The day after my review of Gemelli’s hit the stands, I got this missive from a reader:

After reading your excellent review, my friend and I arrived at 11:10 this morning (Fri), drooling over the thought of the shrimp scampi ...There was an 8 top that had walked in immediately ahead of us, so we settled into our booth, anticipating that the lone server was about to have a busy couple of hours. Right away we asked about the scampi: "Oh you're going to love this ... that is our lunch special today, and you two will be the first ever to order it!"

We enjoyed a glass of wine and a house salad ... more lunch diners showed up, and about 20 minutes passed before the poor overworked woman reappeared. "We don't have any shrimp today! Someone forgot to order it. You'll have to start over again." She dropped two menus off and disappeared.

Just thought you'd like to know. I know I'll never have the scampi that I was craving because we simply won't go back. As the wise man said, you only have one chance to make a good impression. I wish the staff and owners at Gemelli's all the best ...”

I love cereal, I love milkshakes. So when Carl's Jr. introduced their new Cap'n Crunch Milkshake, I was immediately putty in their hands. Or I should say I wanted to be putty. The trouble was twofold: 1) I don't much frequent Carl's Jr. and 2) I accidentally caught a glimpse of the nutritional information on one of those bad boys, and at 740 calories and 35 grams of fat I became paralyzed at the thought of downing the shake.

But then I got to thinking, how hard could it really be to make a Cap'n Crunch milkshake? I could even use lower fat ice cream or non-whole milk if I wanted. The ingredients were easily accessible! There'd be no way for me to calculate nutritional info! Guilt assuaged, I got me some original Cap'n Crunch and headed over to a friend's party, which just happened to be ice-cream-themed. It's like the planets aligned for this.

My own little bubble of delusion, really. I know nothing of Japan except what I’ve picked up from Saturday afternoon kung-fu movies, late-night anime, video games. I’ve never been to Japan, and I’m afraid I will be disappointed. How could reality possibly live up to the fantasy I’ve built in my brain of a place where there are ninjas in the rafters, robots walking the streets and nightly Godzilla attacks? It can’t.

The one thing I do know for sure are Japanese restaurants -- the lure of Japanese food, the heady complexity, the Zen calm.

Last week, while writing about the resurrection of Pizzeria Mundo (right), I mentioned that new owner Patrick Pool was trying to be nice to the planet and his fellow man by using as much local, organic produce as he could. Since he was heavily involved in Denver Urban Gardens, he was getting a bunch of his stock from his local DUG plot and, as a way of giving back, I wrote that he planned to send “his leftover sauce, dough and fresh produce to Brad and Libby Birky at SAME Café.”

Well, come to find, that’s not entirely true. I got an e-mail from Brad Birky this morning and he told me that while, yes, he and Pool had talked about sharing, there’s no deal yet.

Here it is, just off the line and popping fresh.

New Belgium Brewing started canning Fat Tire Amber Ale today. By mid-June, the cans should be available in limited markets, including Denver stores.

“We are looking forward to introducing our old friend, Fat Tire, in a brand new package,” says Bryan Simpson, spokesman for New Belgium. “As we fire up the line for our initial runs, we are celebrating the new adventures of Fat Tire.”

We'll drink to that. -- Patricia Calhoun

Since February 2007, Alto has been serving up contemporary American cuisine and often live music. And starting today, May 20, it will be open for lunch Tuesday through Friday. Just in time, too, because the intimate patio should make this a perfect spot for a long, leisurely lunch on these unexpectedly hot days. -- Paticia Calhoun

These days, the man mostly smokes cigarillos. He’s given up the pipe, the tins of Half & Half and bags of black cherry tobacco. Things are different. But I still have a powerful connection with that smell, with the mechanics of pipe smoking.

I remember being a teenager -- sixteen, maybe seventeen, already a smoker myself -- and sitting in his chair in the living room one night when my folks were gone; taking up the tools of his habit and trying to make them work. I remember being older, traveling, and picking up a cheap cob pipe and a foil bag of Half & Half at a drugstore, sitting in a cheap motel room and trying to go through the motions myself -- the packing, tamping, lighting and drawing. I did it because I missed his quiet, stoic company. The smell of his presence. What I learned was that pipe smoking is not something that one can aspire to casually. It takes a certain skill, a certain expertise, to make it work. How to pack the tobacco, how to hold the match, how to hold the pipe itself -- what it requires is practice: a series of motions that, once performed a thousand times, simply become reflex. My dad? He’d been smoking his pipe since I was a toddler. It was as much a part of his body as the fingers that made it work.

I was reminded of this refinement, this ease of manipulation, while sitting at a sushi bar for this week’s review (I'll post a preview here later today), watching the hands of the sushi chef prepare my fish.

Some people dedicate their lives to the study of pianist’s fingers or the way a violinist draws the bow. Others could talk for hours about the way a pitcher grips the ball before delivering a slider across the plate. Me? I remember the way my father tamped his pipe and thrill to the hands of true sushi savants at work, because they are two things that I never had the discipline or the desire to learn. -- Jason Sheehan

Or taste them, if you're at the Fuel Cafe at 3455 Ringsby Court, just west of the Platte River in the Taxi project. Since January, Fuel has been keeping residents/workers in the area fueled, serving up breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday, as well as offering to-go items and doing some catering for the businesses in Taxi.

And soon -- very soon -- owner Bob Blair hopes to augment his lineup of breakfast items, pastries, sandwiches, soups and salads with alcoholic beverages. With any luck, he'll get the okay on Fuel's liquor-license application before the expansive patio is ready to open, which should be within the week. After that, this urban oasis just might be one of the city's best spots to refuel, particularly once Blair is able to add evening hours, as he hopes to do. -- Patricia Calhoun

Indiana Jones Chocolate Cereal with Marshmallows
Kellogg's
Rating: Three spoons out of four

Cereal description: The main pieces consist of brown oat-and-corn puffs -- but the main attractions are the marshmallows, which come in four different shapes. "Indy's Hat" might more accurately be described as "a triangle," and only its brownish tint differentiates it from the bits dubbed "Temple of Akator," whatever the hell that means. (Presumably, the movie, which opens on May 22, will explain all.) Also disappointing is the "Torch," which resembles a lumpy-tipped blue diamond from Lucky Charms that only got colored to the midline. Thumbs up, though, to the "Crystal Skulls," white, skull-shaped chunks of goodness with ghostly eyes that seem to stare dolefully as you raise the spoon to your mouth. Disturbing!

Can a candy with a malted center ever really be milkshake-flavored? Wouldn't it automatically be malt-flavored? This obviously isn't a question the marketing people at Hershey's worried themselves over, and it certainly didn't stop us from picking up a giant pink pack of the candies when we spied them in a dollar bin at Walgreens. Doesn't all the best candy come out of the dollar bin? And by "best" we mean "weird and probably recalled."

First reactions:
The balls are very light pink, almost white. We expected a more PINK! pink. The scent is almost overpowering.

Liz: They smell like Barbie.
Aubrey: No, like the Strawberry Shortcake dolls!
Liz: Oh yeah, totally.

Taste:
The coating is waxy and softer than your average Whopper. Our tongues are immediately bombed with an intense fake-strawberry flavor that should be disgusting, but actually evokes some nostalgia.

Aubrey: This is the exact same flavor of a McDonald's strawberry milkshake.
Liz: They taste pink.
Aubrey: It's not bad, just exactly like every artificial strawberry flavored thing you've ever had.
Liz: Really pink.

Conclusions:
Would we finish the box? No.
Would we purchase this candy again? No.
Would we make Steve the receptionist eat one without disclosing what it was, only to find out he loathes Whoppers? Yes.
Rating: 2 out of 5

- Liz and Aubrey

And so this year, the Colfax Marathon will not start on Colfax at all, but in City Park. And it will skip the best part of Colfax, the Bluebird District, completely.

Seriously, I go to Starbucks because I like Starbucks. If I didn't like Starbucks, I could go to any one of a dozen other coffee shops within spitting distance of my office door. But I don't, because I like Starbucks. Or I did, anyhow.

I know I'm not supposed to. Corporate giant and whatnot. But I do. Or I did. And a lot of other people do (did) too, seeing as how there are forty-seven Starbucks on the 16th Street Mall alone. There are several on every block. Some of the Starbucks have Starbucks. This is because the place is popular. The lines are long. The people must have their coffee.

But in mid-April, Starbucks rolled out a new blend called Pike Place Roast, named for the street address of the original Seattle store. But as for the coffee, frankly, it's a complete sell-out. (Can a corporate giant sell out? Is that possible? Might that even be a good thing, like two negatives canceling each other out?) Anyway, in this case, the coffee bites, and I have a caffeine headache because I won't drink the stuff.

When Goodfriends closes at the end of service on Saturday, May 17 (or, more likely, early on the morning of May 18), it will close for good.

With it will go a lot of memories -- since the restaurant/watering hole at 3100 East Colfax Avenue has been open almost thirty years, and is the last survivor of Denver's once-thriving fern bar scene. So stop in -- soon -- and raise a glass (I recommend one of the margaritas) to Goodfriends. And while you're there, you can also toast the restaurant that will be moving into the space: the equally venerable Annie's Café, which will leave its longtime home on East Eighth Avenue next month, getting more space, the contents and a full liquor license in the bargain.

And Goodfriends's menu and margaritas will live on, too, since siblings Racines and Dixons offer much the same lineup. (Owners Lee Goodfriend and David Racine will be on hand for last call at Goodfriends, their first venture.)

As for the ferns, they went with the furniture. -- -- Patricia Calhoun