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I know, I know... this is twice in one week that I'm making fun of the New York Times (see "$115,000 Worth of Pointless Revenge" a few blogs below for my first shot at the Old Gray Lady), but I just couldn't let this one go without a comment.

In the February 25 Travel section, writer Michelle Auerbach gave a nice shout-out to Boulder, touching on the alleged sudden profusion of fine, earth-friendly restaurants popping up in the People's Republic. Mateo, Frasca (chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson shown above), The Kitchen -- it was all the usual suspects, and that didn't bother me at all. What did bug me was Auerbach's contention that the Denver/Boulder area has only recently become worthy of notice and that this is all thanks to the relocation of people from New York and California to our fair state -- as if it is only the refined palates and deep pockets of the Coasties that could've possibly elevated the level of cuisine in our benighted culinary backwater and saved us poor testicle-eating, taco-loving, twig-and-berry-chewing hippie savages from our own baser desires.

We're midway through Denver Restaurant Week, and reports are coming in. Restaurant Kevin Taylor? Full to capacity. Barolo Grill? Booked solid. Luca d'Italia? Ditto. Owner Frank Bonanno (above) has said that he couldn't find a table for even his mother if she were to wander into Mizuna one night this week, hungry and looking for a break.

When DRW began, I was eating around the outside of the bona fide phenomenon that this annual event has become, visiting several restaurants that, for their own reasons, have chosen not to participate.

Pizza at the D Note in Arvada, sandwiches from Pat's #1, shrimp two ways and sweet-and-sour chicken from East China, a little barbecue, some corned beef hash and eggs, bagels from the Bagel Store -- all places where $52.80 could easily feed ten big hungry boys and where I (as just one big hungry boy) spent considerably less.

Denver Restaurant Week, Day 2. A report by Amy Haimerl:

I have a new culinary love. Not fois grae, not sweetbreads, not chili-infused chocolate or any of the other delicacies I've had the good fortune of trying while dining with Jason Sheehan and my other foodie friends. No, this is something more simple, more pure -- proletariat,even. Celery root puree.

From the moment I took a bite of Duo's slow-cooked pork with celery root puree and broccoli rabe, I knew I'd be back often. I'm one of those people who gets a taste for something and then eats only that for meals on end. I've gone through my pork-fried rice from Min Min phase, and my green chile from Tacos Jalisco phase, and even a chicken Peshwari from the British Bulldog phase.

Now it's a celery root puree from Duo phase. Imagine the most perfect plate of mashed potatoes and then multiply its perfection by ten. Hell, increase its perfection by a power of twenty. It's that good. Same texture, yet smoother and lighter. Same taste, yet slightly sweeter. Same ideal foundation for heavy dishes like the pulled pork, but without the heaviness and carb overload. I'll be hitting the trusty Food and Wine website looking for recipes to perfect this delicacy for myself.

The asparagus soup with saffron cr�me fraiche and green olive tapenade, also served as part of the Denver Restaurant Week menu, were also palate-pleasers. And while I loved my pulled pork, my partner actually preferred his escolar. That's sacrilege on the alter of the celery root puree, I say.

And I'm ready to worship. -- Amy Haimerl

Big-time international restaurant owner Jeffrey Chodorow -- who owns a couple dozen name joints in New York, Vegas and elsewhere, but who you may remember as Rocco DiSpirito's money guy from that unconscionably awful reality show The Restaurant -- got his name in the papers again last week. This time, though, he had to pay his way in.

Following a zero-star review of his new(ish) New York steakhouse Kobe Club by New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni, Chodorow took out a full-page ad in the Times (at $115,000) blasting the paper, the section and, in particular, Bruni himself -- saying, among other things, that the former Rome bureau chief and political writer who came to the Times critic's job with no serious food-world experience was not qualified for the gig and was in over his head.

If you are where you eat, a lot of people are Benny's, since the Denver institution is usually packed with fans, including Leslie Fry, who offers this:

Benny's is my all-time favorite Denver restaurant. I have been there with family, friends, boyfriends, blind dates, out-of-towners, foreigners, children, grandparents, co-workers and neighbors. It is a place where you can dress up or dress down; eat quickly or linger for hours; you can have a quiet dinner with a friend or a party with a table of ten drunken friends. There is always a wait but it never seems to take that long, I always run into someone I know and I have eaten there so many times I never have to look at the menu (Fish Taco Plate, please -- wait, make that a Sloppy Burrito).

Benny's is Denver to me -- fast, slow, crowded (where did all these people come from?) but friendly, and a place everyone I know enjoys.

Keep those cards and letters coming, folks. -- Jason Sheehan

Here's Kate's take on the quintessential Denver restaurant:

It would have to be My Brother's Bar at 15th and Platte. My stepdad has been taking me there since I was six and we would play "I Spy" while waiting for our gooey JCBs; he'd sometimes let me have a sip of his beer. I loved that I would get smoke in my hair and I loved washing my hands with the little shell soaps they had in the bathroom.

In the early '80s that area was totally undeveloped, and now I see how edgy and cool he was to have taken an office down there.

So even though it is not a part of Denver Restaurant Week, MBB is my favorite restaurant in Denver.

And you'd need a lot of JCBs to hit $52.80 -- even for two -- at Brother's. But then there's that good beer list...-- Jason Sheehan

Another smart response to "You Are Where You Eat," this one from Steve Poquette of Parker, touting Mezcal:

It should be a restaurant where you would proudly take friends and family from out of town (as opposed to business associates). It should be a restaurant that you feel embodies the cultural essence of Denver and its food. It must feel comfortable to you and your guests -- not overly pretentious or pricey, but not too "divey," either.

Mezcal meets those criteria for me. It's quintessentially Denver. It's got a great mezcalrita and menu, good food, and a fun atmosphere. It's even located in an area that shouts "This is Denver."

Have a place you want to shout about? Send it my way, or just comment on this item. -- Jason Sheehan

What does Denver taste like? In Bite Me, I've been writing about my hunt for the quintessential Denver restaurant, and readers have served up plenty of food for thought. The following, from Scott, aka "The Mayor," is particularly choice:

There is nothing more Denver than the Executive Lunch at the Buckhorn Exchange. It's the perfect combination of pot roast and dark rye bread, a sandwich and a bean soup, Denver's past and Denver's current. Well, not so much the current, as there is really nothing current about the place except for the prices.

A runner up is Charlie Brown's. The food isn't great. The service is friendly but unspectacular. The drinks aren't always mixed right. But it was good enough for Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg. And I always think of Denver when I'm in there. A beat city on the windswept, snowy plains, lying across I-70 like sweet, sad roadkill. And here we are in the heart of Victorian Capitl Hill, where beat got its name. Like Denver, it's a combination of whites, blacks, Hispanics, cowboys, native Americans, poets, artists, hippies, yuppies, young hopeful kids, crazed old men who talk to trees, punks, gangbangers, government bureaucrats, Republicans, Democrats -- whatever and whoever the wind couldn't blow into Kansas....

Couldn't have said it better myself. -- Jason Sheehan

Suddenly, Chi Bistro was being hailed as a restaurant featuring 'American classics with a flavor of French Indochina'—which ought to have meant Cafe du Monde and cr�me caramel, pho, fish heads and pigs roasted and redolent of gunpowder and Zippo lighter fuel, but didn't, of course, except for an Asian bouillabaisse that managed to smash together the flavors of coastal France and Southeast Asia with all the cool gentility of a sledgehammer blow.

And that Asian bouillabaisse barely moves the needle when it comes to the awful things coming out of the kitchen at Chi Bistro, which I review this week. Thai chicken wings, Shanghai ratatouille and spaetzle? Oh, my...

My recent musings about the archetypal Denver restaurant, "You Are Where You Eat," inspired several people to send in their own tastes of Denver. Here's the slightly ball-obsessed response from Christine Sipple:

Well, you might be right -- finding a restaurant that truly speaks to you in this city could be about balls, but I don't need to have them in my mouth, or even on the menu. It's enough to have them in your face in the way of a chef/owner who has the culinary talent, charisma and creative vision to do it all her way and succeed year after year on the strength of her food and reputation, not riding the wave of a massive PR campaign or culinary fad.

Okay, so the rumors have been flying about some big shakeups happening at Mel's in Cherry Creek, and I'm here to tell you that the bad news is true. I just got off the phone with owner Mel Master a few minutes ago, and he told me that Mel's will, in fact, be closing — probably sometime this summer.

How did this happen? Let me explain. See, it seems that in October of last year, Mel and his wife, Jane, were looking to sign a new lease on their space at 235 Fillmore Street. They still had two years left on their old lease, but for a long time, they'd been thinking about spending some money and making some improvements to the twelve-year-old Cherry Creek institution, and they weren't about to move ahead with that without getting a nice long lease agreement first.

This Just In: Late word from Stephen Anson, who is now the ex-owner of Wholly Tomato up on the hill at 9th and Lincoln. On Wednesday, Anson announced that his two-year-old "healthy fast-food restaurant" was closed as of immediately, and that he'd been bought out by the guys from Deli Zone in Boulder.

Anson admits that while he considers his first Wholly Tomato to have been a success, he never really made a lot of money with it. What's more, he was actually looking for an out when the Deli Zone guys came calling so that he could focus his energies on the bottling and marketing of Oogave -- his agave-sweetened, all-natural soda -- which he intends on having in the stores by summer.

As for the future? Well, he's hoping to be able to open another Wholly Tomato someday, one that will incorporate "substantial" changes over his first Lincoln Street experiment. But that, according to Anson, will have to wait until after he sees what Oogave can do. -- Jason Sheehan

Fusion is the devil's cuisine. I've been saying that for a long time. And I've believed it ever since those dark days of my own forays into the seductive world of galangal, lemongrass and frisee.

A chef has to be an absolute genius to make any sort of fusion work -- and genius is one of the many things I've never been. But this week, I'm taking a look at the opposite side of fusion -- a pure expression of one of the cuisines so often abused by the industry's fusers, deconstructionists and world-food enthusiasts.

I've got Thai food on tap this week, at US Thai in Edgewater. And this is one you're not going to want to miss. Look for the full review on this web site tomorrow afternoon, or in the February 15 issue. -- Jason Sheehan

I was surprised as anyone that I loved the Palace Arms, the Brown Palace's most august restaurant. Here's a recent letter on that review.

Typical Sheehan. This article typifies why I read Jason's stuff, why I look forward to his next crafted statements. When I read Sheehan, I want to be whisked away to some exotic place, and that is what I've come to expect with his reviews.

It's hard to do that with restaurants in strip malls or the ubiquitous Mexican, Chinese, etc. places dotting the landscape. What I want is to learn of the fine dining spots or remote catches that someone else has researched. Sure, I find 'em on my own, with my wife, but those gems are occasional.

Let Sheehan blaze the trial for me. He has in the past, and I count on it in the future. Before this review, I never seriously considered the Palace Arms. But I'm soon to get a reservation. Thanks, Sheehan.

No, thank you. -- Jason Sheehan

Chef Michel Wahaltere has parted ways with the owners at Seven Eurobar in Boulder. And though he didn't go into a lot of details on the split, Wahaltere did tell me that his reasons were pretty simple. First, he wanted to create a restaurant -- whereas the majority partner was more concerned with building "a bar scene." And second, Wahaltere was looking at Seven as a model location for an eventual restaurant empire -- lots and lots of little Sevens scattered all hither and yon. And the owners? Yeah, they weren't so much into that, either.