The wine room at Adega Restaurant + Wine Bar is made of glass and green light. It’s a powerful presence, beautiful in the way that cubist art can be, or a ’50s-era Hugo Gernsback-inspired Greyhound bus station. There’s an undeniably weird majesty in the geometric arrangement of its towering shelves,…
Yes, it’s that time of year again, and I’ve been sitting here at Bite Me World HQ trying to think of ways to improve this column in 2003. For starters, I was thinking of moving the entire operation to some tiny island in the South Pacific, where the tropical breezes…
As many of Denver’s seedier neighborhoods undergo gentrification and John’s TV floods our public airwaves, finding a hooker in thigh-high boots walking Colfax just isn’t as easy as it used to be. But the Lounge, a swank, newish joint on the corner of Colfax and Marion Street, stays true to…
All through the run-up to this holiday season, people were asking what I’d be doing for dinner: on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day, on New Year’s Eve and the day after. They asked expectantly, assuming that I’d be doing something fabulous. Maybe they thought that, as a restaurant critic, I…
Everyone knows you can’t ring in the new year without popping the tops off several magnums of champagne. But if you prefer your bubbly mixed with a little hard stuff, Rhino serves up champagne cocktails that should add buzz to your big night. La Playa ($9), made with Bacardi O,…
Brunch is almost always a bad idea. For consumers, it spans the dullest, most grinding hours of the day — that weird, timeless space between a leisurely late breakfast and the early start of happy hour — and brings to the table nothing but the worst of two meals that…
I’m still receiving heated responses — both pro and con — regarding the December 5 “Smoke Free or Die” Bite Me. Among the messages was this, from reader Matt Roper: “Unfortunately, I read your article a day after the public meeting on the 5th. I read somewhere that even if…
For about 1,100 Denver shut-ins, Santa won’t drop down the chimney this Christmas. No, he’ll walk through the front door bearing the gifts of a hot meal and caring company, courtesy of a special force of two-days-a-year Samaritans who deliver supper for Meals on Wheels each Thanksgiving and Christmas. Every…
The weather outside may be frightful, but inside the Ship Tavern, the corner bar of the Brown Palace, things are always warm and cozy. And a glass of Williams’ Eggless Egg Nog ($6) can be a downright delightful nightcap after an evening of downtown winter festivities. To make this traditional…
Kim’s is not the kind of place where anyone goes on purpose the first time. It’s the kind of place you almost always find by accident. A happy accident, as it turns out. Maybe you discovered it through that annoying vegetarian ex-girlfriend, who always seemed to have a takeout box…
Many restaurateurs have promised to open new places by the end of the year (and before the post-holiday lull), and at least a few are going to make it. Last Friday, Larry Herz opened his new spot, Indigo, in the former home of Papillon Cafe, at 250 Josephine Street. The…
Long Island Iced Tea is infamous for its tendency to make drinkers pray to the porcelain god, and the Bank’s version ($5) should only cement that reputation. By substituting Blue Curacao for Coke and then mixing it with the standard rum, gin, vodka, tequila, Triple Sec and sour mix, the…
On a perfect mild afternoon before the last cold snap, I found myself perched on a stool before the small, half-moon bar at Bistro Adde Brewster, contemplating a late-day snack. I’d been poking around Cherry Creek looking for something interesting to do in the neighborhood, with a vague notion of…
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire… Few lyrics capture the holiday season like those famed words from Nat “King” Cole’s 1946 “The Christmas Song.” But in Colorado, that line gets a big “Bah, humbug” from local vendors. “We do roasted almonds, hazelnuts and peanuts; that stuff goes over real well…
Sometimes the best way to pass the day is by drinking — and when the sun is shining, nothing goes down smoother than a good, old-fashioned screwdriver. Hanson’s Grill and Tavern, on the corner of Pearl and Louisiana in West Washington Park, is a comfy neighborhood bar, just the sort…
Bistro Adde Brewster (see review, page 71) is no longer on the front lines of the smoking war. Owner Adde Bjorklund’s attempt to take his subterranean Cherry Creek digs non-smoking was just a recon mission, a bold foray into enemy territory to check the disposition of the other side’s forces…
I watched her walk away. I watched her come back again, smudging the glass on the display case with perfectly manicured fingers. I watched her walk away again, high heels clicking on the tiles, her basket empty but for one lonely glass jar of Stonewall Kitchen raspberry-peach champagne jam. For…
I know what you’re thinking: Cook’s Fresh Market (see page 69) sounds like a pretty interesting place, but you’d rather have gum surgery than drive to the Denver Tech Center during rush hour (which runs from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. on every day ending with a Y). Fortunately, Denver…
Ahhh, Thanksgiving: the official start to the glorious holiday season, when friends and family are certain to drive you crazy — or at least drive you to drink. And there’s no better place to do that than Charlie Brown’s Bar and Grill, a wonderfully dilapidated Denver drinking institution and a…
Sean Kelly is no celebrity chef. His hands give him away. They’re big, strong, the wrists thick from handling sauté pans, fingertips mauled, palms rough as untreated leather. Cooks know cooks from the feel of each others’ hands, and they can gauge how long someone’s been in the business from…
“I wanted the perfect meal. I also wanted — to be absolutely frank — Col. Walter E. Kurtz, Lord Jim, Lawrence of Arabia, Kim Philby, the Consul, Fowler, Tony Po, B. Traven, Christopher Walken…I wanted to find — no, I wanted to be — one of those debauched heroes and…
Jose Lara knows what people associate with tequila. “Having a really great time, getting crazy,” he says. “And headaches, throwing up. Everybody has had a tequila nightmare.” Mine is coming back to me: Freshman year in college, I picked up hitchhiker Stanley Claxton, who spied my first bottle of Jose…
