miraculous. It…
Fall is my favorite season. I love the warm, sunny days and the cool, crisp nights, the quintessential autumn-in-Colorado experience of experiencing all four seasons — heat, cold, rain, snow — in one day. But most of all, I love Indian summer, when I can sit on one of my…
In sum, I’ve consumed seventeen and a half cold beers by the time I fall through the doors of the Wazee Supper Club (1600 15th Street) just after midnight. The first eight went down between 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., while I was watching college football. The half a beer…
While Lo Coastal Fusion presents itself — perhaps unwittingly — as a champion of all things ’80s, particularly the dreaded fusion, Avenue Grill has actually been around since the 1980s (and has the documentary evidence to prove it, hung all over the walls behind and beside the bar) and has…
Rumors are swirling that French 250 , which Jason Sheehan raved about this spring, is bidding Denver adieu. A sign on the door notes that the restaurant is no longer open on Mondays and Tuesdays — which could explain why no one was answering the phone yesterday. (The web site…
A few weeks back, we asked readers where we should take Gustavo Arellano of Ask a Mexican fame during his visit to Denver, so that he could try a real Colorado Mexican eatery. One suggestion was for a spot we’d never heard of: Las Tortas, a torta joint at 5307…
See the slide show here. Forget the grooming routine from vines to wine. Forget the proper way to hold a wine glass — and which glass to use, for that matter. And that sniffing, swirling, what-have-you, forget that, too. It’s all important, of course, and was taught in one of…
The audacity of hops. It’s been faked, photo-copied, duplicated and replicated, mocked and knocked off. But Shepard Fairey’s now-iconic blue-and-red print of Barack Obama’s hopeful face never gave us reason to drink – until the folks at Oskar Blues got a hold of it. The Lyons-based brewery, makers of Dale’s…
Lo Coastal Fusion It was a decade of experimentation — like the ‘60s had been with drugs and the ‘70s with sex, the ‘80s were about testing the boundaries of money, power and food. And an argument could be made that it was a necessary period of madness, a kind…
