Earlier this morning, hundreds of chefs, restaurateurs, journalists and restaurant-industry groupies were eyeballing their computer screens and mobile phones, anxiously awaiting the news, which was live-streamed from the Publican in Chicago, announcing who would make it through to the James Beard Foundation’s finalists round, the nominees of which included seven…
Given Denver’s increasing proliferation of beef burger joints, it’s a welcome change to find an alternative, in this case a salmon burger that was as juicy as the gossip going on at the table behind me. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct…
Find of the week at Safeway: Jolly Rancher gelatin (never call it Jell-O), in the signature watermelon and green-apple flavors that still taste of childhood to many adults many decades beyond that. Jolly Rancher was founded in 1942 by Bill and Dorothy Harmsen, who sold the company to Hershey in…
The lineup at Denver Union Station, set to reopen this summer, is now complete. Last week, the development partners announced seven more restaurant and retail tenants, including an outpost of the Tattered Cover, two bars (one on the lovely mezzanine level, one in the former ticket booths), an ice cream…
After a half-dozen years commanding the line at Beatrice & Woodsley, opening exec chef Pete List, whose impressive resume also includes gigs at the Empire in Louisville and the long-gone Papillon Cafe Cafe, has departed that kitchen, he says, to “spread my wings and explore new opportunities.” The decision to…
Suffice it to say that I eat out more than the general population, unless, of course, the general population can catalogue more than 450 restaurant meals in a year — which is about the number of breakfasts, lunches and dinners that I stomached over the past year. Pathetic, isn’t it?…
The restaurant business, muses Mark Fischer, exec chef of Harman’s Eat & Drink, is “seriously peculiar.” Chefs, he continues, “have become really high-profile, and they’re granted an inordinate amount of admiration and given an inordinate amount of credit for the successes that are their restaurants, much of it completely justifiable.”…
Cafe Society served up four Guess Where? contests last week, ranging from a mound of cheap — and cheap tasting — nachos from Agave Taco Bar to a bowl of awesome hot and sour soup bobbing with foie gras dumplings from Zengo to a sizzling vessel of bibimbap from a…
Last week USA Today came out with its “10 Best Foodie Spots in Denver.” But you’d better move fast if you want to hit two of them: D Bar is closing this coming weekend in anticipation of a move, and Restaurant Kevin Taylor is closing for good at the end…
Montana just bumped Colorado out of its top spot as the least obese state, according to a recent report by Gallup. Mississippi is still number one for fat, with 35.4 percent of the population weighing in as obese. In Colorado, just 20.4 percent of the residents are obese, which earns…
This week in Cafe Society, Gretchen Kurtz reviewed The Plimoth, a new spot that may help transform a long-ignored neighborhood. Lori Midson talked to chef Eric Cimino of Luca D’Italia about what it’s like to work in one of Frank Bonanno’s kitchens, what he would eat for dinner if he…
The Denver International Spirits Competition, the only international spirits competition in the Rockies, has announced the list of 2014 medal winners. During the event from March 1-2 at the Omni Interlocken Resort in Broomfield, fourteen spirits professionals tasted almost 200 spirits in a double-blind tasting. See also: Highlights from last…
Two more restaurants are joining the brunch bunch tomorrow. Just over a year after it opened in LoHi, Old Major will launch a Saturday and Sunday brunch menu. And down the hill in Riverfront, La Biblioteca — a Sandoval Restaurant concept that took over for Al Lado last fall –…
Last winter, Peter Ryan, former executive chef/instructor at Cook Street School of Culinary Arts, inked a deal on an out-of-the-way space in North City Park that he felt was just right for the neighborhood eatery he dreamed of opening — in what happened to be his own neighborhood, just west…
With the grand reopening of Denver Union Station less than four months away, Larimer Associates and its partners in the project just announced eight more retail and restaurant tenants for the renovated facility set to debut on July 12. And not only are all of these tenants from Colorado, but…
Yesterday, I bumped into a local chef slurping oysters at a restaurant that sells thousands of them every month, and the platter of briny bivalves sitting in front of him, he gushed, where magnificent. In fact, he went on to say that all the oysters he’d seen over the past…
I’m a sucker for a good hot and sour soup, and when the kitchen tosses in a foie gras dumpling or two, it’s definitely an added bonus. Can you guess where I’m eating? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to a Guess Where post is entered into…
Restaurant stages, i.e. unpaid apprenticeships, are very different from the useless internships many of us endured in college. Far from killing time making copies, kitchen interns gain real-time, real-world experience that translates directly to necessary skills. For example, Peter Ryan says he wouldn’t be where he is today without the…
Eric Cimino Luca D’Italia 711 Grant Street 303-832-6600 lucadenver.com This is part two of my interview with Eric Cimino, chef of Luca D’Italia; part one of our chat ran yesterday. What’s the best food- or kitchen-related gift you’ve been given? I love getting new cookbooks, especially the odd, quirky ones,…
Wafflich, the neighborhood breakfast-and-lunch joint at 4166 Tennyson Street that chef Benny Kaplan opened after closing Shazz two years ago, had some problems from the start — chief among them the fact that it didn’t serve waffles. Now the tiny spot on Tennyson Street has been turned over to the…
Is it time for the “fancy burger trend to call it quits”? That’s what Eric Cimino, chef at Luca d’Italia, suggests in this week’s Chef and Tell interview. And nothing gets the meaty juices flowing like a big burger battle. “Not if it’s delicious!” says Phillip. “I’m over it,” says…
Legend has it that in 1620, the pilgrims set foot on terra firma at Plymouth Rock. But did they really? Likewise, is The Plimoth, the charming new eatery that chef-owner Peter Ryan named after his Massachusetts home town, really a “neighborhood eatery,” as the tagline claims? Does it actually cater…
