Milking It: Chocolate Honey-Comb

Chocolate Honey-Comb Post Rating: Two stars out of four Cereal description: Corn and oat flour mashed into the ingenious Honey-Comb shape — a modified hexagon, thickly constructed, with six holes geometrically arrayed around the perimeter and another drilled at the center. Then, the professors at Post sprayed the bits brown,…

Join the Lunch Bunch at Billy’s

While other restaurants are cutting back on hours, Billy’s Inn is expanding. Open just over two weeks (that’s reopened — the original Billy’s opened more than 75 years ago, and just shut down earlier this year for a change in ownership and a massive renovation), Billy’s will add lunch to…

We All Scream for Little Man Ice Cream

Sign of the times: The hot evening of July 6, that fateful day when Colorado liquor stores could finally open on Sunday, the lines were much longer outside Little Man Ice Cream than they were at Tejon Liquors, just a block away. And with temperatures slated to hit triple digits…

Cool to Colorado Green Chile

The new issue of Westword includes excerpts of a letter from one R. Rubio of Phoenix, which offers a flavor of a visitor’s view of the city — as well as a taste of what bad service can do for a town’s reputation. Here’s the entire letter: I am visiting…

Welcome Back to Billy’s Inn!

Billy’s Inn is now open, and looks to become as popular with this generation of northwest Denver dwellers as it was with seven decades of previous regulars (you can find their mugs here). But unlike the last incarnation of Billy’s, this one has a kitchen (the last one closed in…

Chef and Tell!

TV or not TV? Top Chef season four contestants Antonia Lofaso and Ryan Scott will be in Cherry Creek tomorrow as the seventh stop on “Top Chef: The Tour,” a nationwide promotional trip featuring a customized traveling “Top Chef” 18-wheeler semi-truck with a state-of-the-art kitchen. The former chef/contestants will offer…

Apple Fries?

Burger King is rolling out a test-market product here in Denver this month: Apple Fries. Basically, they’re slices of apple — or perhaps slices of an apple-like product. For all we know (and based on the long and dependable history of ridiculousness in the fast-food industry), they could be processed…

Candy Girls: Desiderio Chocolates

We first encountered Desiderio Chocolates at the Chocolate Expo in May. A line snaked around the booth where row upon row of elegantly crafted chocolates were on display. Though they were offering samples of several flavors, the crowd favorite was clearly the salted caramel. So, later, when we were offered…

Say It Ain’t So, Joe: Starbucks Closes Stores

Reporters are renowned for how much they can drink. But not coffee, apparently. Yesterday, Starbucks Corp. posted the list of 600 stores it will close by early next year: nine of those in Colorado, three of those in Denver, and exactly one of those in the Denver Newspaper Agency building,…

Street Smarts: Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe

The neighborhood at the edge of Highland, now dubbed LoHi, could change its name to LoHot, with so many bars and restaurants popping up seemingly overnight.And then there’s Rosa Linda’s Mexican Café, which has held down the corner of 33rd and Tejon for more than twenty years. You’ll often find…

Lost and Found: Indochine

I found myself wandering around the south ‘burbs last week, lost and chasing down a vague tip about some Vietnamese place in Parker that does killer pho and bahn xiao (kinda like a Vietnamese pizza — a rice-flour crepe covered in black bean sauce, sprouts, a little pork, maybe some…

The Coolest Clubhouse in Town: Fuel

Since it opened six months ago, Fuel has become not just a regular meeting spot for those with offices or business in the Taxi development but also a go-to destination for anyone who wants to see a project fueling Denver’s growing reputation as a hipster hangout. While owner/chef Bob Blair…

Pho 99

My dentist hits the button and slowly brings the chair back to vertical. “All right,” he says. “We’re done. How ya doing?” I nod, say something about being okay, all good, splendid. “Really done?” I ask. “That was…” Gross. Annoying. Disturbing. Double-gross. “…not so bad.” He smiles, turns half away…

On the Town

I was driving a lot last week, bouncing between pho restaurants all over town, trying to decide which one was going to be my lucky number. There was the new(ish) Pho 7, at 10009 East Hampden Avenue in Aurora (in the former home of Istanbul Grill), where I still haven’t…

Mary Poppin Cherry

Sitting down for a late Sunday brunch on the patio at Hamburger Mary’s, I hear the cute boy next to me say, “My penis isn’t curved — in fact, it’s the only straight thing on me.” And instantly, I realize that I’m at the center of the universe for extraordinary…

Pho Fusion

Pho 99 serves a surprisingly authentic, working-class, streetside kind of pho that, while not exactly rare in Denver (what with its million numbered pho shops and half-million more unclassifiable Vietnamese restaurants), is not the most common iteration of the classic Vietnamese breakfast-lunch-dinner-midnight-snack food, either. Its focus on ingredients and plain…

Another Pearl: Gaia Bistro

The food doesn’t get any more local than at Gaia Bistro, especially in the summertime, when greenhouse gardens in the back yard yield produce for the table. And it only seems natural to eat out admidst the growing stuff — which is easy to do on the cozy patio at…

Avery Brewing Ales the Chief

As the Democratic National Convention approaches, and the presidential election after that, everyone is thinking Oval Office politics — even beer makers. To “celebrate the last day in office of our current Commander in Chief and welcome in a new one,” Avery Brewing Company in Boulder has created Ale to…

So Pho, So Good

Inside Pho 99, there are more fish than people – fish in tanks by the door, on the counter, by the register. This is a simple space — comfortable and open and bright, friendly but not much more than functional. People come to Pho 99 to eat, nothing more. Which…

Pearl Beyond Price: Izakaya Den

South Pearl Street has a string of fine restaurants, including the legendary Sushi Den, but none is more astonishing than Sushi Den’s year-old sibling, Izakaya Den. The menu is an amazing mix of sushi, Japanese classics and fusion from around the world — and somehow it all works. The interior…

A Lotta Latte Art

As this slide show demonstrates, the competition last Friday night was frothy and furious at Fluid Coffee Bar’s “Live to the Fullest Cup” fundraiser for local Novo coffee roaster Semeon Abay, who was recently diagnosed with advanced metastatic prostate cancer. Shots were pulled, milk was steamed and froth was sculpted…