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I don’t think that Kelly Clarkson can be considered hard rock. Neither can Sugar Ray vintage 1998 when Mark McGrath got down on his knees to deepthroat VH1. But that’s just my opinion. Obviously it should be left up to the experts, and when the Hard Rock Café decides to loop these “hard rockers” on TVs all over the downtown monstrosity, who am I to argue?

I would never choose to just meander into a Hard Rock Café, but when word hit the street that Denver’s own had just received a new shipment of “memorabilia,” I thought I might swing by, you know, ironically. It was horrible. First I sat down and had a beer and a plate of fries. Ten fucking dollars. I don’t know who these people think they are, but charging $5.50 for a pint is stupid, I don’t care how many gold statues of Elvis it comes with.

Second, whoever is in charge of deciding what crap goes on the wall apparently thinks that Denver is the '80s-hair-band capital of the world. There were so many rhinestoned jumpsuits, the glimmer started making me dizzy. Between Motley Crue and Bon Jovi, the Hard Rock could blind a nation.

And finally, according to the plaques accompanying the rock detritus, Red Rocks is the only venue that has ever existed in Colorado. No one ever played anywhere else in Colorado besides Morrison. Good job with the research fellas.

So I said goodbye to the glamour of rock’s past and hope to never return. Leave it to the tourists I say, and the bastards who think it is entertaining to drink Bud Light out of an aluminum bottle while ogling a wife-beater that the bassist from Maroon 5 once wore. Totally hard rock, man.
–Taylor Sullivan

The Brown Palace comes close to what I’ve occasionally imagined heaven might look like: big and wide open, with a huge stained-glass skylight capping some distant ceiling, a well-connected concierge standing by, several restaurants to choose from and a nearby bar that not only stocks a fine collection of bottled Irish brain lubricant, but lets me smoke.

I’ve been to the Brown maybe a dozen times since coming to Denver five years ago, and I never get tired of walking into that lobby. Nor do I get tired of the booze, of the sound of hard-soled shoes echoing on the tiled floors, of watching the door around back where all the help — potato-shaped housekeepers, slumping cooks, young runners, whippet-thin dishwashers and off-duty valets—stands clustered, smoking, making fun of the guests, talking shit to each other in languages where I can only pick out the curse words.

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Ling & Louie’s is a place aimed squarely at families, at young, quote-unquote adventurous eaters with a taste for Asian flavors who want something better than Happy Meals and cheeseburgers when they go out to eat. A restaurant with a kids menu and a liquor license? I’ve got to think that’s a mighty comfort to couples unwilling to give up their dining habits once the offspring start arriving. There are cloth napkins and comfortable booths. The dining room seems constructed entirely of long, sensuous curves and live bamboo, the kitchen sealed behind an indoor waterfall tumbling down across pebbled glass (a design element that has become a sort of signature of Schoch’s Taifoon and Ling & Louie’s operations). It is a chain restaurant sired by chain restaurants, modern, urban Asiana done with a restraint belied by the estimated $2 million it cost to open, and it works.

Almost.

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A sit down at Cora Faye's Cafe.

The tablecloths at Cora Faye’s Cafe -- heavy, almost like oilcloth but patterned with flowers -- are a little sticky. And so is the air. It is close and warm in the cluttered front dining room, the atmosphere rich with smells that are both food smells and the smells of people on a hot afternoon. Damp cologne and scorching corn meal, fryer oil, gravy and panting breath. The atmosphere is so thick that closing my eyes and gulping air feels like eating a meal, my every inhalation infused with the ghosts of pork chops, spirits of catfish hitting the pan, the memories of bodies passing through the door.

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This week Jason Sheehan reviews Chutney's. Photo by Mark Manger.

A few years ago, while working in Albuquerque, I made one dumbass move that almost accidentally ended my cooking career -- a full three or four months before I ended it quite deliberately on my own.

It was a Tuesday and things had been going badly all night. It was just one of those days -- bad for no real good reason, a hundred small things going wrong one, after the other after the other. I’d spent most of the night spinning in place, trying to do ten things at once, accomplishing none of them, getting myself further and further into the weeds. And then, around eight o’clock -- just as the second turn was finishing up in the dining room and the third rolling in -- I made a blind, bare-handed grab for the handle of a heavy, thick-bottomed saute pan in which I’d been par-cooking a dozen vegetable sides.

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