Towering Inferno

The Pinnacle Club occupies the 38th-floor space that housed the swanky Petroleum Club back in Denver’s go-go oil days, and not only does it give a feel for the past, but it provides phenomenal views of the Front Range — all 360 degrees, if you want to walk around and…

Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar

Coming into turn three on Good Friday, the Mormon Representative and I effectively distanced ourselves from the pack of the damned. Devout types that we are, we decided there was no more fitting way to reflect on our blackened souls than to brew a batch of beer while barbecuing some…

House of Kabob

For twenty years, House of Kabob has been jammed into this strip mall on Colorado Boulevard, tangled up with other Middle Eastern markets and restaurants. That’s twenty years of Persian cuisine, twenty years of kabobs and lamb tongue and herbed yogurt and pita. And while the room — done in…

Ghost of a Chance

I have now been to 250 Josephine Street more times than I can count. The address was predestined to fascinate me. As Papillon, it was ground zero (one of the ground zeros, at least) for Denver at its height of pre-millennium excess: a jumping-and-jiving bastion of high-tone, big-money weirdness with…

The Name Game

Bad enough that Chris Douglas and his crew had to take on the sorry history of the 250 Josephine Street address when they opened Tula there (see review). Bad enough that they have to deal with a crowd of diners who have long memories (when Ian Kleinman was cooking there,…

My Brother’s Bar

Leave it to the Institute of Drinking Studies to host one of the biggest events in a very young man’s life in the oldest saloon in Denver: My Brother’s Bar (2376 15th Street). We here at the Institute feel that it is important to demystify drinking by showing our progeny…

1515 Restaurant

Gene Tang has always had a beautiful place at 1515. The Victorian storefront wears its age well, handling crowds with a kind of shotgun feng shui — moving people back and forth through the long room, around the well-spaced tables and banquettes. The upstairs dining room is elegant, the dimly…

On the Lamb

I like Greek food, but it’s never seemed like much of a cuisine to me. Greek food isn’t a cuisine because it has no rules. Ask a hundred Greeks how to make tzatziki — the ubiquitous yogurt and cucumber sauce — and even though tzatziki contains only about four ingredients,…

Dates and Places

May is going to be a big month for Troy Guard. And not just for Guard, who’s currently standing post as exec chef at Nine75 and Emogène and also overseeing the Caribbean menu at Wings and Wraps, which opened at 4736 East Colfax Avenue, but also for his wife, Leigh…

Sicilian Breeze

If you’re like me (and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be), you yearn for a return to basic values. This means you think that pros playing in the Olympics (especially hockey) was the primary reason that TV ratings for the Winter Games hovered somewhere between those of Supernanny and Fox’s…

Ti Amo Ancora

If you’re like me (and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be), you yearn for a return to basic values. This means you think that pros playing in the Olympics (especially hockey) was the primary reason that TV ratings for the Winter Games hovered somewhere between those of Supernanny and Fox’s…

Pete’s Gyros Place

There are two ends to every spectrum, including the spectrum of Greek restaurants, although in this case, neither end is necessarily better than the other. On one, there’s Yanni’s (see review) and places like Yanni’s that attempt to present the best of Greek food culture in a comfortable environment; usually,…

Sum More, Please

“Yes, please.” “Yes, please.” “Yes, please.” For two solid hours at Super Star Asian, from one until three on a Sunday afternoon, the food never stopped coming. Brought on carts and plates, on unbreakable orange plastic cafeteria trays carried by smiling, indomitable women packing scissors and wearing rubber surgical gloves,…

Shark Bite

I had my very first bowl of shark’s fin soup last week at Super Star Asian (see review). As a culinary indulgence, it wasn’t worth the money; if I’m paying $46 for a bowl of soup, it had better come garnished with about $38 in small bills. But as a…

Grand Mal Margarita

I know I’m going to have my cool card taken away, but I love Lowry. As a girl from the Denver suburbs, I think it’s great that kids can grow up in a comfortable, new-urbanist environment without their parents having to deal with I-25 during rush hour in order to…

Nallen’s Irish Pub

It’s horrifying to admit, but the signs are all there: We are growing up. On my birthday, I’d denied the usual urge to overindulge in food and booze simply because it didn’t fit with my diet. JP just put down “earnest money” on a house, meaning that he earnestly wants…

Reading Tea Leaves

The dim-sum experience varies from restaurant to restaurant, but I know I can usually count on the tea. Always green, almost always served in squat white pots with loose leaves steeping in hot water, inevitably accompanied by small, plain-white cups nicked and tinted the color of bone by long use…

Dirty Love

Sean Yontz is a survivor, a success story in an industry that does not take kindly to failure. He worked in the shadow of Richard Sandoval at Tamayo when modern Mexican and Nuevo Latino were all the rage, then set off on his own and wound up taking some serious…

The Rest of Denver

In my original Best of Denver 2006 list, Chama (see review) was up for something like 74 awards. Why? Because the place is just flat-out fantastic. And while the haters out there can say what they like — scream bias because I know owner Sean Yontz, refire the rumors of…

Bloody Mary

I was in New Orleans a couple of years ago for Jazzfest. On that trip, beer with breakfast was not only acceptable, but encouraged. One day while we were walking, cocktails in hand, along the packed sidewalks of the French Quarter, we happened upon a ragtag band singing in the…

Braun’s Bar & Grill

If you’re still not convinced that men and women are totally incompatible, then you haven’t been out in the world for way too long. At least 30 percent of the GNP is dedicated to mitigating the constant conflict. How else to explain Dr. Phil and daytime TV and in general?…

Tamayo

Five years ago, chef/owner Richard Sandoval’s Tamayo was on the cutting edge of the Nuevo Latino culinary movement, with critics in Denver and beyond raving about the pipian de puerco (tamarind-marinated pork tenderloin in a pumpkin-seed sauce), the ceviche (mahi mahi in a spicy tomato broth) and the crepas de…