During 23 years in the seafood industry, you build a lot of connections and develop a solid foundation of knowledge for sourcing the best fish for a restaurant. Chef Matt Stein is putting all that experience and knowledge to good use at the Chowder Room, his restaurant that opens tonight…
Elvis Presley would have turned 80 today were he still alive, but at Nick’s Cafe in Lakewood, the King lives on, fueled by memorabilia and anecdotes from owner Nick Andurlakis. Andurlakis, whose claim to fame is a hand in the creation of the Fool’s Gold Loaf at the long gone…
Rioja celebrated its tenth anniversary in November, and now it’s taking some time off for a facelift so that it can enjoy its second decade with a fresh look. Owners Jen Jasinski and Beth Gruitch are closing up their Larimer Square favorite on Friday and will reopen on February 2…
La Casa de Manuel reopened yesterday after a holiday break — and after close to six decades in business, it deserved one. Manuel Silva’s modest Mexican joint got its start at 20th and Larimer streets, where it lasted for forty years, until Coors Field opened nearby and the area started…
The Source is one of Denver’s hottest artisan food markets and has also garnered plenty of national praise since opening in 2013. Among the fifteen merchants, Comida Cantina, a modern taqueria that transformed into a permanent storefront from its modest Mexican taco-truck beginnings, is the only one open for brunch…
From the start, Glaze by Sasa seemed an unlikely combination: a bakery with a crazy horizontal rotisserie cake oven built for turning out German/Japanese baum cakes and a sushi bar headed by Wayne Conwell, one of Denver’s most revered names in raw fish. Still, the merger of the former Glaze…
City Stacks Books and Coffee opened in December on a block of Wazee Street downtown previously short on retail establishments. Father and son owners Kevin and Ben Gillies are aiming for a neighborhood coffeehouse ambiance with a selection of books geared toward city dwellers — think architecture, design, sustainable food…
Chef Toby Prout and Jimmy Callahan, co-owners of Leña on Broadway, started planning the pan-Latin American menu for their new restaurant months before they even found the location, much less started construction. The two traveled to California and sampled their way through some of the state’s top Mexican, Central American…
Amass 2240 Clay Street 720-287-1895 Imagine you’re in a movie theater for a showing of your favorite film. The lights dim. The music starts. But instead of the opening scene, what flashes on the big screen is a montage of pivotal moments, snippets of the movie displaced from the chronology…
In November Steve Friesen, director of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, visited Lola, whose space in the former Olinger’s mortuary building at 1575 Boulder Street includes the place where William F. Cody’s body was put on ice after he died on January 10, 1917, until the ground on Lookout…
When Waffle Brothers closed on Corona Street in April last year, John Powers thought he and Rod Dupen would be able to reopen the waffle bar in its new location in just a couple of months. The gestation period turned out to be a little longer, but the new Waffle…
There’s no better way to try Novo Coffee than in one of the company’s two Denver cafes, one on East 6th Avenue and one downtown. “Our retail locations are a great way to showcase our coffee,” says president and co-founder Jake Brodsky. “The fact that we do it in our…
When hunting for the cuisine of any country or ethnic group, Colfax Avenue is not a bad place to start. This month I’m looking for pupusas, the stuffed tortillas of El Salvador, and there are at least three restaurants on Colfax east of Quebec Street that either specialize in Salvadorean…
Megan Heinley has been working on her dessert recipes for years, hoping some day to have the opportunity to turn baking into a profession. That chance came in December, when her friend Jason McGovern opened Denver Deep Dish in lower Highland and wanted to serve local baked goods for dessert…
Jim Seidel just opened his eleventh Snarf’s in the Denver-Boulder area; this one brings his sub sandwiches to a former convenience store on 38th Avenue on Denver’s western border. The pagoda-style building, originally part of a chain of convenience stores in the 1960s, has been decked out in Snarf’s familiar…
When the temperature drops, we often make up for the mercury deficit with an indulgent caloric splurge. This year, if you’re not into starving yourself the first week of January until you give up on that crash diet, then head strait to Cart-Driver for the pizza that would have inevitably…
This week, we took a final look back at some favorites — the year’s ten best new bars and the top trends — and also compiled a list of nearly 300 new restaurants, bars and specialty markets that opened in 2014. But now it’s a new year, so now we’re…
This week’s cover story profiles Craftsy, the Denver start-up that’s thriving by teaching people new hobbies through high-end online tutorials. Cooking and cake-decorating classes are among the most popular courses on the site, with baking instructors turning into online celebrities and students launching their own pastry businesses. But can Craftsy…
If 2013 seemed like a busy year in the restaurant industry, 2014 was positively manic, with nearly 300 bars, restaurants and specialty markets opening in the Denver metro area. You could have had a meal or a drink at a new place every weekday this year without hitting them all…
Earlier this month, a Chipotle worker made a raised-hands gesture when nine New York Police Department officers entered a Brooklyn location of the national burrito chain for dinner. The officers immediately left the building and the incident has since sparked a boycott of the store by local police from the…
In less than a year, Work & Class has made some big waves in the Denver dining scene. With plenty of praise for the food, atmosphere and beyond-friendly staff, it comes as little surprise to find the place packed every night. Come 2015, the Work & Class family will mark…
I’ve never experienced a weekend,” says Duc Huynh, who runs the second Vinh Xuong Bakery. His parents opened the original bakery on Federal Boulevard more than 24 years ago and still work there from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day of the week, baking baguettes and other Vietnamese sweet…
