Denver Food Blog

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Just got off the blower with Curt Steinbecker (that's him in the funny hat up there, standing beside his wife, Deicy) of Ondo's, the Spanish tapas restaurant that I've been waiting forever for at 250 Steele Street (in the former home of French 250).

Okay, so maybe it hasn't quite been forever, but it's certainly seemed that way. The sign they've had out front -- the one that says "Opening This Fall"? That thing has been taunting me, filling my head with dreams of patatas bravas, little fried anchovies, albondigas and bacalao.

These new PETA ads are weird...

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Twenty-eight hours and sixty-five entries later, we know one thing for sure: You people out there in Hotcakesland certainly do love your dick jokes. And your Colfax jokes. And your vegan jokes. And your vegan-on-Colfax dick jokes...

Still, we had to go with just one caption for our last set of Anthony Bourdain tickets. And the winner is Jimbot.

Well done: Your entry captured both the uncomfortable confusion and surrealistic humor we were. So, Jim, send an e-mail to cafe@westword.com and we'll get you the details on your prize.

As for the rest of you, thanks for playing. And better luck next time.

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​Tomorrow night, Mayor John Hickenlooper will give Anthony Bourdain a fork to the city when he introduces the travelin' man at "An Evening with Anthony Bourdain" at the Buell Theatre. Of course, Bourdain has already forked this city: After visiting Denver on a book tour in 2002, he said he saw no reason to return, because the food here was so bad.

That inspired our first ticket giveaway contest, in which we asked readers to list the three restaurants that Bourdain should visit, restaurants guaranteed to change his mind about the Denver food scene. Nathan won that round (with Ian a runner-up), but taken together, the collected answers create an excellent guide to dining in Denver, as you can see here.

Yesterday, when we got our greedy bhands on two more sets of tickets, we introduced a second giveaway, which involves putting a caption to the picture at right. We're accepting entries on that until noon today (the winner will be announced at the end of the day). And you won't want to miss the entries thus far, which you can read here -- where you can also enter the contest.

​Oxtails are everywhere. In the new Lola bowl on the new brunch menu at Lola, in this amazing dish from Pete Marczyk at Marczyk Fine Foods. But what, exactly, is the animal that contributes its tail to these delicious preparations?

Here's the answer from Marcyzk:

"Ox can be any number of beasts of burden, but usually refers to castrated males. Oxtail refers to the tail of any cow. To my knowledge, oxtails for culinary use are not the docked tails of the beast, but rather the harvested tails of the slaughtered animal. Our oxtail is from Niman. We get them whole (about three feet in length) and we cut between the cartilage by hand rather than saw-cut. This totally changes the way they cook -- for the better."

Hey, Tony? You gonna drink all that yourself?

​Here's what you've all been waiting for--the winning entry in our "win a dream date with Tony B" contest!

After several days and 55 entries (most of which actually stuck to the rules for a change), we have chosen our favorite. The mission was to provide three places for Denver-hating Tony Bourdain to go when he hits town on Wednesday, November 18.

Lori Midson

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Paul Piciocchi has had his hands full this fall, turning the former Alto space at 1320 15th Street into not one, but three venues -- and also running his other popular Denver club, Tryst, at 1512 Larimer Street, right up the street from his new project.

A third of that project will debut this weekend, when The Drink, the portion of the space that's billed as a "soft tavern & bar," is slated to open. Rack & Rye, the gastropub, and mix, a live music venue, should come on line within the week.

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Okay, so yesterday I used my not insignificant Staffing Up mojo to give some suggestions as to what ought to be done with the former Mojitos , which closed last week at 1120 East Sixth Avenue.

And then this morning, guess what happened? I get a phone call from Alex Gurevich of Limon and Cafe Bisque. He tells me he read the piece. He tells me he has some news.

"We're working on that location," he tells me.

"What location?"

"Mojitos."

"Seriously?"

The menu includes wings and eye candy

​The Tilted Kilt was slated to open this week in the former ESPN Zone space on the 16th Street Mall, but the official kick-off time has been delayed.

"We are shooting for next Monday, but it could be a day or two after that," says franchise owner Mark Voss. "There are a few loose ends that need to be wrapped up."

Voss describes the process of opening the restaurant as a full-fledged production, one that included auditions for front-of-house servers. "We want the perfect face; we are committed to having an amazing space and well-trained staff," he says. "We are trying to appeal to anyone who wants a bite to eat, watch some sports and enjoy a fun pub atmosphere."

With servers wearing knee-high socks, short plaid kilts and matching halter tops to show off their cleavage and midriffs, there will be plenty to watch beyond the fifty plasma TVs. These outfits, coupled with the 24 beers on tap, gave rise to the Tilted Kilt slogan: "A cold beer never looked so good."

Closed and out of luck

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The lights are on and the Open sign still hangs by the door at 1630 Welton Street, but that door is locked tight and the phone, which no one answered last week, is now disconnected.

Looks like Chopsticks & Sushi is officially closed. But then, owner Yan De Yang is in jail, charged with first-degree murder in connection with a slaying October 22 at his restaurant. Read Michael Roberts's report on the formal charges here.

Yang has a November 4 appearance scheduled in Denver District Court.

Lori Midson

Top Chef winner Hosea Rosenberg with fellow contestant Fabio Viviani

​Okay, so Jax-Boulder superchef Hosea Rosenberg wins Top Chef: New York and, along with the top title, gets $100,000 to blow on opening a new restaurant.

Except he hasn't opened a new restaurant. In fact, as I reported in this space last month, Rosenberg is taking a sabbatical from Jax, 928 Pearl Street in Boulder, so that he can "travel all over the United States and to South America," where he'll be "attending the Latin Food and Wine Festival in Florida, cooking at a James Beard dinner in Wisconsin, touring Louisiana for the best food and drink..." and...and...

Yan de Yang is behind bars, not the burners.

​Yan de Yang, the owner of Chopsticks & sushi at 1630 Welton Street, is now behind bars -- not the burners.

He's being held without bail on suspicion of first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of Lloyd Running Bear II, who was slain at the restaurant last Thursday.

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The Tilted Kilt, a sports-bar chain popular enough to publish its own calendar, will start a new page the first week of November in Denver, when its latest location -- in the former ESPN Zone in the Tabor Center -- is now slated to open.

​Sushi Hai, at 3600 West 32nd Avenue, celebrates its fifth anniversary tonight starting at 7 p.m., with half-off on sushi and drinks.

The Scott Davis Project will be playing acoustic blues in the downstairs Hai Bar -- a space guarded by an off-duty cop this past weekend. It was an unusual sight in Highland, but perhaps an inevitable one given the October 4 fight that started in the 3,000 square foot club and spilled out onto the street. Inevitable, if the owners of Sushi Hai want to avoid a major battle with neighbors. Hai Bar is also now closing at 1 a.m. on weekends -- although that's not yet reflected on the web site. "Like the Highland neighborhood we call home, Sushi Hai is refined, with a funky bite to its elegance," the home page promises.

Make that funky fight.

Councilman Rick Garcia has formed a committee of local bar owners and neighbors concerned about the the businesses in their midst; that group will meet for the first time next week.

The once and future El Charrito

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You could once find the city's best dive bars along Larimer Street, but gentrification has claimed most of those, leaving only the Star Bar at 2137 Larimer and now El Charrito, which has made a comeback at 2100 Larimer. This longtime Larimer haunt is only open after 7 p.m., and a sign on the door reserves the right to change hours at whim -- but when that door's unlocked, it leads to one of Colorado's classic dives.

(For the record, although we love Herb's, just across and down the street at 2057 Larimer, in no way does this live music and martini mecca qualify as a dive, as its fans suggest.)

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Hosea Rosenberg may have won last season's Top Chef, but his luck didn't hold for Big Red F colleague James Lee, the Boulder mixologist who placed fourth at this weekend's Iron Bar Chef contest at the annual Santé Restaurant Symposium in New York.

Which means Lee didn't get the $1,000 prize, or the chance to move on to the 2009 Shake It Out competition. But he's not bitter -- despite the fact that you can usually find him shaking things up at the Bitter Bar, the very hot bar within Happy, the Big Red F Asian restaurant at 835 Walnut Street in Boulder. That's where you can sample a Scottish Sunset, the drink that took him to the finals; you can read all about it here.

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A few days back, we talked about Kevin Taylor getting his catering operation up and running out of Palettes at the Denver Art Museum. Inside that blog, there were some questions about what had gone wrong with the launch of what was supposed to be his newest full-scale restaurant, Kevin Taylor Steak. It had originally been scheduled for a September 2009 opening, but here we are in October and no new steak house. So what gives?

I got a hold of Taylor this morning and asked precisely that. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer was about as banal as they come: delays from the contractor.

Lori Midson

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Travel + Leisure, the glossy travel title that encourages readers to anchor down in Amsterdam, escape to the Cape and luxuriate in Italy -- Santorini-style, has just released its America's Favorite Cities issue -- and the results, based on 60,000 votes, from residents and visitors alike, are in.

While Denver cleaned up in the public park, environmentally friendly, cleanest city, family vacation, airport design and active/athletic residents categories, apparently our ethnic food scene well and truly sucks, because of the thirty cities that are ranked in that category, guess where we landed? We got stuck with the number 27 spot, which means there are exactly three cities -- St. Louis, Dallas and Nashville -- that did worse than us.

Karl Allis lost his seat on Millionaire Monday.

​Oops. For a restaurateur, Karl "Hungus" Allis slipped up on an embarrassing (and expensive) question during yesterday's showing of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

Allis, the restaurant manager at Atomic Cowboy and Fat Sully's, had started in the hot seat on Friday's show, and made it up to the $12,500 question. So on Monday, with three lifelines left, he started with this $15,000 question in the "Chinese Food" category: "Dim sum, a meal of varied dishes originating in China, is often translated loosely into English as 'a little bit' of what?"

The possible answers:a) health, b) family, c) heart, d) joy.

​Damn. Gourmet magazine, the Condé Nast publication that's been pimping food porn for nearly seventy years, is done. The somber news, which was delivered in a memo from Condé CEO Chuck Townsend, didn't come as much of a shock to industry insiders, many of whom have predicted the magazine's demise for months (blame a decline in ad pages), but the cut is still a major bummer, especially for Gourmet's editor, Ruth Reichl, the former restaurant critic at the New York Times and a formidable force in the food world. (Her Twitter page is quiet right now, but expect it to heat up soon.) The magazine will cease publication after the November issue, although the website will remain.

In related news, Cookie magazine, another Condé Nast pub, also crumbled, which is horrible news for kids around the world, especially right before Halloween. The good news? The staff at Bon Appetit, the sole surviving Condé Nast epicurean monthly, all have their jobs.

For now.

The full memo that put the knife in Gourmet's cake is available after the jump.

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Some of you are getting pretty cocky about this "Guess where I'm eating" game. And so I present to you this simple photo. Just looks like a bowl of pho, right? Same bowl of pho you could get at a hundred different shops around town. But in the picture, there's one very important clue as to the actual location of this particular bowl of pho.

Guess it and you'll have bragging rights as a bona fide Denver pho junkie. Good luck...

Lori Midson

Enchiladas from El Taco de Mexico

​Gourmet, the national food porn glossy with lots of dreamboat pictures, is rumored to be going down -- fast, at least according to The Observer, which reported earlier this week that the monthly, along with several other pubs owned by Conde Nast, will likely need to slash its budget by 25 percent next year. And don't be surprised if there's a reduction in issue frequency, either, thanks to a cringing slide in ad pages.

So it was a pleasant surprise to open the October issue -- a celebration of The American Restaurant -- and see some good stuff, namely shout-outs to two Colorado spots in an article recognizing "Restaurants Worth the Money."

But while editors noshed their way through restaurants in New Orleans, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Chicago with $1,000 in their pockets, Denver didn't get that kind of royal treatment. Which may explain, in part, why one of the joints that Gourmet named best in the West is El Taco de Mexico, 714 Santa Fe Drive, which is obviously worth the money since it's effing delicious and it costs virtually nothing to eat there. Gourmet didn't exactly say that, but here's what they did write about our beloved taqueria:

This tiny no-frills Mexican joint is beloved for its green chile, a.k.a. Colorado's de facto state food. Order tacos al pastor or burritos de chile relleno at the counter, say yes when asked if you want it smothered, and get some horchata to cool the chile's blaze.

Lori Midson

Top Chef winner and Jax-Boulder exec chef Hosea Roseberg is taking a five-month sabbatical

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How's this for a coincidence?

Beginning Thursday, October 1, Hosea Rosenberg -- Bravo's Top Chef: New York conquistador and Jax-Boulder exec chef -- is launching www.whereishosea.com, to more or less announce his five-month sabbatical from the house of aquatics that made him famous.

The new site, explains Bryce Clark, marketing director for Big Red F, the Dave Query restaurant group that owns Jax, "will be a combination of a blog that Hosea will write himself, Twitter and Facebook feeds, recipes, travel guides and pictures and videos of his travels."

Late last week, Leah Cohen, the contestant on Top Chef: New York best known for swapping spit with Rosenberg in a PG-rated sex scene while filming the show (they've since denied a relationship), suddenly upped and vacated her exec chef position at New York's Centro Vinoteca to "continue her culinary education by studying in Southeast Asia and Spain." Her departure, coincidentally, comes at the exact same time that Rosenberg plans to "travel all over the United States and to South America," which he'll be doing in between "attending the Latin Food and Wine Festival in Florida, cooking at a James Beard dinner in Wisconsin and touring Louisiana for the best food and drink," says Clark.

All of which leaves us to wonder where Rosenberg and Cohen will hook up in between their worldly jaunts.

Justin Wadstein's got his pie in the sky.

​The Festival Italiano at Belmar, which took place this past Saturday and Sunday, has quickly become one of the best festivals in Denver.

Not only was there great food and wine, as well as very little shlock for sale, fewer stroller and dogs, and lower temperatures (September beat August hands down when it comes to weather), but the Italian extravaganza offered some truly different activities that made a visit worthwhile.

Even better, it offered stuff for both kids and adults, and kept everyone happy.

For the adults, there were the wine seminars and tastings, the chef demos and Italian lessons; for the kids, there was grape stomping (Balistreri Vineyards makes wine every year from it, called Little Feet Merlot), face painting and story tellers; for both, there was terrific food, a bocce ball tournament, chalk art, Sinatra singers, traditional Italian flag throwing and Justin Wadstein, the world champion pizza dough tosser, who did amazing things with wads of flour and water.​

And although the weeks leading up to the festival involved a bit of a pizza dispute (which you can read about here), the food was terrific. The line for sausage sandwiches served up by Polidori was half a block long, but the other vendors were serving up some mean grub as well, including Italian egg rolls, deep dish pizza, meatball sandwiches, and my favorite, sausage on a stick.

Oh, and don't forget the cannoli!

The sausage on a stick came from Nonna's Chicago Bistro, 6603 Leetsdale Drive, and it went perfectly with some bocce ball cheering. Oddly, however, the Oven, the Neapolitan style pizza place in Belmar, didn't appear to have a cart out in the festival. Granted, the restaurant is right in the thick of things, but it was getting almost no business inside.

Next year, I'd suggest the Oven get Wadstein in there. Oh, and pizza on a stick wouldn't hurt.

Zaidy's in happier days.

​The residents of Writer Square were ready last night with their petitions complaining about a proposed liquor-license change for the former Zaidy's Deli Downtown, which morphed into Zaidy's Fusion Grill this spring and was planning to transform itself again into Fusion Cantina, offering salsa dancing and live entertainment.

But the application for a cabaret license, which would allow such entertainment, was dismissed at last night's hearing before the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses, when no attorney or corporate officer appeared to push the application.

Although Zaidy's could refile, the restaurant space remains dark and messages left at the Fusion Grill number have not been returned.

The lights were off on Monday, and the listing suddenly disappeared from the upcoming hearings schedule at the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses -- but by all accounts, the liquor-license hearing at which the city will consider whether to expand Zaidy's license to allow live entertainment at the Writer Square location is still on for 6 p.m. tonight.

Stay tuned for the next installment in the story of what's now being called Fusion Cantina.

The vision for the new Writer Square -- it doesn't look like this now.

​David Hannes, president of the Writer Square Condominium Association, has had his hands full dealing with the ongoing renovations at Writer's Square, which have turned the downtown oasis into a concrete desert. He lives above the restaurant that had been Zaidy's Downtown Deli, and he's also kept a close eye on the the changes in the space downstairs, which have added another level of frustration regarding the area's uncertain future.

This spring, while Zaidy's remained a deli during the day, it transformed into Zaidy's Fusion Grill at night, featuring a menu of small plates and music, including salsa. "It has been terrible," Hannes says of the late-night activities. "There have been nights I can't get to sleep until after 1:30 a.m."

Hannes says he contacted the restaurant 37 times to complain, but the noise issue was not resolved.

​Cheba Hut raised a toasty toast this week when a Weld County District Court judge overturned a ruling that had denied a liquor license to the sub shop's Greeley location.

In April, Robert Frick, who rules on Greeley liquor licenses, turned down the company's request, citing Cheba Hut's pot-related marketing strategy, and spanking it with this: "This restaurant is founded upon the principles and theme of the illegal drug marijuana and incorporates other illegal controlled-substance-related themes."

​"At long last," proclaims the Coalition of Immokalee Workers website, "a grower steps forward."

And let's not forget a restaurant company, Chipotle, which, as spokesman Chris Arnold had told us three weeks ago, was negotiating with that grower to get around a stalemate that had prevented the Denver-based outfit from raising the price it paid for Florida-grown tomatoes - a raise that will now go directly to Florida farm workers.

The grower that made it possible: East Coast Farms, one of Florida's largest tomato growers, "somebody willing to make a change," Arnold says, by defying the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which had blocked a half-dozen of CIW's Fair Food agreements with growers for close to two years.

Can't we all just get along?

​If you've been following the pizza war between Virgilio's and Belmar, a turf battle over Belmar's upcoming Festival Italiano and its refusal to allow Virgilio's to participate, then you know there's a heated debate in the comments section (seventy and counting, last time I looked). One of those comments is from a guy who calls himself "Doug" -- and Doug, it seems, took the time to contact Belmar general manager Lary Herkal, whose decision it was to deny Virgilio's participation in the festival.

Doug must have a lot more clout than I do, because when I e-mailed Herkal earlier this morning to ask about the reasons behind his decision, I got squat. Nada. A big black hole of nothing.

But Doug got himself a big ol' e-mail from Herkal, which he then posted in the comments section. And Herkal's note is interesting, because while he insists that the "festival could only accommodate 4-5 pizza vendors," he then goes on to write, "The three pizza vendors that will be participating at this year festival, Grammy's, Mici and Belmar's The Oven, are all small local based companies."

So, let's see if I have this right: By Herkal's own admission, the festival can house four or five pizza joints, but there are only three pizza vendors participating, which means, at least by my math calculations, that at least one additional space is available. Two, if Belmar wants to be generous. Herkal doesn't address that puzzlement in his note to Doug, but he does "accept full responsibility for the process and the actual selections that were made."

Read what else Herkal has to say after the jump.

​It's hard to imagine anything more meaty than BBQ. It is a cuisine based entirely on the flesh of the pig, the cow and, in some cases, the chicken.

So it's no surprise that a BBQ joint owner might hang up on a sales rep trying to sell him vegan meat substitutes. That's certainly happened a lot to Jeff Friedrich of Gardein, a Canadian company that uses a blend of veggies, grains and soy to make simulated pulled pork, beef skewers, chicken breasts and other meatless meats.

But not when he called Sam Taylor's Bar-B-Que, the twelve-year-old Glendale joint at 435 South Cherry Street, whose motto is "one bone is all it takes." Instead, Sam Taylor's signed on to cater last Saturday's Pretenders concert at the Denver Botanic Gardens' Chatfield location, and to serve only Gardein products.