Kevin Taylor has a challenge on his hands: filling one of the most gorgeous, but difficult, restaurant spaces in town. When Taylor first took on the elegant old 17th Street bank lobby back in 1997, he turned it into Brasserie Z, an upscale French bistro that served Mediterranean-inspired New American…
Q: Where should we go to eat for Chinese New Year? A: Chinese restaurants usually go all out for the New Year, often offering a prix fixe meal or special dishes, so it’s a good idea to make your reservations now for this year’s February 12 celebration. Besides Akebono, my…
More open-and-shut cases: For every restaurant that closes, another one is born. Belly-up is Fins Fish House (550 Broadway), which floundered for a while before its death notice was finally posted on the front door last month, declaring the place closed for non-payment of taxes. This fall, Fins owner Anthony…
Thank heavens we’ve almost shed the Year of the Snake. As in most cultures, Chinese lore rarely regards snakes as a good sign. In China, the snake represents cunning and evil, which pretty much sums up our 2001 (or the Chinese year 4698). On February 12, the year 4699 begins,…
Q: I’m trying to find out about the new restaurant in Boulder owned by the chef who started out at Citrus. A: That chef is Seamus Feeley, who now owns Mateo (1837 Pearl Street, Boulder, 303-443-7766) with partners Matthew Jansen and Brett Zimmerman. At Mateo, Feeley offers the French provincial…
When I moved to Denver nine years ago, I didn’t realize that there were regional variations to green chile, much less recognize all of their nuances. The sophisticated interplay of heat and flavor found in the New Mexican chile served at Jack-n-Grill, for example, would have been lost on me…
What do a salesman from Texas, John Elway and a pot of New Mexican green chile have in common? They were all instrumental in convincing Jack Martinez to turn a little chile shop on Federal Boulevard into his own New Mexican eatery, Jack-n-Grill. “I was supplementing my income by selling…
Eat a bloody steak or couple with a cowboy: Those are the two things that suddenly seem eminently appealing every January when the National Western Stock Show rides into town. I’m otherwise involved in a relationship, though, so a bloody steak it was, and I started looking around for where…
Q: Where can I find Scandinavian food? A: Head for the hills, to the Tivoli Deer in Kittredge (26300 Hilltop Drive, also known as Highway 74), a charming, romantic place to eat the foods of Denmark, Norway and Sweden while sitting under the heads of formerly very live deer. The…
Meating a need: After a recent trip to New York, Mayor Wellington Webb came down with a bad case of the corned-beef blues — the inevitable result of eating big, fat sandwiches filled with the good stuff in NYC and then returning to the vast deli wasteland that is Denver…
Q. Where do you go for good, inexpensive, red-sauce Italian? You know, the kind of place where Frank Sinatra would eat if he visited Denver. A. Even dead — okay, especially dead — Ol’ Blue Eyes would cause quite a stir if he walked into an eatery around here. Should…
Residents of the West University neighborhood took a hit a few weeks ago when Judge Anthony Vollack ruled that their beef with a proposed Hamburger Stand at the corner of South Franklin Street and East Evans Avenue wasn’t grounded (“Food Fight,” May 4, 2001). “The judge just didn’t get it,”…
Thai cooking celebrates freshness, flavors, textures and colors, and nowhere is this more evident than in the street food of Thailand. Eating on the street is so popular in that country — for natives and tourists alike — that entire guidebooks are devoted to the possibilities (Thai Hawker Food, It…
Q: I have a friend visiting from Iowa who just came back from Budapest. Her hometown has no Hungarian restaurants. Are there any in Denver? A: Finally ‹ proof that Denver is culinarily superior to a small town in Iowa. The Budapest Bistro (1585 South Pearl Street, 303-744-2520) is a…
The Colorado Restaurant Association is predicting that the state’s diners will spend $20 million per day in restaurants in 2002 — but that money won’t help the eateries that couldn’t make it past December 31. Several of the closures were no surprise. Exhibit A: Tasteez (9595 East Arapahoe Road, Englewood),…
What’s in a name? Plenty, as the owners of the Havana Diner quickly discovered. “People who came here regularly were getting to know us well enough that they’d just tell other people, ‘Hey, we’re going over to Kathy and Bill’s,'” says Kathy Frangiskakis. “The problem was, we weren’t listed as…
Q: I’d like to start off the new year by supporting small mom-and-pop eateries. Can you recommend some in a variety of ethnic types? A: Denver’s lucky to have so many mom-and-pop ethnic places to choose from. For good, family-oriented Mexican, try Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe (2005 West 33rd Avenue,…
Both the owners and employees of Tiramisu (see review above) could use a copy of The Main Course on Table Service, the new book by veteran server David Rothschild, who co-owns the Phoenix-based EATiQuette waitstaff-training and dining-etiquette company. In fact, at $19.95 a copy, The Main Course wouldn’t be a…
The term “tirami su” is Italian for “pick-me-up,” an apt label for a confection filled with enough sugar, chocolate, espresso and liqueur to elevate the blood sugar of a dead person. A relatively recent creation, tiramisu (sometimes seen as one word, sometimes as two, and sometimes with an accent over…
At this time last year, I was lamenting Denver’s lack of great restaurants, as well as its excess of lousy service. Well, the service hasn’t improved much, but several wonderful eateries opened in 2001, and many other eateries got better, so picking my annual dream meal was a little tougher…
When Napoleon said, “An army marches on its stomach,” he was referring to the soldiers who did the actual fighting — not the sympathetic sublimations of folks sitting on their sofas watching it all unfold via videotape. This nation is at war, all right, and if we keep eating the…
Q: Do you have any suggestions for good restaurants that large groups (ten to thirty people) can go to for breakfast, lunch and dinner? A: Big parties can be a big strain on eateries ‹ and if you’ve ever tried sending out thirty perfectly timed dinners while simultaneously preparing, oh,…
