We all know how the holiday gift-giving hierarchy works: Your best-effort gifts are given to people you like (or people whose asses you pucker up to the rest of the year); you give cost-effective, neutral gifts to those you pretend to like (bring on the Hickory Farms boxes of fossilized…
Nicolo’s Chicago-Style Pizza, 1205 East 13th Avenue, has completed its expansion into the space formerly inhabited by Cricket on the Hill. The joint now has more seats, slick new televisions, an arcade game and a pool table. The renovation came with a new menu: The pizza is about the only…
Just got off the horn with Michael Long, exec chef and partner at Aria, Long’s New American restaurant at 250 Josephine Street, and the news is good: After months of getting the dining room, kitchen and bar in tip-top shape, Aria will open tomorrow at 5 p.m. “My stress level…
Since it opened back in June, Comfort Cafe, 3945 Tennyson Street, has fed the community as a non-profit, pay-what-you-can restaurant, offering comfort-food meals to anyone who walks through the door for however much of a donation that person can muster up. And on Saturday, it will be providing Christmas dinner…
The next generation in mobile food has arrived: In California this week, the Roving Mammoth hit the slopes at Mammoth Mountain, using a snowcat-like base to bring burritos and beverages to skiers all over the hill…
Vine Street Pub, 1700 Vine Street, is known for its brews (pouring Mountain Sun-made ales, stouts and lagers) and its hippie-friendly atmosphere. The walls are decorated with an array of mostly psychedelic band posters, and there are no televisons — although the pub does provide board games and books if…
Every year, Westword publishes a little guide called the “Best Of Denver,” wherein our writers rank the city’s best stuff, including food. Last year, the Highlands Mommies — the formidable northwest Denver parents group profiled in our cover story, “The Mommies” — did their own “Best Of” for the Highlands…
Ramon Campos, owner of Empanada Express Grill in Golden, hopes to have his second restaurant open by tomorrow, Christmas Eve at the latest. The new spot is taking over the former home of a Mexican joint at 4301 West 44th Avenue, just off Tennyson Street. And even if the doors…
This is part one of Lori Midson’s interview with Mike Adams, the executive chef of Racines. Part two of that interview will run in this space tomorrow. Mike Adams Racines 650 Sherman Street 303-595-0418 www.racinesrestaurant.com “Are you seriously going to write that?” asks Mike Adams, stretching over his chair to…
2010 has come and almost gone, and Colorado still doesn’t have a Trader Joe’s. And the state has few prospects of getting one. Are you bitter? We are, especially since we got a hold of the Trader Joe’s list of its top-ten most popular products from 2010, which includes some…
The comments keep coming in response to Kyle Garratt’s initial In the Weeds: A Waiter’s Rant. Yesterday, B2 posted this: Cafe Society is becoming the service industries yelp. Its an avenue for waiters, cooks and chefs to bitch and moan about paying customers, much like yelp is that means for…
Know what I’m really looking forward to this holiday season? Not the gifts or the family time or the generosity of spirit or the tidings of comfort and joy. Nope, I’m looking to the fact that having Christmas fall on a weekend gives me an extra day or two to…
My mom loves a good Old-Fashioned — and this was the best I’ve ever tasted. It was so good I couldn’t help but wonder if the altitude helps make this drink so special. Can you guess where I’m drinking? Special bonus: Anyone who gives the first correct answer to the…
No. 89: Lemon-ricotta doughnuts from Olivéa They were an afterthought, those doughnuts. After desecrating the headcheese, swelling my jowls with pork cheeks, emptying a plate of tortellini bobbing in a pancetta-scented broth and reducing the guilt with a crock of cauliflower, the doughnuts just sort of appeared…
Boulder might be a college town, but we’re still a little surprised at the influx of pizzerias there over the last year, especially because these aren’t greasy slice joints — they offer gourmet pies, pulled straight from the depths of a wood-fired oven. Pizzeria Basta, 3601 Arapahoe Avenue, opened last…
For years, Gaia Bistro has been a serene breakfast and lunch spot, serving crepes, salads and sandwiches to diners packed into the charming dining room or sunning themselves at tables on the large patio. There was just one drawback: Gaia never had a liquor license. Which is part of the…
We’re into any social activity that involves eating and drinking, but something about the cozy traditional vibe of the holiday season makes us want to put on a fancy dress and head out to a high tea, where we can eat delicate cookies and drink English breakfast with our pinkies…
The sign dangling from the door of Wolfe’s Barbecue plainly says “closed,” but at 3:15 p.m., fifteen minutes after barbecue nobleman Louis Wolfe has closed for lunch to prepare for the impending dinner rush, in walks an optimistic latecomer who orders two pork dinners. “We’re out of pork,” laments Wolfe,…
Food deserts — that’s what areas without grocery stores are called. And Commerce City is ready to provide some irrigation for the desert area around Reunion, a planned community whose plan has so far lacked a supermarket. The result? About 16,000 people in the northern range of Commerce City are…
Cook Street School of Fine Cooking hosted a holiday feast class last night that had almost all the qualities of a good action movie: cut-the-crap dialogue, a flesh wound, fire, and an ending where everyone ate juicy slabs of prime rib. Almost all the qualities, since there was no nudity…
After thirteen years in the restaurant business, Kyle Garratt knows what it means to be in the weeds. Still, he’s really feeling the heat after posting the first of what will be a series of weekly waiter’s rants under the “In the Weeds” title. Among the readers fueling the fire…
Our family led a pretty modest existence when I was a child, but weekend mornings were sheer luxury. My brother and I would plod down the stairs and be greeted by a pile of misshapen chocolate chip- or banana-studded pancakes, steam still rising from the freshly griddled ones on top…
