I talked with Frank Bonanno of Mizuna (225 East Seventh Avenue) last week about…well, about just about everything, really. Sushi, restaurant design, the economy, why people eat foie gras, how to keep and feed your waitstaff. Most important, we had a chat about the place that Bonanno and partner Doug…
Gutsy, that’s what it is. Opening any restaurant in any location on any day takes guts, but opening a small Mexican joint (of which there are already roughly 17 million in the Denver area) in the middle of a recession that has seen restaurants large and small dying off like…
The Cosmopolitan, a cocktail made famous by the sassy, serially unattached women on HBO’s Sex and the City, is the ultimate single woman’s drink — and there’s no better place to down one than the Cool River Cafe, suburban Denver’s ultimate pickup joint. At any given happy hour on any…
Not too long ago, going out to eat meant just that: leaving your house and going someplace where someone unrelated to you would do the cooking. It was a simple process, requiring nothing of the diner except an appetite and a wallet. You didn’t need to buy a new wardrobe,…
Is nothing Sacre? As promised, rumored, alleged and speculated about at length, Sacre Bleu is coming back — although not as Sacre Bleu. The space, at 410 East Seventh Avenue, will be reincarnated as Vega, a joint venture of Marco Colantonio, former floor man at Denver’s Tamayo (and director of…
While the players prepare to hit the ice for the 2002-’03 Colorado Avalanche season, Brauns Bar and Grill offers Le Puck, a martini created especially for Avs fans. If you love licorice, this dark cocktail ($7) made with Pearl Vodka and Romana Black Sambuca and garnished with two red licorice…
Over the years, I’ve been assembling a dream menu of the best foods I’ve ever eaten, a desert-island top ten from which I’d choose if ever asked the question, “If you could eat only one thing every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?” Beef jerky…
Where’s the beef? First Con Agra recalled 19 million pounds of beef processed at its Greeley plant, and now GFI American, a Minneapolis meatpacker, has announced a nationwide recall of approximately 717,000 pounds of beef possibly tainted with E. coli. But if these recent horror stories of slow, inefficient health…
When Kevin Daly opened Boulder’s Mountain Sun in October 1993, the brewpub had a small list of ambitious craft beers, an affordable, whole-earthy menu and a Grateful Dead theme. Nine years later, beer fans are very grateful for Mountain Sun, which is doing such a lively business that it’s just…
That crazy Aussie Steve Irwin may make his living pouncing on snakes and alligators in the untamed wild, but all you have to do to snag such a beast is order a Dirty Alligator at the Cherry Cricket. The Dirty Alligator is one of the Cricket’s specialty shots, served in…
All of you health nuts are going to feel pretty stupid someday, lying there in your hospital beds dying of nothing in particular. Redd Foxx said something like that once, and I agree with him. All you joggers, all you twig-and-berry vegans, all you juicers, you fasters, you calorie-counters and…
Yeah, but how’s the food? Inmates at Denver County Jail are in for a change later this year, when the traditional “three hots and a cot” are replaced by two hots, a cot and a bologna sandwich. In accordance with Mayor Wellington Webb’s proposed 7 percent cut in departmental operating…
As Michelangelo discovered in the Sistine Chapel, creating an Italian masterpiece takes time. Mixing a great cocktail does, too — but the Limon Cello at Campo de Fiori is more than worth the wait. Poured from a glass decanter into a frozen shot glass, the Limon Cello mixes a simple…
Gene Tang — the owner, floor manager and master sommelier of 1515 — knows how to work a room. One minute, he’s on the stairs, smiling all the way back to his eyeteeth and greeting the point man for a group of eight just making their way up from the…
Market watch: Need some fresh foie gras for that traditional Labor Day picnic dish? Marczyk Fine Foods, at 770 East 17th Avenue, has goose liver available and will be stocking Hudson Valley and Sonoma duck lobes by early next week. These are fresh products, folks: If they’re in your hands…
It’s Labor Day weekend, and no faction of the local workforce is more worthy of salute than the hardworking (and generally underpaid) men and women who staff the area’s eateries. But save your sympathy: Phill Corbin thinks he has the best restaurant gig in town; he leads the cliff-diving crew…
Ready for some monkey business? Follow the brightly painted arrows on Colfax past Kitty’s and right into Dulcinea’s 100th Monkey, Denver’s newest jazz venue. This no-frills dark den fills up nightly with the town’s hipper cats, who lounge on comfortable couches and listen to live jazz; Colfax regulars, who make…
The interior of Shead’s Fish and BBQ Heaven is not hip or slick or fabulous. Nor does it have that bogus clutter aesthetic or the faux-rustique feel so popular at some of the carefully sculpted eateries I’ve been skulking around these days. I can guarantee you that not a single…
Things are stirring at the moribund Dick’s Hickory Dock (26220 Highway 74, Kittredge), which was sold a few years ago by its original owners (who’d opened the barbecue joint in the 1970s) and recently sold again after the next owners couldn’t open because of unspecified financial troubles. After being closed…
Rocky Balboa’s glass full of raw eggs won’t prepare you for the Knockout, the signature martini at Sullivan’s, a swank LoDo steakhouse named for legendary pugilist John L. Sullivan, the “Boston Strong Boy.” This killer cocktail is made with fresh Hawaiian pineapple slices that have been marinated for seven to…
Chefs acquire weight over time. I’m not talking about pounds packed on the beltline from nights spent surrounded by food, but rather a kind of metaphoric weight — a density of celebrity that increases incrementally with each mention of their names by critics and chowhounds, a slow accretion of notoriety…
More news from Mr. Radek’s neighborhood: As we all know by now, Papillon Cafe (250 Josephine Street), Radek Cerny’s premier Denver address, has closed its doors for good. This came as quite a surprise to everyone in the biz (including some of Papillon’s employees who, allegedly, weren’t even told the…
