‘Tis the most wonderful time of the year, Denver. During the stretch of days between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, it’s totally socially appropriate to stay out too late on a school night, drink too much and show up to work griping about your subsequent hangover. Okay, maybe not totally socially…
A year after he started running the bar at Boulder’s Salt, Evan Faber sat down with the restaurant’s owner, Bradford Heap, and divulged a dream. “I told him, ‘One thing I would like to do is open a distillery,'” Faber says. To his surprise, Heap, who also owns Bradford Heap…
Happy Repeal Day, Denver. In celebration of the day in 1933 when United States citizens could finally booze legally again, you might consider raising a pre-Prohibition era cocktail — like a dry Martini, made with equal parts gin and vermouth, or a bittered sling (the old-fashioned Old Fashioned) — to…
Six years ago, Seattle-born brothers Tommy and Tim Thwaites borrowed some money from their parents to launch Coda Coffee, a metro Denver roaster that drew on the their combined three decades of experience in the industry. A year or two into their venture, the brothers started focusing more on the…
With more snow and cold temperatures in the forecast for the weekend and beyond, we’re not really feeling ice cold drinks right this second. And that gives us a good excuse to check out the hot drinks that have popped up on menus around town. Here are a handful of…
Just a month ago Jonathan Gold — Pulitzer Prize-winning critic at Westword’s sister paper, LA Weekly — heaped praise on Steve Ells, founder and CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill, the company that got its start at a burrito shop on East Evans Avenue and exploded into a giant international company…
Utumporn Killoran took the recipes that had won her so many fans at her popular cart on the 16th Street Mall and opened Thai Street Food Restaurant, a real restaurant (but only on Saturday…the rest of the time, the place is her commissary kitchen). For this week’s review, I ate…
For six years, Utumporn Killoran has been peddling Thai curries from a cart on the 16th Street Mall. And her recipes, culled from her native Isaan Province in Thailand, have gained her such committed fans that they’re willing to wait in line for an hour just to wolf down her…
I’d been following the group of six recent college grads since they’d first walked into Thai Street Food Restaurant, talking about how they wanted to fuel up for a night of drinking. I’d tried to distract myself by studying the watercolor paintings crammed onto one wall and the gilded tapestry…
At Le Grand Bistro and Oyster Bar, Robert Thompson’s new French restaurant near the convention center and the subject of my review this week, the bar was the place to be. That dark wooden counter was my favorite place to match fat sausages to Alsatian Riesing, oysters to Muscadet, or…
Restaurateur Robert Thompson made his name in this town with Brasserie Rouge, a much-lauded, now-defunct French restaurant in the IceHouse that won our Best New Restaurant Award, then closed not long after. Thompson left town for a while, then made a strong comeback with Argyll, a basement gastropub in Cherry…
Since Drew Shader took over the Atomic Cowboy in 2004, it’s evolved — with the help of his wife, Ashleigh — into five different concepts. The bar is front and center, but it houses two restaurants — Denver Biscuit Company and Fat Sully’s — and serves as the commissary kitchen…
Bryan Dayton, owner of Boulder’s Oak at Fourteenth (which is under construction after a fire there this spring), flew to Vegas this fall and outdid dozens of mixologists from around the country to bring home a big first prize: He was named GQ Bombay Sapphire’s most inspired bartender in the…
So I’ll be in town for the weekend,” Jeff told me. “Pick a restaurant.” It should have been a simple task — there are dozens of joints in this town that would work well for a collegial catch-up — but Jeff is one of my oldest friends. And though food…
Rob and I had been talking about Wild Catch since it opened this summer, our anticipation building with every friend we ran into who raved about the place. “The food’s damn near perfect,” one promised. “Best restaurant in Denver right now,” said another. We were waiting. Or, more specifically, I…
When Peter Roper was a program manager in the environmental center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, he spent a lot time working on bikes. “He developed a lot of amazing programs up there related to bicycles,” explains Jessica Caouette, his business partner and lifelong friend. “He created the bike…
Over the last few months, I went from the worst shape of my life to the best while continuing to eat like a food critic. Don’t punch me in the face; instead, read how I did it in part six of this series: Three weeks into Bonza Bodies and the…
When Crema Coffee House opened on Larimer Street a couple of years ago, it quickly became one of my favorite spots in the city for coffee. My love affair started at a Noble Swine Supper Club event when owner Noah Price poured me one of the best cups of French…
A few hundred years ago, while sugar traders from Britain and the American colonies were distilling their molasses into fiery rum, a very different tradition was unfolding on the French islands in the Caribbean. The French produced their own sugar in Europe, and so had no need to refine it…
Highland Tap and Burger caters to a lot of different neighborhood groups, but owner Katie O’Shea has made a point of frequently hosting a large group of women in her restaurant who have one thing in common: a love for beer. At those gatherings of the Craft Ladies’ Beer Club,…
Details were sparse when we heard Mile High Spirits was going into a space on 29th and Larimer Streets — we knew the new distillery would be making vodka, and we knew it was tentatively slated to open in January. Owner Joe Vonfeldt confirms that January is still looking good…
When Mitch Abate, Matt Causey and Andy Causey opened Downslope Distilling three years ago, they didn’t just start working on the variety of vodkas, rums and whiskeys that comprise their regular line. Almost as soon as they got their license, they set up a one-off and also put together a…
