When I reviewed Frisco’s in April 2005, I was impressed by a couple of things. For starters, the crew’s resumés included some big-time names (Batali, Bastianich, Le Bernardin and Capital Grille) that seemed totally out of place on the still-virginal landscape of Belmar. And then there was the concept: a…
Why in the hell would you eat that?” I get asked that a lot. Most often by my wife. “No, I mean seriously, Jay. Whole fish and sea bugs and chicken ass — why?” Because they’re good, I tell her (or anyone else who corners me with The Question). But…
Back in December 2003, when I reviewed Thai Basil II in this same location, it was a little like falling in love. There was that first blush of excitement over finding something new, the desire to explore everything it had to offer, and the absolute conviction that it could do…
Dinner at Mel’s on Monday night for Gael Greene (see “Sex and the City”) and about fifty of her dearest admirers. Was it a good time? Tough to say. For starters, the median age in the room (not counting press) was ancient, and most of the diners were rushing the…
Some of the best meals I’ve had — the most surprising, often the most memorable — have come on nights when the last thing in the world I wanted to do was eat out; nights when I just wanted to sit in front of the TV in boxer shorts and…
While Guadalajara (see review, page 47) captures the authentic flavors of Mexico’s southern latitudes, Santiago’s has a mortal lock on quick-and-cheap Mexican street food. The local chain (it started decades ago with just one outlet and now boasts more than twenty locations scattered across the metro area, with satellites as…
At the table behind me, two girls are talking about Jesus. In front of me is a plate of chicken-fried steak that could send me to meet him real soon. It’s the third chicken-fried steak I’ve eaten in less than 24 hours. I have the meat sweats. My heart is…
Emerald Isle Restaurant 4385 South Parker Road, Aurora 303-690-3722 Talking to Genessee Elinoff, owner of Rosie’s Diner (see review, page 54), I learned that Denver’s connection with diners dates back to 1888, when one of the first diners ever built — a simple lunch wagon, made for feeding mine workers…
Laura staggers as we step through the double doors and into the Royal Peacock. She doesn’t swoon, exactly, but there’s not much in this world that can make her swoon. She misses her footing a little, and then a huge smile spreads across her face, and her eyes go wide…
From the outside, there’s not much to distinguish Namaste from the antique shops, sports-memorabilia stores and physical therapists’ offices that share this Lakewood strip mall. And inside, it’s just a room: tables, chairs, double-thick tablecloths, a grinning Buddha by the door, and waiters who seem surprisingly overdressed for the suburbs…
Thirty-two steps is all it takes to get from Vietnam to Italy, Saigon to Rome, New Orient to Viaggio Italian Trattoria. Thirty-two steps if you’ve got legs like mine, probably fewer if you’re in a hurry. And if it’s raining, you won’t even get wet. Strip-mall dining is one of…
Caribbean Cuisine is the quintessential strip-mall restaurant. It’s small, cheap, slightly alien, clean, well-run and — since its recent relocation from an invisible flank position at a big strip mall at 15445 East Iliff Avenue to a much more obvious (and larger) spot down the street at 17200 East Iliff…
No matter how good a server is, it’s tough to move the chef’s yak special. “I have two specials to tell you about tonight,” our waitress said, smiling, struggling to make eye contact as Barry — my go-to steakhouse guy — and I pored over the newsprint menu, looking for…
Every time I go to New York, I find myself liking it less and less. It’s not the people, the noise, the size — all that stuff used to bug me, but not so much anymore. Now, after six years and change spent west of the Mississippi, what bothers me…
The first time I went to Domo, I parked on the wrong side of the building, and I remember the annoying sound of my boots crunching on the gravel parking lot. Gravel anything — parking lots, roads, driveways — speaks to me of poverty, of not being able to afford…
Mori is an unusual place. For starters, it’s housed in an old VFW post that’s done double-duty as a Japanese restaurant since 1948. But the building dates further back than that, to the 1890s, when it was a brothel (and a fairly popular one, from what I understand). Today, depending…
At Emogene Patisserie et Cafe, it was the bakery cases that hooked me — a glossy, sluttish, sugar-coated come-on speaking straight to my baser instincts and addictive personality. Biscotti and miniature cheesecakes, chocolate muffins glazed in shiny black icing, airy cream puffs, dense meringues and thick slices of almond cake…
My sugar-fueled romps through Emogene Patisserie et Cafe (see review) put me in mind of another place in the neighborhood, a longtime bastion of the patissier’s and chocolatier’s art. Andre’s Confiserie Suisse crouches on a corner outside of the standard Creeker territory, so it has a bit of that “hidden…
The first time I went to Istanbul Grill was about a week after John Lehndorff reviewed the place for the Rocky Mountain News. There were big photocopies of his review on the counter, a whole stack, and the servers were handing them to anyone who asked and almost anyone who…
For twenty years, House of Kabob has been jammed into this strip mall on Colorado Boulevard, tangled up with other Middle Eastern markets and restaurants. That’s twenty years of Persian cuisine, twenty years of kabobs and lamb tongue and herbed yogurt and pita. And while the room — done in…
I have now been to 250 Josephine Street more times than I can count. The address was predestined to fascinate me. As Papillon, it was ground zero (one of the ground zeros, at least) for Denver at its height of pre-millennium excess: a jumping-and-jiving bastion of high-tone, big-money weirdness with…
Gene Tang has always had a beautiful place at 1515. The Victorian storefront wears its age well, handling crowds with a kind of shotgun feng shui — moving people back and forth through the long room, around the well-spaced tables and banquettes. The upstairs dining room is elegant, the dimly…
