We’d been considering the “world-famous” Islamorada Fish Company Restaurant (7974 East 49th Avenue) for an Institute night, but it didn’t seem quite right for my birthday dinner. Islamorada is attached to one of my all-time favorite stores — but would I really want to eat there? That would be like…
That’s when James Mazzio left Colorado for Chicago, where he took on a chef’s gig for a restaurant that didn’t yet exist and spent a year waiting for its owner to get his shit together before giving up and coming home. And then what line did he walk onto? Via’s—with…
In the next Bite Me, you can read all about the rest of the Best of Denver. But in the meantime, I have a major correction on the Best Free Chips and Salsa. I gave the award to Los Carboncitos, which definitely has the Best Free Salsa. Just one problem:…
We can’t do this anymore.” “We can. I know we can make this work.” “We can’t. This has been a problem for too long.” I sighed. “Look. We’re both smart people. We’re college-educated grownups.” “Well, one of us is, anyway.” “We can figure this out.” Laura crossed her arms and…
Leigh Jones, owner of the Dish Bistro, is a bit nervous. Not seriously nervous, but a bit. “I think we’re ready,” she told me. “We’ve got a great menu, a great staff… I’m a real restaurateur now.” And frankly, she can hardly understand how it happened. Jones is late of…
Ode to a patio: I think that I shall never see/A patio as lovely when drinking Chablis. Or better yet, tequila. After the miserable winter we’ve endured, I’ve got the worst case of spring fever in the history of the world. While many people get out their Rollerblades, hiking shoes…
Have you ever felt really out of place? I’m not talking about the times you walked out of the can with toilet paper trailing from your pants, or even when, as a teenager, you had to skulk out of the classroom with your Trapper Keeper held low because at that…
Let’s agree from the start that no new incarnation of Lucile’s will ever compare with the first at 2124 14th Street in Boulder. The original has a kind of magic, a musty, irregular charm that can only be earned, never bought. That said, the Denver Lucile’s has only improved since…
At the end of a good night, I often have more takeout stacked in the front seat of my car than I can carry up the stairs in a single trip. Some of my to-go compulsion is work-related. When I need to know exactly what ingredients were in the ravioli,…
I have long held that Buffalo, New York — where I spent a few formative years of my cooking career — is a city unjustly labeled as a one-hit food town. Chicken wings, chicken wings, chicken wings, right? Nothing but deep-fried bird parts and snow. But this is wrong. Well,…
“Look, Rhumba was never a restaurant that I was fully, culinarily happy with.” That’s Dave Query telling me this. Dave Query, owner of the now defunct Rhumba (above), of the very much funct Lola and Jax and West End Tavern and Zolo Grill. Dave Query, who I took to task…
Here’s everything I ate at Red Tango in one sitting last week, an enthusiastic order so large that the dishes could not fit on the table at one time, forcing the kitchen to stagger courses, the floor manager to wonder aloud if six or seven more people would be joining…
While restaurants across the metro area were swamped by Denver Restaurant Week, I was wrapping up my Denver Restaurant Year, debating a few final picks for the very best eating in this town — everything from hot dogs and cheeseburgers to cassoulet and loup de mer — at restaurants big…
Life after death. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the owners of Vita, the Italian restaurant that opened in part of the old Olinger Mortuary in December, named their place after the Italian word for “life.” The interior is certainly lively enough, with its exposed brick, dark wood, leather booths…
I don’t like Sundays. You always feel like crap on Sunday and are most likely regretting something from the previous night. Or regretting that you have nothing to regret. In high school, we used to congregate at five o’clock mass to collect church bulletins and prove that we had cleansed…
While South and Central American restaurants like Red Tango (see review) are just starting to get serious traction here, Denver has long been blessed with many fantastic Indian restaurants — and those Indian restaurants have been blessed with a very supportive and reasonably educated clientele. I can’t even count how…
Ceviche…fresh chips and chipotle salsa…empanadas and arepas con something-or-other with goat cheese…fried plantains, thick-cut and buttery, crisp at the edges and gooey in the middle. Plantains are hard to do even moderately well, and these were the best fried plantains I’ve had in Denver. Since I eat fried plantains everywhere…
A brief list of stuff I don’t like: Poetry, with the exception of a few pieces by the likes of William Carlos Williams and T.S. Eliot and the shell-shocked blasphemy of Siegfried Sassoon. The musical stylings of the Grateful Dead or any of their legions of hippie imitators. Vegetarianism used…
Wow. No, I mean seriously. Wow. I’ve taken shots before for my reviews. I’ve been called lots of nasty names. I’ve been screamed at on the phone. I’ve been threatened with everything from lawsuits to having my teeth kicked down my throat. That all comes with the job — at…
It’s been more than a month, but we here at the Institute are still bitching about the Snickers Super Bowl commercial. That’s the one in which two guys accidentally touch lips and have to atone by doing several manly things, including ripping off chest hair and kicking each other in…
I often wonder if New Orleans boosters rue the day that a bartender invented the Hurricane, the city’s most popular cocktail. Prior to August 2005, when I thought of New Orleans, I thought of Mardi Gras, Jazzfest, Bourbon Street, bead-throwing, boob-showing and Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s — in that order…
I’ve always been a little creeped out in empty restaurants. There’s that uncomfortable sense of being watched — because there’s no one else in the dining room to attract any of the staff’s attention. I feel like I ought to whisper, so as not to distract the bored cooks and…
