Highlights and lowlights from the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen

By the time the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen ended yesterday afternoon, I’d already seen a whole posse of amateurs puke; another man suffer a seizure just after chef Michael Symor ended a fantastic cooking demo devoted to pork belly; Top Chef winner Hosea Rosenberg locking arms with knifed…

The Market Report, June 20

Since I found myself in Littleton Friday night, I decided to substitute a trip to the Southwest Plaza’s farmers’ market, at Wadsworth and Bowles, for my regular Saturday morning visit to the Boulder Farmer’s Market. Big mistake.If you bill yourself as a farmers’ market, more than 25 percent of the…

Get your red-hot Biker Jim wieners in two locations

Biker Jim Pittenger, whose Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs won our Best Cart on the 16th Street Mall in the Best of Denver 2009, now has a second location — off the mall.Three days a week, he (or one of his minions) will now be on the plaza at 17th and…

And the answer is…Bistro Vendome

Oops. Just posted this week’s Ask the Critic question, and already we have an answer (and a correction). Turns out that Bistro Vendome does, in fact, have exactly what Jim is looking for.  Right there on the brunch menu, between the soup a l’oignon and the croissants, there’s a breakfast…

Ask the Critic: Where’s the town’s best Continental breakfast?

The last couple of weeks, our regular Ask the Critic time-waster has been concerned with moms and dads and holidays and other assorted domestic questions.  This week, we’re getting back to the core mission of our Monday-morning discussion with an actual question by a reader. Jim writes: I spent 9…

Third Way finds another way to host fundraiser

For the past five years, the Third Way Center benefited from a major wine-tasting/fundraiser wine-tasting fundraiser in LoDo. But the event, scheduled for tonight, “was cancelled rather abruptly a week ago by the host/venue, leaving Third Way Center high and dry,” according to Tami Lack, Third Way’s director of administration…

Milking It: Mighty Bites HoneyCrunch

Mighty Bites HoneyCrunch Kashi Rating: One-and-a-half spoons out of four Cereal description: Lots of different grains in this stuff: oat, wheat, corn, rice, rye, barley — pretty much everything included in the grain page on Wikipedia other than millet (which is just as well, since I don’t know what the…

Tonight: Rare Slovenian wines at Table 6, bourbon at the West End Tavern

At 6:30 p.m. tonight, Table 6, 609 Corona Street, welcomes Slovenian winemaker Aleks Simcic and master sommelier Laura Williamson for a four-course dinner paired with the rare wines of Edi Sincic from Goriska Brda. Not impressed? Ray Isle, Food & Wine magazine’s wine editor, called these wines the “darlings of…

Party animals at Do at the Zoo

The Denver Zoo hosted its twentieth annual Do at the Zoo last night, and Denver’s party animals were out in force, sampling tidbits from dozens of restaurants and getting wild! See for yourself on our slideshow…

Cafe Society: Week in review

You didn’t miss all this good stuff, did you?  No problem, we’ve rounded up the best of the Cafe Society week for you below.Hot dog eating champs battled it out in a Denver qualifier for the big 4th of July competition in Coney Island.  Jason Sheehan sought your opinion on…

The List: Neighborhood bars for every taste

This week, I talked about Dougherty’s — a fantastic neighborhood bar that’s perfect for getting into all kinds of lightweight trouble, which just happens to have a very decent restaurant attached and a chef in the back who knows his way around the cuisine of the whiskey-sodden Micks.I followed that…

Update: Pad Thai on the go …

Yesterday, I got a very nice note from loyal reader Jason Marsell, hipping me to some killer street food in one of the most unlikely of places.Pad Thai on the 16th Street Mall.I was both intrigued and highly skeptical — my first blush of overwhelming enthusiasm giving way to some…

Toke of the town: Mary Jane’s Pizza

Could be a fight to the finish to see which storefront pizza joint opens first: Denver Pizza Company — whose owner, Mark Huebner, can focus on finishing his Golden Triangle spot now that he’s been booted off The Bachelorette — or Mary Jane’s Pizza. Mary Jane’s is located at 2013…

First report from the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen

See more photos at westword.com/slideshow.As expected, the first night of the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen was a culinary red carpet of celebrity chefs and the giggling, starstruck fans who couldn’t stop pawing them. And then there were the blowout parties, like the charity event hosted by Mario Batali,…

Huebner off the Bachelorette, back on pizza

We’ve spent a lot more time looking at the home of the new Denver Pizza Company — a few blocks away from the Westword office at 309 West 11th Avenue — than we have watching The Bachelorette, even though one of the swains vying for Jillian Harris was from Denver:…

Barbecue this weekend in Frisco, at Randolph’s

Head to the hills of Frisco this weekend for the mountain town’s annual two-day Barbecue Challenge, a heated event that brings together competitive grillers from across the country. The riotous pig races are always a big draw, as is the pancake breakfast, live music and parade of barbecue grills, barrels…

Pad Thai on the go…

This just in from observant reader Jason Marsell: There’s a somewhat new cart on the 16th Street Mall (at Stout) that’s a one-woman Thai food operation, and it’s fantastic. I consider myself a Thai food fanatic and her pad thai gai is some of the best in town. I know,…

Prickly Pete’s opens on Leetsdale

Prickly Pete’s, which bills itself as Denver’s “newest outdoor sports bar,” opened June 16 at 5151 Leetsdale Drive, in the space formerly occupied by Oli’s Café. And what is an outdoor sports bar? The main qualifier appears to be a massive patio that seats about a hundred people. That patio…

Candy Girls: Lees’ Jaffa Bar

It was only a matter of time before the pull of Tony’s Market and its selection of imported candies drew us in. We spied the bright blue bar from a checkout lane and snagged the dense treat as an impulse buy.The wrapper told us the Jaffa Bar is from Scotland…

Drug bust outside Elway’s — and it wasn’t botox

At Elway’s, the usual drug of choice is botox. But on June 1, it was ecstasy. That’s the night that Marcus Long took his girlfriend to dinner at the Cherry Creek restaurant. Meanwhile, out in the parking lot, Jamie Medina was allegedly selling ecstasy out of Long’s car — to…

Gluttony, debauchery and, yes, chefs: Food & Wine Classic in Aspen

Today marks the beginning of the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, a three-day food orgy and wine romp that lures all sorts of grape stompers and rock-star chefs — you know, big names like Mario Batali, Jacques and Claudine Pépin, Ming Tsai, Nancy Silverton, José Andrés, Bobby Flay, Michel…

Tonight: Barbecue, beasts and biodynamic wines

Devil’s Food Bakery, the bake shop and java joint at 1020 South Gaylord Street, is welcoming Denver-based food stylist and cookbook designer Erica McNeish from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. tonight for a down-home dinner featuring barbecue, sandwiches, grilled sweet corn, Southern-style salads (many of which are vegetarian), cobblers and…