Like Denver as a food city, Sixth Avenue as a restaurant neighborhood always seems on the edge of becoming the next big thing. Its progression can be tracked the way die-hard fans follow a perpetually losing ball club — watching through the seasons as the roster is brought up and…
“You’ve got to try Fernet-Branca; it’s my new favorite drink,” said Ryan O’Brien, the knowledgeable, solicitous and darling bartender at Barolo Grill. “I’ve heard Sean Penn orders it by the case.” When my medical doctor prescribes drugs, I take them. So when my drink doctor gave his prescription, I drank…
We here at the Institute of Drinking Studies are always looking for new watering holes to grace with our presence, our stunted sense of “humor” and the inevitable sexual advances of certain members whom I would not trust alone in a room with Sister Inviolata of the Painfully Chaste. Since…
I never thought Mirepoix would make it. I didn’t believe that Bryan Moscatello and crew could squeeze Adega’s smart, beautiful cuisine into a JW Marriott corporate template; I kept seeing all that lovely food dying under the domes of room-service trays. And the fact that they were trading on the…
This time last year, there was a lot of talk about the big man, Bryan Moscatello, and the guys from Adega Restaurant + Wine Bar (1700 Wynkoop Street) trying to clone their phenomenal success at, first, Table 6 (in the former home of the Beehive, at 609 Corona Street), and…
Joey Buttafuoco. I can’t get my car serviced without thinking about Joey Buttafuoco, so you can imagine that going to a bar with “Garage” in its name was not high on my to-do list. Happily, a less mechanically inclined drinking companion convinced me to try the new Bannock Street Garage,…
Things just aren’t the same anymore. I think it’s the fault of the Democrats. Or maybe the Republicans, the Catholic Church, the Air Force Academy, carbs, your parents, fraternities and football (but not any members of frats or football teams, much less the coaches, athletic-department heads, regents or university presidents…
Phil Collier, owner and executive chef of A La Tomate Cafe and Tarterie, is a nervous sort of fella. I can see him in the kitchen — a big space for such a small place, full of tall bakery racks, new ovens, antique slicers with exposed motors, bright stainless steel…
Sometimes when I have a bad day, I console myself by thinking about sandwiches. Not about eating them — although I do dearly love a good sammich — but making them. It’s an obsession, something just short of a religion. I think of sandwich-as-spiritual-object the way a Mexican Catholic might…
I don’t know which brilliant person figured out that if you add a full bar to the upper deck at a sports facility and call it “the club level,” you can charge people more money for seats on that level than they would pay to sit right next to the…
Turning thirty is a mother. All of a sudden your body is falling apart before your eyes; if things continue to progress at this pace, you’ll be in a nursing home within five years. For women, gravity gets stronger, and things start to droop. Although science tells us that body…
Wild-mushroom-and-Fontina grilled cheese. Frittatas; toasted-oat pancakes that taste like giant oatmeal raisin cookies laced with wispy vanilla; seared tuna in a soy-ginger glaze. Eggs Benedict made with poached eggs wrapped in smoky Nova lox and topped with crème fraîche, and a breakfast pizza assembled from scrambled eggs, beef tenderloin, sprigged…
It was early in my tenure here — and in Littleton, of all places, while visiting Opus Restaurant, at 2575 West Main Street — that my passions for the true New American cuisine were first revealed (“This Note’s for You,” November 7, 2002). It was one dish that set me…
Yeah, baby, yeah! Maybe it’s because I grew up in a house where there was always some groovy Burt Bacharach hit on the record player, but I love anything from the ’60s. So when I walked into Harry’s Bar at the Magnolia Hotel, I fell instantly in love. This place…
“C’mon, let’s go to Willie’s! It’s Stripper Tuesday!” “Uh, dude, it’s Wednesday.” “Whatever.” Even as the Head of Drinking Regrets and I were having this conversation, other members of the Institute of Drinking Studies were well into their research, having gotten a call earlier from the Head of Sleeper Drunks…
Once is an event, twice is a coincidence, but three times? Three times is the beginning of an addiction, and for the Bush administration, Heaven Dragon Chinese Cuisine and Lounge is starting to look like an unhealthy habit. It was back in 2002 that President George W. Bush got his…
Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.” Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said that, and I believe it. What a person eats says volumes about his personality; his choice in food speaks with a clear voice straight from the heart and gut. And that’s why I…
My first cocktail-waitress job was at the Bull & Bush, and even back in the day, I knew the Bull was a special place. A Cheers-like place, full of womanizers like Sam Malone, lovable losers like Norm, annoying know-it-alls like Cliff, and at least one wiseass young cocktail waitress like…
I recently went to the happiest place on Earth — and no, I don’t mean Disneyland, which calls itself “The Happiest Place on Earth” because it has bathrooms cleaner than yours will ever be and employees who are happier than you’ll ever be. True, I have extremely fond memories of…
One of the best Vietnamese restaurants in the country, Dac Hoa, is in Rochester, New York. It’s a small, Barton Fink-ish place, with a perpetual pall of dishwater gray light, rickety tables and peeling everything in a borderline-creepy neighborhood. Still, most people who eat there have no idea how good…
Recounting the history behind Chez Thuy’s exquisite cuisine (see page 61), I was reminded of this episode: During the siege of the French at Dien Bien Phu by the Viet Minh, one of the last cargo drops recorded before the base was overrun included, in addition to the usual ammunition…
I have a terrible weakness for young, handsome, cocky bartenders. Young and handsome alone don’t do it, but add a little arrogance and I’m a goner. So when our young, handsome bartender said “Tsingtao is a Chinese beer, you moron, and we only have Japanese beers,” I knew I was…
