Highland Tap serves bar food that tastes much better than bar food

Over the past few years, the booming burger business has included everything from new joints trying to re-create the classic burger to restaurants so redesigning the burger that it’s sometimes no longer recognizable, as at Crave Real Burgers. And then there are the spots that fall somewhere in the middle,…

Crave Real Burgers in Castle Rock meats expectations

The first time a plate was set before me at Crave Real Burgers, I nearly choked. I was sitting at the brightly lit bar that faces the open kitchen, surrounded by the din of a busy dinner service and sucking down a mint chocolate chip milkshake. But when I got…

Shazz is closed until the end of August…at least

Over the weekend we heard that Shazz was dark, so we stopped by the new American restaurant that Benny Kaplan opened almost three years ago in northwest Denver to get more details. The restaurant was certainly quiet, and the lack of activity will continue for at least a few more…

Super Mini Walnut Cafe will open next week in Lafayette

Earlier this year, Julia Buonanno and Dana Derichsweiler, the owners of Boulder’s Walnut Cafe and South Side Walnut Cafe, put the brakes on the food truck they ran with Ashlie Beckham, but that didn’t stop them from moving full speed ahead on a project they have going in Lafayette: The…

Review: Awolnation at Summit Music Hall, 8/18/2011

AWOLNATION at SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | 8/18/11If you were at the Awolnation show last night and you didn’t have fun, you are dead inside. The band played in shorts, for fuck’s sake. Shorts pretty much always mean fun. The band brought its A game from song one — opening with…

Denver’s five best Indian restaurants

We’re equal opportunity in our love for Indian food, favoring specialties from both the north and the south, and marveling at the way chefs from all over the country blend spices into complexly layered stews. And here in Denver, we’re always on the hunt for spots that stand out from…

Maker’s Mark COO Rob Samuels talks history and Maker’s 46

If you look at a bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon, you’ll note that the company spells the word “whisky” without the “e.” That’s a tribute to the history that the Samuels family, who founded Maker’s in the 1950s, has with distilling. Rob Samuels says his ancestors were making Scotch in…

Food porn: Jai Ho

This week’s review took me to Jai Ho, a restaurant in Aurora that succeeded in its goal of filling a particular gap in Denver’s Indian food options. The spot offers many southern Indian specialties, all of which are fantastic — which is a good thing, since the menu doesn’t offer…

Cheese heads, rejoice: Cured opens Saturday in Boulder

Enamored of the daily trips they made to small-town markets while living in Europe, Will Frischkorn and Coral Ferguson, who are engaged, decided to bring an element of that shopping experience home with them to Boulder. So earlier this year, the couple picked up a space on the east end…

Bobby Flay also blames Chipotle for Soul Daddy’s demise

Jamawn Woods isn’t the only one blaming Denver-based Chipotle for the spectacular failure of his three Soul Daddy restaurants, which closed just weeks after the Detroit resident landed the grand prize on reality-TV show America’s Next Great Restaurant. Steve Ells’s fellow panelist and investor, Bobby Flay, is also pointing the…

At Masalaa, it’s okay to fill up on the bread

At Masalaa, man could almost live on bread alone. About half of the dishes at this vegetarian restaurant feature some sort of bready base — a pancake or a biscuit — and those are among my favorites. Ravi Kumar and Ehmad Ansari, two strict vegetarians, opened this restaurant in an…

Eat Their Words: Jai Ho’s food lives up to its colorful menu

The Jai Ho menu features some of the most useless — and hilarious — dish descriptions I’ve ever seen. “One of our signature dishes — many different stories for how the name came about, but who cares, we just eat it!!” sums up Chicken 65. JaiHo Spl Karaikudi Mutton is…

Second Helping: Pho Fusion

There is no greater pleasure in life than seeking out new spots and trying anything and everything that the kitchen puts in front of me. But there are also times when I want something cheap and quick — something that I don’t have to think about too much. And since…

New Belgium Spoke plans a fall opening at DIA

Months ago, we got wind that another New Belgium-themed outlet would soon take flight at DIA, picking up a spot on Concourse A that would be a sibling of the New Belgium Hub that serves beer and burgers in the hinterlands of Concourse B…