When the lights come on, and the only thing separating you from Hammered Enough to Want Taco Bell is one last shot, it’s good to have a plan. Hesitate, and risk the bartender reneging on his gracious offer to tack fifty more dollars on your tab. But: Know what you…
The String Cheese Incident’s Kyle Hollingsworth is touring to push his new solo release, Then There’s Now, but the keyboardist/songwriter isn’t just an expert musician. He’s also a home brewer, and is teaming up with local breweries along his route for Kyle’s Beer Tour. Although the tour won’t hit Colorado…
My family wasn’t the Irish pub kind. Some of my earliest, fondest memories involve going with my dad to Trader Vic’s in the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Or the Brown Palace. Or Eddie Bohn’s Pig ‘N Whistle on West Colfax, where we’d sit in one of those red booths with his pals…
The good people at Mezcal (3230 East Colfax Avenue), Tambien (250 Steele Street) and Sketch (101 Broadway) have declared a state of happy hour emergency, which is often the case when the streets and sidewalks are canvasses of white. And so long as the snow continues to fall, all three…
The bad weather has put the Hendrick’s Gin competition hosted by the Colorado Bartenders Guild at Lola tonight on ice. I was slated to be a judge, so I’m both relieved and disappointed by the postponement. The contest has been tentatively rescheduled for November 16. In the meantime, you might…
On the first big snow day, restaurants and bars offer a flurry of cold-weather specials. But it’s hard to beat the standing deal at McCormick’s Fish House & Bar, the cozy spot tucked into the Oxford Hotel at 17th and Wazee streets. Whenever it’s snowing, this McCormick’s offers Irish coffee…
901 Silver Tequila, the ultra premium tequila brand that just launched this year, has sealed a multi-year deal with Live Nation that makes it the official tequila sponsor at Live Nation venues across the country. It’s Live Nation’s first spirits sponsorship on a national level. “We are thrilled to be…
Leigh Jones, the woman behind Jonesy’s EatBar and the Horseshoe Lounge (with partner Margaret Moore), was also the co-owner and designer of the Dish, B-52 Billiards, Brasserie Rouge, Atomic Cowboy and Buffalo Billiards in Nashville and Austin. But she really came into her own with the eponymous Jonesy’s, Denver’s first…
Any ol’ bar, from snazzy to seedy, can offer $2 cans of PBR and still make more than a 300 percent profit on even the most egregious retail thirty-pack price; in Denver, plenty do, though often just during happy hour. The Squeaky Bean, however, is different. In a lot of…
Chili Verde, the Mexican restaurant that opened this summer at 3700 Tejon Street, has a lot of things going for it. It has a lovely space, friendly service, and a menu that’s like a dream for anyone looking for a real taste of Southern Mexican and Pueblan cuisine. One thing…
You could once find the city’s best dive bars along Larimer Street, but gentrification has claimed most of those, leaving only the Star Bar at 2137 Larimer and now El Charrito, which has made a comeback at 2100 Larimer. This longtime Larimer haunt is only open after 7 p.m., and…
Osteria Marco bartender Michael McGill hates being whistled at when someone wants his attention. As he told Westword’s Nancy Levine in this week’s Behind the Bar column, “I’m not a dog.” Not every bartender is as cool as McGill. Still, no matter how he or she acts, that barkeep holds…
Michael McGill grew up in Kansas City and moved to Boulder for college, where he poured his first drinks. He has been behind a bar since 1998, and today can be found managing the bar at Osteria Marco in Larimer Square. Now serving: Michael McGill. How did you get into…
Hosea Rosenberg may have won last season’s Top Chef, but his luck didn’t hold for Big Red F colleague James Lee, the Boulder mixologist who placed fourth at this weekend’s Iron Bar Chef contest at the annual Santé Restaurant Symposium in New York. Which means Lee didn’t get the $1,000…
James Lee, mixologist at the Bitter Bar at Happy (known as Happy Noodle House until very recently), is heading from Boulder to New York this weekend, for the annual Santé Restaurant Symposium — where he’ll be competing against against five other bartenders in the Iron Bar Chef contest. The competitors…
There are quite a few things that I look forward to once the weekend rolls around, including football, naps, Pin the Tail on the Pig, toilet papering the neighbor’s house and Bloody Mary bars. And there’s no better Bloody Mary spread in town than the one you see in the…
When I interviewed Frank Bonanno for this week’s Chef and Tell Q & A, we hung out in his kitchen at Luca d’Italia, where he totally seduced me by making housemade burrata, arguably the crack cocaine of cheese. One portion was plenty for two (three if you have a skinny…
Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey, which owns the building where the Rackhouse Pub is due to open next week, bottles a unique product. The micro-distilled whiskey is made with locally grown barley and aged in charred white oak barrels. When a batch is ready–once or twice a month–the distillers put out a…
Cowboys are my weakness. I recently went on a six-hour trail ride in southeastern Colorado with some local ranchers. When one of those ranchers spotted a rattlesnake, he jumped off his horse, grabbed his rope, killed the snake with the rope and cut off the rattle – which he then…
Halloween is always a big day at the Wynkoop Brewing Co., because the pub celebrates its birthday that day (it’s 21 years old this year) and because of the annual Denver Gorilla Run, a 5.6K race in which everyone dresses up as a gorilla and raises money to support the…
The Rackhouse Pub is slated to open next week with a slightly pared-down beer menu, but a seriously cool look. Located inside the former Heavenly Daze Brewery, at 200 South Kalamath Street, the Rackhouse will feature twenty tap handles (mostly Colorado microbrews), rather than the fifty that had been originally…
Caleb Whitmore worked at the Fogo de Chao Churrascaria in Chicago, then moved to Denver this summer to open the Fogo here, bringing his caipirinha-making skills with him. And what’s a caipirinha? “It’s Brazil’s most popular cocktail,” explains Whitmore, “made from cachaca, sugar and fresh limes, shaken and served over…
