It’s time for our monthly round-up of restaurant opening-and-closing action — and there was plenty in April, much of it caffeine-fueled: RESTAURANTS/VENUES OPENING IN APRIL*: Abrusci’s, 300 Fillmore Street Backcountry Provisions, 1617 Wazee Street Bardo Coffee House, 238 South Broadway Big Game, 1631 Wazee Street Boulder Organic Pizza, 1175 Walnut…
There are several links in the homegrown Mercedes Mexican Restaurant chain around the metro area, but perhaps none more welcome than this new outpost, which occupies a former Taco Bell at 14th Avenue and Santa Fe Drive. Which means that not only does this Mercedes offer the same great $2…
Jared Jacang Maher’s February 2009 Westword cover story on SAME Cafe just won a prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for newspaper feature writing about restaurants and/or chefs. The name of Brad and Libby Birky’s restaurant at 2023 East Colfax Avenue stands for So All May Eat, and speaks to the…
Cafe Society served up six Guess Where I’m Eating/Drinking contests last week, featuring everything from the view from the door of the Squeeze Inn to a giant (and still unidentified) breakfast burrito to the new fois gras on Shanahan’s revamped menu. For identifying that starter — which may be one…
In the four hours that David Bravdica had been slinging pizzas, the skies rained, sleeted, snowed, dropped gropple and kicked up enough wind to blow flour from here to Tuscany, which is where Bravdica, a former airport manager, learned the art of making pizza — pizza that he began peddling…
Picture this commercial: In a split screen, two attractive young women are both in rumpled beds with the silhouette of a man in the shower behind them. The girls talk into the phone at the same time: Girl 1: “Did you…” Girl 2: “We did…” Girl 1: “It was..” Girl…
I’m picky — really picky — about my scrambled eggs, which I always order soft and which, more often than not, arrive every way but that way. The exception are the scrambled eggs in the above snap, which the kitchen always prepares beautifully, even when it’s weeded with tickets and…
The towering milk can poking out of the lower Highland neighborhood is hard to miss. Owner Paul Tamburello designed his ice cream stand as an homage to the Coney Island hot dog stand (the one that looks like a hot dog, not the one on Coney Island), liking the idea…
Marczyk Fine Foods, the Uptown market at 770 East 17th Avenue, is kicking off its seasonal sidewalk burger bash tonight at 5 p.m. “We started the burger night as a way to get people in the neighborhood to taste one of our favorite products — Niman Ranch beef — and…
Angelina Soleno, who recently opened University Groundz Coffee House at 2493 South University Boulevard, won’t say where she gets her breakfast burritos — only that they come from a secret spot in Brighton and are “the best breakfast burritos anywhere in Denver.” She’s wrong about that (the best breakfast burritos…
Big Game just opened last night at 1631 Wazee Street, and as promised, the restaurant brought to us by TurnTable Restaurant Group — New York restaurateurs Jeffrey and Zach Chodorow, and Dan Smith — looked like it was going to be very hot. But this is ridiculous. Five fire trucks…
In Lincoln, Nebraska, there are numerous homegrown items to sink your teeth into, including steak, pork and corn. Anna Godfrey has now put another item on the menu: human ears. According to this report, Lincoln’s finest were called to a local hospital after receiving a report that a patient was…
Chris Graves says he decided to open a coffee shop after 25 years of hanging out in them, all the while taking stock of various details and inconveniences that he would change at his own place. “There were just little things about them that bothered me,” he says. “Like, why…
Hat’s off to a Cafe Society reader who tipped us to the unfortunate demise of Aviano Coffee at 955 Lincoln Street in the beleaguered Beauvallon building. A woman who answered a call to Aviano yesterday gave a “no comment” when asked about the closure, but then said details would be…
Argyll, the Cherry Creek gastropub (and winner of Westword’s Best New Restaurant 2010 award) at 2700 East Third Avenue, is celebrating its one-year anniversary on Friday, April 30 by offering one starter and two lunch entrees for $14, excluding tax and gratuity. “We’re thanking Denver for all the support they’ve…
Up until very recently, my favorite breakfast burrito, which we smothered with accolades in Westword’s Best of Denver 2010, came from Pico de Gallo Mexican Grill. And while I still believe that it’s the best breakfast burrito in the Mile High City, I’ve found another breakfast burrito, outside Denver, that’s…
The opening of Pasquini’s new Denver Tech Center restaurant at 8101 Belleview Avenue has been pushed back more than a month while it secures all the necessary permits and brings the space up to code, says founder Tony Pasquini. The pizzeria, which will be the fifth to join the mini-chain,…
After resisting for years, Cucina Colore has caved to pressure and started a happy hour. They never really needed it, says general manager Chris Millette. Plus the “whole discounting concept” just didn’t seem to pair well with the restaurant’s upscale sensibilities. But all that changed Monday when the Italian restaurant…
This is part two of Lori Midson’s Chef and Tell interview with Eric Stein, chef/instructor at Johnson & Wales. To read part one of that interview, click here. Most embarrassing moment in the kitchen: I worked for a restaurant called Adesso in Providence, Rhode Island, that featured an open kitchen…
The Pasta Bible, a new Aussie cookbook published by Penguin Group Australia, has sinned. In a big way. The proofreader made a “silly mistake,” explained Bob Sessions, head of the publishing group. The recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto was supposed to include the words “freshly ground black pepper,”…
The Spice Market of Addis Ababa is almost a city of its own — a serpentine stable where merchants hawk the raw materials that combine deliciously in Ethiopia’s distinctive cuisine. In the spring, when the sun finally comes out after two rainy months and bakes the muddy streets into damp…
After months and months of speculation, anticipation and dropping gazillions of dollars in rent on a space that sat vacant for more than a year, the parcel of land at 1631 Wazee Street, formerly Il Fornaio, is finally springing back to life…
