Denver Food Blog

Mark Manger

Jamey Fader dishes out one of the 50top dishes.

​At 5:15 p.m. on a chilly Thursday, Jamey Fader, clad in black, with a plaid cap pulled low over his forehead, is balancing on a box in the corner of a back-alley warehouse. "Welcome to whatever the fuck this is," he deadpans.

What do you get when you put fourteen chefs and fifty enthusiastic diners in the Stranahan's warehouse -- with plenty of product nearby? A great party, as Lori Midson reveals in this week's profile of the underground institutions known as 50top.

Since chefs Jamey Fader and John Hinman came up with the concept close to two years ago, 50top has grown into Denver's most amazing culinary event -- and one that's been completely off the record. Until now. Feast on Midson's piece here tomorrow.

Jason Sheehan, now of Seattle

​ I feel bloated, exhausted and fat as a bastard--lying splayed out in the middle of my living room floor like a beached whale, catching up on old episodes of The Simpsons on DVR and sweating pure suet.

It's been a week, more or less, since I rolled gimpily into town and found my way down to the office. I detailed my first day's eating adventures like a war correspondent just back from the front--dropping my critic's gear (wallet, credit cards, laptop bag, reporter's notebooks, pill case full of ibuprofen and Zofran and hip flask) by the door and falling right down in front of the typer as soon as I got home, unloading on the poor machine like it'd said something nasty about my mother.

Hungry for a taste of Jason Sheehan's writing? He's landed in Seattle, as he detailed yesterday in the above post. You can follow his adventures here, on the restaurant blog of our partner paper, the Seattle Weekly, which now can claim Sheehan as its own.

Mark Manger

Eric Hines in the kitchen of The Kitchen.

​There are a few things that I like about Boulder and many that I don't. For example, it bothers me that Boulder exists where it does, snugged up tight against the base of the Flatirons, frantically humping the leg of a mountain range that would be that much more splendid if the whole town just buggered off to the plains. But then, I like the view of Boulder as you come up over the big hill on I-36 and see the town all laid out with its predominantly low-slung buildings and tidy landscaping. From a distance, it looks so idyllic -- like a fantasy postcard painted by a landscape artist dosed to the gills on NyQuil and Prozac. The town is filled with pretty girls, and that's good. It's also filled with pretty boys, all carrying Rollerblades or freshly returned from a thirty-mile hike and a spa visit, and that's not so good. Makes the pretty girls that much less likely to shoot a smile or pass the time of day with a scowling, scrofulous, chain-smoking, perpetual ex-New Yorker with a fatal allergy to any outdoor activity that doesn't involve a barbecue and a wet bar.

That was the start of Jason Sheehan's review of The Kitchen penned back in 2004. He didn't like the restaurant much more than he did Boulder, and last month, when he asked readers to suggest a place for his last Westword review, several recommended the Kitchen - none more eloquently than John Broening, exec chef of Duo and Olivea.

​Time is growing short. Less than a week before I turn my back on the 303 and make for the 206 (which sounds weird just to say), and everywhere I turn, I'm seeing things I'm going to miss. It's no longer just the big things that are getting to me, but the little ones as well -- my view of the mountains as I drive in towards the office, the waitresses at the diner where I've done most of my work for the past five years, the pretty glow of the cop lights on a Friday night as they round up the drunks and face-punchers from the bar across the street...

I've got no regrets (yet). I'm certainly looking forward to settling into my new home and new scene. But Denver has been good to me. I've had more adventures, seen more weirdness and fun in this town than I have most anywhere else I've ever lived.

​So how many people braved the weather last night and came out for my last book signing?

Eleven.

Which some people might see as sad, but not me. First, because that doesn't even take the record for my least-attended signing (which would be eight people showing up on a night without apocalyptic weather and at a venue with a full bar). And second, because those who did show up? They were die-hards, baby. True fans and good folk and committed crazies.

​The way things are looking right now, the new Ali Baba (which is just waiting on permits, according to the manager) might manage to get open before the end of December. Failing that, though, the fallback date is January 1.

That's what I wrote at the beginning of December, from the best information available at the time. The owners, who already have the original Ali Baba in Golden and a second restaurant in Highlands Ranch, planned to have everything up and running at their third Ali Baba, this one in the Landmark project in Greenwood Village (at 5380 Greenwood Plaza Boulevard, right next to the Hapa Sushi there) long before the ball hit bottom in Times Square.

​No one ever said the restaurant business was easy. Most people (the smart ones) would actually say that, short of becoming a medical guinea pig or hand-grenade catcher, the food service-industry is one of the toughest out there. Fun, sure. Exciting. But not the easiest way in the world to make a buck.

But even by restaurant industry standards, Boulder is having it rough right now. In a January 5 article in the Daily Camera, writer Alicia Wallace ran down the butcher's bill:

​I first met Matt Franklin through his cuisine...I wrote in April of last year, when I first visited Franklin's then-new restaurant, Farro. Under the neon, tile and blue Miami Vice lights at 240 Union in Lakewood, he made me amazing lobster corn dogs, served in a plastic basket with homemade coleslaw and a bag of Fritos. Another favorite from another year: a simple, peasant plate of littleneck clams, chorizo and potatoes in a broth of garlic, lemon and fresh thyme. It was a hot summer night in Denver in June 2008, and the room was full of rich men in golf shirts drinking hundred-dollar bottles of wine, but I might as well have been on the Côte d'Azur. By then, Franklin was cooking on the other side of town, at the Wine Experience Cafe out in the boonies of the Southlands development.

Franklin soon moved on, bailing out of the Wine Experience and throwing in with another serious industry veteran -- John Richard, late of the Palm, Gallagher's, Starfish and Las Vegas before that -- to open Farro last November in a different suburb (Centennial this time), in a different setting (straight-up strip mall) with a different focus. Franklin had done Californian and he'd done fusion, he'd done Mediterranean and a sort of Froggish but borderless nouvelle. He'd done goofy and he'd done gimmicky, and he'd done a lot of what could've been called New American. And now? Italian. Strip-mall, suburban Italian.

Farro was a great restaurant then. It served a plate of meatloaf that I still sometimes daydream about, especially when facing down a plate of meatloaf from somewhere else that just doesn't quite measure up.

​"This might be the last time, you know?" Laura said. "Our last chance." And she was right. While Curt and Deicy Steinbecker and Ondo's might just be starting out in Denver, we were finishing up, doing last things, handling final details before aiming ourselves west and making for the distant coast, the stones and salmon of Seattle. Our house was a wreck. Our things all in boxes behind us. And I'd been waiting months for Ondo's to open, tracking it with the fanatic focus of some Brooklyn towhead pawing through baseball cards and building fantasy lineups on his bedroom rug, talking with Curt, watching the long-dormant website, hoping that Laura and I would get to experience their Spain before we turned our backs on home and headed for parts unknown.

Yesterday, I told you all the places I decided not to do for my final review in Denver. And now you know what I did.

I couldn't have picked a better place. After months of waiting, I was excited to finally try Ondo's. And not only that, but there was something nicely cyclical about starting out my tour of duty in Denver with green chile and Mexican food and ending it with a long, lovely hit of modern, worldly Spanish tapas.

It was a perfect goodbye. And if what's happening right now in the kitchen at Ondo's is any measure of where Denver will be heading in this new decade, I'm a little jealous of all the millions of meals you people will get to eat while I'm kicking it wetly in Salmonville.

​Word went out yesterday that James Rugile was looking for a fresh body for the line at Venue: "James Rugile needs a part time line cook ASAP," his Facebook status update reported, emphasis on the ASAP.

I put in a call to Venue and spoke with one of the managers, wh said that Rugile was looking for someone who's "just an all-around cook." Venue does lunch and dinner, so the applicant must be flexible. And because the restaurant has some pastry on the dessert menu, a bit of rounding in the gentler galley arts certainly wouldn't hurt. It's a part-time gig, but this being the restaurant industry, I'm guessing that just means something less than 100 hours a week.

​So the big question last week (and the week before) was what restaurant I should review before saying goodbye to Denver for good. I got a lot of suggestions. Some of them were good. Some of them were ridiculous. In the end, I went with my gut (and the demands of at least a certain percentage of the people) and chose...

Well, I'm not going to tell you just yet. First, I'll dispense with some of the other propositions put forth by faithful readers:

​Just got word that the Samba Room (1460 Larimer Street) will be starting off the New Year with some new blood and fresh energy in the back of the house.

Gabe Stallone, ex of Vesta, Steuben's and, most recently, Izakaya Den, called on Monday to let me know that he'd recently been brought on as either sous chef or chef de cuisine, depending on how one defines such titles. "I'll be the one handling the food," he said, "so whatever that would be."

​I am to the point where I am literally counting down the days before I bail out of the Mile High City for the sea-level thrills of Seattle. And yet, I still have details that need seeing to, last things that need to be done, promises that need to be fulfilled before I show this town my taillights and light out for Salmonland.

One of those things? A final book-signing. Pretty much the minute the news broke that I was leaving, Nina Else from Who Else! Books at the Broadway Book Mall got a hold of me and asked if I could drop by for one last event. And because I love books, bookstores (particularly small and independent ones), and the people who run them, I of course said yes.

​When I arrived in Colorado seven and a half years ago, there was no Stranahan's, no Colorado whiskey to speak of, and no war in my soul over what to order when I pulled up before the long oak with a taste for whiskey and some time to kill. I was a Jameson drinker then, tips to toes. Still am, as a matter of fact. And I love Jameson whiskey to this day the way a flower loves the sun or a pervert loves porn.

But I also have come to passionately enjoy a fine glass of that magic elixir created by Jess Graber and George Stranahan, that rough, lovely, heady spirit with which they captured everything they loved about Colorado in hard-liquor format.

​It was the year of the gastropub, the year of the gourmet hamburger joint and cupcake shop, the year of the noodle bar. For me, it was the year of the book, the year I lost my father, the year I found out it was to be my last year in the Mile High City after already having put seven of them in my rearview mirror in what felt to me like record-breaking time...

From TAG and Olivea and Argyll to Root Down and Mark & Isabella, it's been one helluva year. And what better way to celebrate it than with one perfect meal, assembled from all the tatters and leftovers of the hundreds of great meals I've eaten over the past 365 days? If you had a dozen-some courses, an unlimited line of credit and one night in Denver, where would you go? How would you assemble your perfect meal?

It took me a week and a lot of advice to put together my list -- after I'd been eating all year. You'll find that perfect meal here (or on a newsstand) tomorrow.

No charcuterie for you...

​Colt & Gray has had a helluva year. First, it opened -- which, as anyone who's ever gone through a restaurant opening can tell you, is no small thing and never guaranteed until the first paying customer actually steps through the door -- and then it got slammed with business right from the start. There have been nights when I've needed to go in lubed up like a channel swimmer just to squeeze through to the bar.

Still, i finally managed enough meals there that I was able to review Colt & Gray for the December 24 issue.

​I get a lot of e-mails from marketing people. A lot. Amid all the tales of bad service offered by people who demand that I tell their stories to the world and ads for discount Vicodin through the mail are pitches from boutique marketers blindly pimping their clients -- many of which are bands, flooring installers or caterers, not even proper restaurants.

And every once in a while, I receive a pitch that rises above the level of the ordinary, workaday annoyance -- one that gets under my skin or pinches me in some way that I find less than pleasant. I got one of those today. I've removed the names to protect the dumb, but here it is in its entirety:

​First off, thanks to everyone for their suggestions on where I should eat my last review dinner in Denver. The comments have been excellent, the suggestions helpful, and the current leader seems to be Casa Bonita -- which I assume is rising fast because so many of you just want me to die before making the big trip to Seattle.

But because all of you out there in Hotcakesland are being so helpful, I've decided to return the favor by answering some questions and offering some helpful links to some of you commenters who have apparently missed or lost track of some of the better reviews we've run over the years. There's no form or order to this list; it's no judgment on the restaurants named. It's just a little guide through the seven-and-a-half-year-long jungle of words I'll be leaving in my wake. So let's get to it, shall we?

​Every day that passes reminds me of another thing I'm going to miss about this town when I finally take my leave in just a few short weeks.

Today, while running through a list of every restaurant I'd reviewed in 2009, I found my March 18 love letter to Bones--Frank Bonanno's noodle house and completely chef-driven restaurant at 701 Grant Street.

​Colt & Gray has been open just four months, but owner and exec Nelson Perkins had been working on the restaurant for years -- in his head, mostly, or on paper. He brought on Brad Rowell, a buddy from C-school, to stand as chef de cuisine and then the two of them rescued Ryan Leinonen, ex of the Kitchen in Boulder, who was cut adrift from his chef's post at Root Down while Colt & Gray was still going through build-out and menu design. Early on, concept drawings of the space were released that described a spare and cozy room, bar, fireplace and simple furnishings (looking very little like the finished version), and gave the impression of a carefully balanced mix of rustic vibes and polished finery (which was dead-on). And a preview of the menu sent local foodistas into paroxysms of drooling joy. Crispy pig's trotters. Marrow bones. Fried oysters. Country pate and charcuterie. Somewhere inside Perkins, Rowell or Leinonen, or all three, there lived a very tiny, very accurate archer who knew precisely how to skewer Denver's food-mad straight through their starved and fatty little hearts.

I was no less wounded than anyone else. It was a board that brought to mind visions of the Spotted Pig in Manhattan, inspired a vague longing for butcher's blocks and Amex gold cards with unlimited lines of credit. I read that first menu release like it was porno, with a focused and frankly degrading level of single-minded concentration. Despite the fact that Colt & Gray (which was named after Perkins's two sons, something that the servers make a big deal out of any time anyone brings a child into the dining room) had been labeled a gastropub, I wanted to go to there in a real bad way. I wanted to live like a mouse in the pantry, gorging myself nightly on pig's feet and bone marrow.

​I'm going to miss breakfast burritos. I'm going to miss all breakfast burritos -- the good ones, the bad ones, the great ones and every one in between. But most of all, I'm going to miss the breakfast burritos from the Santiago's location on Leetsdale Avenue, which I consider to be my home location even though it's nowhere near my home at all.

Because I'm not terribly bright, I always forget which style of burrito is being offered on which day -- whether it's bacon day or chorizo day or ham day or whatever -- and so my breakfast visits are always a surprise. A pleasant surprise.

Yup, that's just what you think it is: jalapeno and rice wine vinegar mignonette, courtesy of Chicken Fried Gourmet

​Last week's Ask the Critic question about the worst food trends of the past decade morphed over into a formal list of the twenty worst crimes committed against cuisine since 2000 (or so).

This week, we're going in the other direction. This week, I'm all about the love and looking for things that happened in the food world that made you smile, made you hungry, made you thrilled that you were living in this most fortunate of decades.

​The clock is ticking. Every day that passes means one less day I've got in the three-oh-three. And I'm still looking for suggestions for the final restaurant I should review before I slink out for wetter, grayer climes.

The rules: Any restaurant in the area counts, Denver or Boulder or anywhere in my normal stomping grounds. It can be new, old, historic or some place I've reviewed before. But if you say The Fort, I'm gonna come to your house and punch you in the neck.

Let me know below, folks. All suggestions welcome.

​As most of you reading this already know, I am not long for this town. In a frighteningly short amount of time, I will be packing my bags and heading for Seattle, where a gig awaits me as restaurant critic at one of our sister papers, the Seattle Weekly.

Still, I've got enough time left to do a little thinking and a little mourning for the scene I'm about to leave. And lately, everything I drive by reminds me that, soon, I'll be too far away to just drop in on some of my favorite places and the addresses that I've haunted for the past seven-and-a-half years.

Mark Manger

Ratna and Macchendra Shrestha at Nepal Cuisine.

​Jason Sheehan just reviewed Nepal Cuisine, where he found more than enough momo to keep him warm through these upcoming winter months.

On momo alone, Nepal Cuisine easily ranks among the top ten Indian and Nepalese restaurants in the area. Here are the rest:

​For those of you who love sushi but don't necessarily want to pay a lot of money for sushi, do I have a deal for you.

For one night only, Joy Sushi Asian Bistro, at 7600 Park Meadows Drive, is offering its all-you-can-eat spread of dinner sushi for a lunchtime price of just $14.95. The one complication? The only night it's doing this is tonight, starting at 5 p.m., as a celebration of its one-year anniversary.

Joy has a fairly standard menu (as you can see to the left), but it's executed by a sushi chef who made his bones at Sonoda's and Sushi Den, now rolling out in the 'burbs and slinging fish to mall patrons.

So if you've got a yen for putting away some serious weight in raw fish, now you know where to go tonight. You can thank me later.

​The celebrated Mezcal restaurant, located at 3230 East Colfax Avenue in Denver, announced yesterday that it has appointed Basic Food Group as its new restaurant management company. "We will operate Mezcal with the highest of standards; the reasons people love Mezcal will not change. The staff and the managers of Mezcal are looking forward to working with the dynamic team at Basic Food Group," said Tim Connors.

Connors, now the brand-new directing partner of Mezcal's new incarnation under Basic Food Group, put out that release shortly after the news broke that chef Sean Yontz and owner/partner Jesse Morreale had been relieved of management duties at the restaurant they'd been running for six years -- on Mezcal's sixth anniversary.

Even their logo looks like it tastes bad...

​I hate Domino's Pizza. Seriously loathe it in a way that ought to be reserved for the hating only of living things, not branded corporate entities. I hate it so much that when one of its commercials comes up on TV, I always turn away and give it the finger, curse at it or, if I'm feeling particularly embittered, start in on the Story of the Dessert Pizza -- a kind of founding myth of mine and Laura's relationship.

See, back when we were living in Albuquerque, we were poor. Dirt poor. Dodging creditors and Hungry-every-Friday poor. We were know-the-mailman-by-his-first-name poor, because I was unemployed at the time, collecting government mercy funds from Uncle Sugar, and I knew to the minute just what time our mail carrier was supposed to show up with my unemployment check. We were poor enough that ordering a pizza represented a kind of wild and fiscally unsound celebration -- a twenty-dollar bachanal that amounted to a significant percentage of our net income for the week.

​Last night was the sixth anniversary of Mezcal, the Mexican cantina and tequila bar at 3230 East Colfax Avenue that has played host to some of the best and some of the weirdest nights I have spent in the city over the past several years.

Last night was also the night that Jesse Morreale and Sean Yontz -- the two faces most publicly associated with Mezcal and the guys who essentially ran the place during its first six years of business -- were no longer welcome on the premises.

This is a story that's still developing (and will likely continue to develop over the next few days), but here's what we know for sure right now, from the two principals involved:

​In Nepal, momo -- the small, white-flour dumplings that represent the Nepali contribution to world dumpling culture -- are used as currency. Goats and yaks can be bartered for on the streets with buckets of momo. A fine woman is said to be worth her weight in momo. There's a folk tale that relates how a man traded his wife for three magical momo and was, forever after, thought of as the wisest man who ever lived. And the best momo-makers in any city are numbered among the most wealthy, blessed and handsome in all the land.

Okay, none of that's true. But it should be. When made well -- with skill and care and an eye toward beauty - momo are among my favorite foods. And I could totally see these dumplings being used in place of a less degradable currency, being weighed on scales in the local markets as a trade-good: ten momo for a pair of sturdy snowshoes, twelve for one of those crazy fur hats, twenty-five for a rifle with which a brave man could go out and hunt Yeti among the frozen crags of Sagarmatha. There have been days when I would've gladly traded my good boots for a dozen momo dressed in smoky, sweet and spicy tomato achaar, times in my working life when I might've considered taking my pay in momo -- spooned out on a Friday evening and kept warm as I ran home, barefoot, through the snowy streets, in a Yeti-skin bag pressed close to my heart.

Believe it or not, that's the start to this week's review of Nepal Cuisine, a great Nepalese restaurant that makes the best momo around.