It was the steak knives at the Capital Grille that really got to me. They were beautiful, utilitarian works of art with gleaming, sharp blades laser-etched with the restaurant’s logo near the forte, perfect balance, full-tang handles and black grips cold-riveted with bright steel. On the table, they had the…
It was getting on toward late, but I was still sitting at Cielo, sprawled in a soft, comfortable, sky-blue chair across from the fireplace in the vaulted dining room, closed in by cloud-white walls, the arched black ceiling above me like starless midnight. There had been four of us for…
Imagine that you’re a restaurateur who’s just been handed a million dollars. A little more than that, actually, but for the sake of nice, round numbers, I’ll call it a million. You’ve got a big, fat check in your hand, ink still wet on all those zeros. What do you…
Matt checked the steel-bodied German dive watch clipped through the top buttonhole of his chef’s jacket. “Eleven minutes,” he said. “Total?” I asked, turning to make a bare-handed grab out of the salamander, the count “one-one-thousand-two” in my head as I set a searing hot platter on the stovetop rail…
I’d been eating out with Glen again, which is almost never a good idea, and I think I felt the building housing Sonoda’s shudder with relief when the two of us finally showed the front door our backs. Although the servers had never rushed us, had never been anything other…
When Jim Ilg and his crew were renovating the space that would become Java Moon, they found a safe sealed up inside one of the walls. It’s big — all black iron and tarnished silver with a swollen head mounted over a heavy, footed pedestal that makes it look like…
New York-style pizza is a tricky thing. In the places where it’s done properly — on the island of Manhattan, in one of the boroughs or, with rapidly declining rightness, in any of the cities that make up the outer estates of the Pizza Kingdom — it’s not even called…
We stood in front of Sherpa’s Adventurers Restaurant, Laura and I, like Hansel and Gretel before the gingerbread house, peering through the dusty windows, looking for some sign of life in the dim interior. What tables we could see were set with wineglasses, white cloths and crimson napkins stiffly folded…
No, no…Jason, you gotta listen. This place, it’s going to be great! We’ve got a chef coming in from Suriname. I don’t even know where that is, and the guy doesn’t speak a word of English, but he makes this yak-butter soup you won’t believe!” I get calls like that…
No doubt about it: I have the best job in the world. Make that one of the best jobs in the world, because there are other good careers out there, and I don’t want to step on any toes. International playboy, for a start. Professional coffee taster. Sole heir to…
He’s just a kid, maybe ten years old, with very new white sneakers that don’t quite reach the floor and martinet parents like something out of Dickens or the grayer volumes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Society types with ramrod postures and delicate, picky little hands. They’re older, but definitely not…
Max Burgerworks should have been a great restaurant. Like a privileged kid saddled with a goofy name (and not even a truly awful one like Hubertus, Melvin or Agamemnon, but one only slightly unfortunate) or a Montessori rugrat born with every advantage, it had the potential for doing wonderful things,…
If I had an unlimited budget, enough pull to get the best guys in town away from their kitchens (or their families) for one night, and room enough at home for all of you good readers, I’d treat you to one great holiday meal. A classy cocktail soiree, dimly lit…
I walk into the Cherry Creek Grill, and it just feels right. From the outside, from the inside, from the heavy front doors to the exhibition line in the back, everything about this restaurant oozes comfort. The smell of smoke from the wood-fired rotisserie oven catches me in the chest,…
It was the Christmas lights that messed me up. The tiny glass ornaments lit from within. The tinsel. The light-up motorized reindeer standing beneath the abbreviated spiral leading up to the rotunda — unused these days except under special circumstances, dark, the chairs all stacked and set aside. The decorations…
I know how Thai food tastes when eaten with the fingers in the back seat of a Toyota Celica parked facing the wrong way down a one-way alley, windows up, lights out, the air thick with stale pot smoke. I know the smell of it — full and exotic –…
We were saying our goodbyes. Laura was inside with her mother, doing the last-minute traveler’s waltz of checking tickets and departure times, making sure everyone had their jackets, collecting books that had been shoved up on shelves, fussing with the cats — doing any and every little thing that could…
You know one thing that bugs me about the French? Their cigarettes. Gitanes, in particular. Their boxes are too big; they burn funny; and they taste like a pile of burning hair. But the Frogs love ’em and are absolutely convinced that Gitanes are the best smokes on earth. Know…
By the third time I’d driven past the construction site, the workers were getting suspicious. The fourth time, they waved. I was beginning to wonder if mocking motorists was their job, if the building site at First and Josephine was really some sort of day-vacation spot for burned-out roughers and…
There’s a colossal amount of stuff I don’t know. Seriously. A lot. And I’m not talking about the specialized, esoteric knowledge that only a few specialized, esoteric people possess. I’m not talking about being able to translate dead languages, suss out the weight of distant stars, or speak at length…
The original Brewery Bar closed right around the time I was born. What information I have about its glory days comes mainly from historical documents, Web archives and the spotty memories of its habitués. It was a beer-soaked neighborhood watering hole that took up residence in the old Tivoli brewery…
Here’s some advice for all the aspiring chefs in the crowd. Want a cinch gig in the kitchen? Go to Switzerland, the home of fondue-style cooking. If there’s an easier path to cash for a chef than setting up a fondue joint, I haven’t heard of it. That’s because no…
