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A few things that are good early in the morning: breakfast burritos, blow jobs, strong coffee, forgiveness for last night’s sins, that first cigarette of the day and banana lumpia from Tropical Grill…

I love banana lumpia. Love, love, love. And in particular, I love banana lumpia when it’s made by Leah Eveleigh at Tropical Grill, which opened a few months back in the dead husk of what was once a half-decent Hawaiian restaurant in Aurora. This week, I finally got the chance to write about the place (a task taken on, more or less, as an excuse to shamelessly gorge myself on banana lumpia and a little bit of everything else off Eveleigh’s Filipino-Hawaiian, Pac-rim, straight-up tropical menu) and though not everything I ate there was wonderful -- I had some issues with the halo halo, for example, because it looked (and tasted) kinda like pudding gone wrong -- enough of it was that now I’ve become a full-fledged addict.

Between runs for more banana lumpia, I started chasing down all the restaurant news that’s been breaking now that summer’s over. The end of August and beginning of September are murderously slow in the industry, but when the weather broke, so did the logjams of news. In Bite Me, you’ll find all sorts of openings, closings, chefs going AWOL and at least one piece of news that made me happier than just about anything has all year.

Anything but that banana lumpia, anyhow.
-- Jason Sheehan

I’ve never gotten over my instinctive dislike of traditional holidays, and instead make up my own -- personal, private mileposts on the calendar with their own rituals and rites of observation, celebrated mostly alone. One such holiday landed on the Thursday right before Labor Day weekend: New Phone Book Day.

Never has a New Phone Book Day gone by when I didn’t find something interesting -- bizarre Indian tandoori restaurants serving pizza and tamales, time-warp strip-mall Chinese operations still offering chow mein and eggy wonton soup, Mongolian restaurants staffed by Vietnamese cooks and existing only to serve apartment complexes full of Russian or Ethiopian immigrants. This most recent New Phone Book Day was no exception. I found my unexpected gift right on page 867: Sae Jong Kwan, also known as House of Korean BBQ.

Yes, this week I’m digging into that unloveliest of cuisines: Korean. I have never claimed to be anything close to an expert on this willfully difficult, dense and confusing ethnic canon, but after a long week spent buried to the molars in all things kim and chi, I now know a whole lot more than I knew a month ago. My visits to Sae Jong Kwan were eye-opening and olfactorily abusive, with a quick lunch-time visit to Uoki Restaurant providing a delicious aside, which inspires this aside: If any Korean (and Japanese) food fans out there start feeling a bit peckish in the vicinity of East Sixth Avenue, please give Uoki a try. I had an absolutely wonderful and supremely comforting lunch there last week -- but had it all alone. I was the only customer who even approached the door for about an hour and change, and I really don’t want to see this place go under. There aren’t many spots in town where I can get bulgogi and maguro sushi from the same menu, not many restaurants so friendly and obviously dedicated to providing comfort food specifically for the Asian foods enthusiast. Uoki deserves to be doing much more business than it is. – Jason Sheehan

When I walked through the door of City, O’ City the first time, late in the evening on a Saturday when the joint was in full hipster-utopian swing, I thought only of how immediately comfortable I found its spare décor, widely-spaced tables, high-backed booths and long bar; how buzzing and vital it felt, how much more I liked it than I had the old WaterCourse, with its anarchic vegan/hippie militancy, fluttering handbills, perpetually wan and humorless staff and stink of wheat germ and patchouli.

This was, of course, before I’d seen the menu. This was before I’d tried to settle in behind a cold beer and my well-thumbed copy of World War Z and found myself too distracted by the crowd and their endlessly looping conversations about meatless nutrition, art, films I’d never heard of and what-the-fuck-is-seitan to appreciate Max Brooks’s brilliant depiction of an underwater zombie attack on a Chinese submarine…

At the end of a long week of tempeh bacon, grainy pizza and a few surprisingly good moments, I am still somewhat conflicted over City, O’ City. Of all the vegetarian restaurants in Denver, I like this one the best -- but considering the competition, I still don’t know if that’s saying very much.

You can see for yourself in my review of City, followed by a visit to the new WaterCourse Foods, which moved to 17th Avenue last year and surrendered its old spot to City. And then, for those of you who either didn’t get quite enough of last week’s hot dog debate or (like me) can only take so much vegetarian talk before the urge for pork products becomes overwhelming, have no fear: Bite Me will wrap up the wiener discussion with a visit to Biker Jim Pittenger’s gourmet hot dog cart and his new concession stand. And I’ll also tell you where to pick up a gallon of bacon ice cream. – Jason Sheehan