There is only one true Italian restaurant — back east, in that charmed province that runs along the coast, north into New England, south as far as Baltimore. Upstate, downstate, in the barrens and on the shore, just one restaurant with 10,000 names that has grown the way mushrooms grow,…
There are many strange delights to be discovered in Aurora’s Asian triangle, behind the doors of karaoke bars, noodle shops, Chinese bakeries, tea shops and stores selling herbal back-pain remedies, manga, car insurance and brain tonics. From strip mall to strip mall, the sensory landscape changes mile by mile, sometimes…
Jason? Hey, this is Duy. Man, I just read your column about JJ Chinese closing and I just had to tell you…” Over the years, Duy Pham, currently chef/owner at Kyoto at 7301 South Santa Fe Drive in Littleton and ex of just about everywhere, has told me a lot…
I imagine that a true baseball fan would be blissful at meeting Babe Ruth’s great-grandson. Politicos probably panic when they’re introduced to a Kennedy scion. Brits blatantly blanch when they see that little convict Prince Harry. So when I met Frederick Booker Noe III, I was speechless. Freddy, as I…
My computer’s dictionary defines a “tavern” as a place that sells beer and other drinks and sometimes serves food. I would agree with this for a start, but a real tavern is so much more. A real tavern is in the upper Midwest. A real tavern serves Tombstone pizza cooked…
Oshima Ramen is like a clock set to run very, very slowly. But rather than having minute and second hands tick off its story, it has walls covered with graffiti. Over the years, people have added signatures, declarations of love, crudely reproduced anime characters, pictures of stick figures doing unmentionable…
“I’ve been thrown out of some of these bars. Chased out. Ignored. I don’t do karaoke, but I know a place where one might indulge their proclivities for singing half-drunk versions of Mandy or Forever in Blue Jeans until late in the night or early in the morning. I know…
On my first night at Fruition, I splashed an entire glass of water onto my date before I’d even said hello. I was late to table and had stuck out my hand to shake hers just as the steward (for lack of a better term) was trying to set a…
It’s crazy,” Alex Seidel says. “Every night. I tell you, man, it’s Tetris all the time in here.” He’s talking about his kitchen at Fruition , that tiny, one-man, Lord Jim foxhole that Sean Kelly once worked alone, like Kurtz at the end of the Nung River, and which Seidel…
Although I’ve tried to systematize my life, the truth is that I’m organizationally handicapped. So when I saw the pricing sign behind the bar at the Bulldog, I was astounded by the brilliance of the concept. Kelly-green dots on bottles meant they were $6, Day-Glo orange meant $5, and so…
Relations between men and women have many unresolved issues. There’s constant bitching about the quantity and quality of sex. Also, no couple on earth can agree on a reasonable definition of “clean.” Guys know something is “clean” if they’ve sprayed a liquid on it, then wiped it up with a…
Fruition, reviewed in this week’s paper, was the restaurant I picked as the Best New Restaurant in this year’s Best of Denver edition. When I made that choice, I knew that Fruition wasn’t yet the best restaurant it could be, just the best there was at the time. And it’s…
“On my second night at Fruition, I lit my menu on fire. It wasn’t a big fire—just the sort one gets from an unfortunate proximity of a heavy-bond paper menu to a small candle on the dinner table. I put the fire out with the palm of my hand—thankful, in…
Never heard of a Violet Crumble? Don’t worry, because neither has most of the rest of the world outside of Australia, Hawaii and parts of the U.K. But personally, I’m somewhat obsessed with the stranger extremes of the confectionery arts and have spent many an evening wandering around the dry-stock…
Okay, so after the totally less-than-smashing success of my last attempt at getting all you grubniks more involved in the day-to-day business of this blog thingamajig (my ill-fated “What’s your favorite taste of Colorado” question, posed just ahead of this year’s Best of Denver issue in a thinly-veiled and desperate…
Laura was downstairs watching TV. “There’s that Indian place by the thing — that place with the fish,” she yelled. I was upstairs in front of the computer. “No.” “What about the Japanese restaurant?” “No.” “Seriously?” “Yeah, no. Not this time.” Quiet for a moment. “I don’t want Italian.” “Neither…
I called Limón chef/owner Alex Gurevich last week, and as a measure of just how frazzled the man was, for the first few minutes of our conversation, he thought I was a contractor calling to tell him that things weren’t going to be ready for his restaurant expansion’s launch this…
A guy hugged me recently, then looked shocked. “After living on the West Coast,” he confessed, “hugging someone with real breasts feels funny.” Chain restaurants are the cultural equivalent of fake boobs. They used to be few and far between, but now, like breast implants, chain restaurants are everywhere. And…
I sometimes wonder how long pleasant memories are good for. What’s the shelf life on one really good night? On one brief afternoon, three strong margaritas and a smile across a crowded table? In my sweeter moments, I want to think that memories last forever — that they never sour,…
It was the first seriously hot day of the year, maybe the second. Outside, the whole world smelled like cherry blossoms and living earth. I had the speakers on the computer turned down low and Tom Waits was singing You Can Never Hold Back Spring. It was that kind of…
I was having dinner with two friends — one who was attempting a wise quasi-diet by never cleaning a plate, the other who, like me, ate every scrap of everything she liked and burned the excess calories by viciously mocking anything she didn’t. Together, the three of us had worked…
By the time this issue hits the stands, Mel’s — that Cherry Creek institution and stronghold of ever-changing American cookery — will have served its final meals, poured its final glasses of wine and turned out the lights for the final time. And you know what? I’m glad to see…
