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At my last job, my boss had a butcher's diagram of a broken-down pig tattooed on her ass. I worked on the line with another guy who had PORK inked across the knuckles of his right hand. And in my family, bacon is how we show our love for one another. Last Christmas, my brother and I cooked a six-course dinner for friends and relations. Five of the courses were pork. The sixth was dessert—kept pork-free only because we couldn't figure how to make bacon truffles. For special occasions, my wife knows to forget the flowers, the high-end home electronics, and just buy me prosciutto. One of these years she's going to surprise me with a flatscreen plasma TV draped in pancetta. Hasn't happened yet, but I have faith.

But until then, I have a restaurant where I can go to satisfy my every porky jones, a place where the cooks have taken one of the world's great cuisines—Mexican—and done the only thing a kitchen could conceivably do to make it even better.

They've added bacon. To pretty much everything.

And that restaurant is... Los Carboncitos, a brilliant short-order place in northwest Denver that's redefining everyday Mexican food, by serving it in a style that's lifted straight from the midnight streets without any sop to assimilation. You won't find breakfast burritos here, or nachos, or margaritas. But you will find bacon...

For the complete review, return to this page tomorrow -- or grab a copy of Westword hot off the press. -- Jason Sheehan

I've eaten tandoori while driving and samosa in bed. I've made entire meals of naan and puri and yogurt. During a brief stint as an unwilling vegetarian (I did it for a girl, mostly because the only thing on earth better than pork is pussy, and I had to give up one or the other), I lived on Indian food and died a little bit every time I saw a texturized vegetable protein not-loaf or slab of Tofurkey in the oven.

On tap for this week: a late-night dinner at Jewel of India, a cultish little northern Indian restaurant up in Westminster where the only thing better than the service is everything on the menu. And in Second Helping, I offer another look at one of my favorite Indian restaurants, Star of India. Read the full reviews here Wednesday afternoon, or when the paper hits the street. -- Jason Sheehan

I witnessed the kind of chaos that would completely shatter any normal restaurant crew: dining rooms filled to double-capacity, lines stretching out the door, crowds waiting out on the sidewalks and absolutely no room to move on the floor. The Southlands outpost of Tokyo Joe's is designed like a Ginza noodle shop with table seating; snaky, communal counters that run through cramped spaces along walls or around dividers; standing room for those in a rush, with narrow ledges for setting down bowls. As seen above and between all the bodies, the design is urban-Asian minimalism, hip without being annoying, all organic curves and wood and steel. The TVs in the background usually show CNN and ESPN, sometimes movies, often cartoons, and the sound system plays non-threatening techno. A sign stuck on a post near the door tells potential customers not to worry, that no matter how long the line might look, it moves really goddamn fast.

This week, I'm diving into the fast-casual/chain restaurant world with a review of the Tokyo Joe's operation, which celebrates its ten-year anniversary this year. With good noodles, bad sushi and a business model that's killing it everywhere owner Larry Leith (shown above) plants a new location, Joe's is one worth watching.

Disagree? Screw you. Tell it to the comment button at the bottom, pal. But first, read the full review in the paper that hits the streets tomorrow -- and will appear on this web site around the same time.

In the same issue, I make fun of McDonald's and eat at the restaurant that actually started Denver's obsession with fast casual Japanese. Can you guess which restaurant that is? Here's a hint: it wasn't Tokyo Joe's, no matter how Leith tells the story...--Jason Sheehan

My meals at Tokyo Joe's -- which I review in the next issue -- were among the least interesting things I found when I braved the wilds of the new Southlands development. The grand-opening festivities were like the Do Lo\ung bridge sequence in Apocalypse Now, a crowded, freaked-out mess about which the best that can be said is that no one got hurt too bad.

Like some weird siren's song, the event drew in yuppies, soccer moms, suburbanites and condo-dwellers from miles around. Many of them brought their dogs. Most of them brought their children. All of them were walking around glimmer-blind from all the lights, display windows and shiny new appurtenances of this shopping plaza that seemed to have sprouted overnight.