The Rialto Cafe is one of those rare exceptions to the rule (see page 53) that hotel restaurants are good for nothing but drinking, smoking and screwing. Sure, you can drink here, and smoke (if it’s to your taste), and even take a room next door at the Marriott Courtyard…
The wait at the Cherry Cricket was twenty minutes, shading into thirty, late that Saturday afternoon. “That’s a long time to wait for a burger,” Laura said. “How’s it look in there?” “Busy,” I told her. “It’s always busy.” And we sat down on the low wall in front of…
Denver is the cheeseburger capital of the nation: Burgertown, USA. Yes, there are other cities that harbor their own singular burger geniuses, sleepy small towns in which freakish wild talents have set themselves along the path of greatness. There’s Solly’s Grille in Wisconsin, which serves upwards of three or four…
You’d think that all sorts of things would go with beer — and you’d be right. But even the discerning beer connoisseur who swills Keystone Light recognizes that while a plethora of items and activities complement a brew, there’s still a right and a wrong way to consume the stuff…
As the Chipotle IPO took off last week at a near-record pace, I visited another Colorado born-and-bred chain. Good Times — which was founded in 1987, six years before the first Chipotle went up — is a drive-thru burger joint in a world crowded with competition. To date, there are…
This place reminds me of someplace else,” my friend says, leaning his chair back against the wall and tracing a finger along one of the cracks in the broken plaster. That wall — multi-colored painted plaster over crumbling brick, the brick exposed where the plaster has fallen away — looks…
Those crazy kids at Monkey Bean (see review) have a cadre of fans — and they know how to use them. During last year’s Best of Denver voting, the ballot-stuffing for Monkey Bean was so wicked it would have made Boss Tweed and those cats from Tammany Hall blush. The…
Popular, you’re gonna be popular! In Wicked, when the male lead asks, “So — what’s the most swankified place in town?,” good witch Galinda answers, “That would be the Ozdust Ballroom.” If the Broadway show were set in Denver, she definitely would have named Bar Luxe (goofily pronounced bar lukes…
In honor of a visit from someone who will soon fill the post of Italian Representative to the Institute of Drinking Studies — should he actually get hired here in Denver after more than one representative burst into his interview to make drinking plans for the coming weekend — we…
There was a time when Java Moon was hailed as the conquering hero of the Golden Triangle. It was a coffeehouse in a neighborhood that desperately needed one (you know, to balance out all the dive hotels and new lofts and pawnshops and galleries and whatnot), a coffeehouse that also…
Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away, there was a restaurant ruled by a king named Larry. Now, King Larry wasn’t an evil king. He wasn’t cruel or ruthless, as kings so often are. He didn’t abuse the peasantry of Hotcakesland, didn’t cut off peoples’…
After visiting Carmine’s on Penn (see review), I decided to check in with Carmine’s original owner, Larry Herz. I hadn’t talked to him since he announced he was closing his Go Fish Grille, at 250 Josephine Street (which had replaced his Indigo at the same address), and going to work…
One recent blustery night, suffering from my second cold of the season but feeling like I was coughing up bird feathers and had become the first North American victim of the bird-flu pandemic, I grabbed a few friends to test out this new proverb: “Drink a cold, feed a fever.”…
My New Year’s resolution is to be like U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo, only a little more conservative. I decided this after spending part of the holidays in Summit County with several million people from out-of-state who I doubt had ever sat in chairs, much less been schooled in skiing etiquette…
When I wrote my original review of 3 Sons (“Same Old, Same Old,” September 11, 2003), people called me an assassin. They called me a thug and an asshole and a brainless, potty-mouthed jerkoff who didn’t know nothin’ from nothin’. What I didn’t get was a single letter sympathizing with…
It’s not often that a fellow like myself — a dedicated carnivore, shameless bacon addict, fan of all things larded, bloody and fat-spackled — goes looking for health food. Ten cups of coffee a day, taken as preventative medicine against potential lifestyle complications like sleep; ice cream for breakfast, Cuban…
The problem wasn’t so much that we were drinking, but that neither of us had really stopped in a couple of days. When my little brother and I get together back home — as annually as we can manage — drinking is just what we do. It’s not to excess…
I believe Spanky’s Roadhouse (1800 East Evans Avenue) chose its name in hopes of generating buzz before patrons even crossed the threshold. Whenever anyone who was born at least twenty years ago hears the word “roadhouse,” he immediately thinks of the cheesy ’80s movie with Patrick Swayze and then almost…
Okay, so John Holly’s Asian Bistro in Lone Tree isn’t Super Star Asian (the incredible dim sum place at 2200 West Alameda) or the old Mee Yee Lin (another incredible dim sum place that became a merely passable dim sum place with great shu mai and incredible dumpling soup after…
Mama T is leaving. She’s moving to Cincinnati, where her husband is working a factory job now, where there’s another apartment waiting, another community expecting her. She’s going with her son Rafael, and she’s taking her pots and pans. She’s taking her living-room set with the white lace doilies. She’s…
Drink of the week? We were looking for the drink of the season, and it wasn’t going down all that well. Twenty-eight restaurants had signed up for the Denver Convention & Visitors Bureau’s first Mile High Libations contest — that added up to 31 drinks, each bearing a Mile-High friendly…
I consider it one of the great fortunes of my life that, for as long as I have been my own man, I have never had a normal year — one that could be anticipated, seen through end to end, navigated on an even keel. All of my years have…
