Denver Food Blog

After fifteen months of reviewing sandwiches, it's time to take a step back, time to consider what has passed between many, many slices of bread, time to take a break from sandwiches and offer a countdown of the ten best I've had.

It's easy to pick twenty good sandwiches, but narrowing those down to ten is hard. Still, eating all those sandwiches has given me some stomach fortitude, so here, in reverse order, are my favorite sandwiches of the past fifteen months.

​10) Spanish Ham and Cheese
Fisher Clark Deli
723 South University Boulevard, 303-722-2091
Nine bucks is a lot to spend on a sandwich, but the ingredients used here are so good and so fresh that I always find a stop is worth it. On this sandwich, I'm not sure what I like better -- the incredible, tangy-sweet onion and pear jam, or the ham and chorizo, or the soft, fresh focaccia made Bluepoint Bakery-style. Fair warning: Try to take small bites, as the meat is piled high. Yes, just try to take small bite - if you can.

​Every year, on a seemingly random day at the end of November, America celebrates Thanksgiving. (Canadians, as usual, get this completely wrong and hold it in October.) It's a day of tradition, a day to give thanks. And a day, or so it's become over time, that we all do inexplicable things just because it's Thanksgiving.

Some things are holy and central to the day: turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pumpkin pie, football. Most everything else is mutable. And then there are some things that have just plain worn out their welcome. These are things that might be better off slaughtered in the background of a Sarah Palin interview.

Denver has lots of great Mexican restaurants, a few good Latin American restaurants, and not many South American restaurants. But Fogo de Chao, which opened this summer, would be a great restaurant on any continent. Here are Denver's ten top way-south-of-the-border restaurants.

​Aji Latin American Restaurant 1601 Pearl Street, Boulder, 303-442-3464. Aji bills itself as a Latin American restaurant, and its menu is a postmodern fusion of Peruvian, Mexican, Argentine, Cuban, Brazilian, Salvadoran and Caribbean influences, in varying degrees of authenticity. Although little on Aji's menu makes much classical sense, a lot of it is very good, offering a güero-friendly Trip-Tik of Latino nouvelle, a reiteration of ingredients and flavors that present Central and South America as a single place, possessed of a single, over-arching culinary gestalt.

Colfax Avenue has plenty of places to drink, as we prove with our profile of the Nob Hill Inn. But there's also good food along America's longest main street. Including:

Lori Midson

​Bastien's Restaurant 3501 East Colfax Avenue., 303-322-0363. Bastien's isn't retro; the rest of the world is. Looking for the cocktail culture of the ´50s? Bastien's has it. Early-´70s swinger swank? It has that, too. Bastien's doesn't change with the times; the times change around it. Like they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and while the batteries on Bastien's Timex ran down a long time ago, this is still a great place to go for good steaks, strong drinks and a taste of Denver's culinary past.

Flickr

We think she went with tequila. If she punches us in the neck, our suspicions will be confirmed.

​When the lights come on, and the only thing separating you from Hammered Enough to Want Taco Bell is one last shot, it's good to have a plan. Hesitate, and risk the bartender reneging on his gracious offer to tack fifty more dollars on your tab. But: Know what you want ahead of time, and the night will be yours. (By "yours," of course, we mean "spent puking in your PS3 after mistaking it for your roommate's trash can.")

So: Ten last-call shots, and what they'll help you accomplish.

The meat skull. Yummy.

​So you're headed to a friend's Halloween party or hosting one of your own and the pressure's on to find the perfect party food to delight and entertain. You've done cute mashed potato ghosts, are bored with spider web cheesecakes, and are so over doll hands reaching out from cupcakes. Maybe you're not so interested in "delighting" after all...

We've rounded up the ten grossest, most disgusting Halloween-themed party foods circling the web. Fair warning: though a lot of effort is involved in creating these, we can't guarantee that anyone will actually want to eat any of them.

​Pop quiz, hotshot. You've got the wealth of Bill (or at least Antonio) Gates, but you live in a neighborhood that doesn't wall-out or otherwise secure your house from casual trick-or-treating. You love Halloween, and you want your house to be legendary. You don't want to go crazy here--no Oprah-style car giveaways. What you want here is something on the realistic side of awesome.

So given that scenario, what do you hand out to the kids? What do you do? Some suggestions, Richie Rich.

Denver has many great Italian restaurants. As I wrote this week, Mark & Isabella is not one of them. Here are ten of my favorites:

​Il Posto (2011 East 17th Avenue, 303-394-0100). Il Posto has an excellent location, crammed between other bars and restaurants, their patios shoulder to shoulder. The concept is also interesting: a purely and unapologetically Italian trattoria with chalkboard menus, changed daily and almost always brilliant, an open kitchen and a dining room alive with bodies, light and noise. On a good day and with a little luck, a meal at Il Posto can rank among the best that Denver has to offer. And on a bad day, this spot is still a fun place to hang out.

​At first, handing out lame treats on Halloween seems like a victimless crime. Kids are already getting bags of candy as it is, so what's the harm with one fewer awesome treat.

Part of the harm is that they're not the victim, really--you are. You, your house, your cars, your trees, your pets. But mostly, your reputation. What you dole out speaks for you, for better or worse, so here's what some legendarily crappy Halloween treats are screaming for you, at the top of their lame-ass lungs.

​There are lots of reasons we may want to patronize some television restaurants. Maybe drive-in to Arnold's (Happy Days) for a burger and a shake; have some brunch and a peek at the afterlife at Der Waffle Haus (Dead Like Me); or enjoy a tuna on toast (with a side of kvetching) at Monk's (Seinfeld). But even in the food-obsessed Seinfeld universe, there are plenty of places we wouldn't want to go, like Poppy's (Poppy doesn't wash his hands, and you don't want him on your couch).

And Poppy's is far from alone: there are actually more restaurants on TV that we wouldn't want to go than there are places we would -- for every semi-charming spot like Central Perk (Friends), there's ... well, any of these ten.

How I Met Your Mother? By getting hammered every night, obviously.

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There are places to meet friends for drinks ... and then there are bars, my friends. Places where the drink is the thing, and the goal is drunk.

That in mind, there are some TV bars where you just wouldn't want to be, like Rosie's from M.A.S.H. (bad booze near the front of the Korean conflict) or the Bronze from Buffy (tough to drink and quip and fight vampires all at the same time), or Archie Bunker's Place (where you have to put up with Archie Bunker). And then there are the bars where the booze isn't the main focus, such as the Bada-Bing! from The Sopranos (topless dancers), 90210's Peach Pit After Dark or Melrose Place's Shooters (looking pretty while snorting coke) or Star Trek: TNG's Ten-Forward (showcasing Whoopie Goldberg).

Fortunately, there are a lot of watering holes on the other side of the spectrum--joints where you'd love to spend quality time with a small shot glass, a chaser of beer, and the infinite possibilities inherent in draining them over and over again.

So hoist your glasses, grab your remote, and don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Mark Manger

Columbine Steak House

​Here in cow country, there's no shortage of good steakhouses -- but LoHi SteakBar, Sean Kelly's new restaurant at 3200 Tejon Street, already ranks right at the top. Here are ten more of Denver's best steakhouses.

Richard Simmons: A source of confusion for boys throughout the 1980s.

​Fitness and diet schemes have been around as long as there's been advertising. It's the sale of empty hope -- machinery with limited usage, devices with inflated claims, herbal supplements that skirt FDA regulations. But we know all that, and still we watch. And some of us still buy.

Of course, we don't watch for the info. We watch for the dazzling lack of production quality, the stunningly cheesy spokespeople -- and maybe so we can fantasize, while we're tucked under our Snuggie at 2:30 in the morning, basking in the glow of dead-of-night television, about a miracle pill or a wondrous apparatus that will solve our problems for us without having to leave the couch. In the daylight, though, we can all laugh at just how ludicrous some of these ads really are. Here, ten of our favorite.

​The pop-culture landscape is littered with the bleached bones of advertising mascots long passed: For every Kool-Aid Man that survives to break down new walls with his rotund fruit-drink excitement, there's a Hawaiian Punch dude who's drunk in the corner and a Spuds McKenzie buried out back.

Some make it, some don't -- and some get messed with along the way. The Pillsbury Dough Boy is a legend, but failed to lend his name to Ghostbusters for a shot to let his inner Godzilla loose. And it's hard to trust the Gorton's fisherman now that he knows what you did last summer. But some icons of advertising -- especially food advertising -- were just flawed from the start.

A Flickr photo.

​ The Great American Beer Festival begins just six days from now. If you want to be ready (and believe me, we are soooo ready), you'll need to check in here every afternoon for some lowdown, some insight and some tips on how to do it right.

In the meantime, here's our list of the ten best brewpubs in the Denver area:

​I blame pineapple.

That's really where it started to go wrong. Once you decide that fruit is a reasonable pizza topping (and no, Mr. Fun-Facts, tomatoes don't count), it's a short trip to a slice of tuna salad, brownie and lemongrass.

So yes, America has adopted the pizza, and that means lots of experimenting. But is a BBQ pizza your best bet for great BBQ experience? Is a BLT pizza much more than a novelty? Not really. They're edible. But they're not pizza. And neither are the ten items on this list.

​Ah, the burger. Labor Day grilling tradition, force of good and ease in the American diet. We take you for granted, burger. We assume that because you are a national culinary treasure that you are also unassailable, that you can be toyed with--unmercifully at times--and that you'll still come out perfect.

But it is, in the end, we who are imperfect, o burger. Arrogant. Thankless. How have we screwed with thee? Let us count the ways. And then, forgive us our trespasses.

​

Pho is the most recognizable example of the Vietnamese canon, a street food lifted whole from the avenues of Saigon and Bien Hoa and brought to the United States by waves of immigrants who came here following the war and the reconstruction.

Many of those immigrants washed up in Denver, which is why this town has dozens upon dozens of great pho spots. My favorites, in no particular order:

They spiked jerky. Why not bananas?

​Ah, caffeine. The most wonderful of all stimulants. The most legal of all stimulants, more to the point. Is there anything that can't be improved by the judicious -- or injudicious -- addition of caffeine? Apparently not, since the last few years have seen an explosion of caffeinated products, from the ubiquitous energy drink to chewing gum and mints, malt liquor and, most recently, beef jerky. But there remain a few key items that could be markedly improved by a little jolt from our favorite molecule. Here are six of them.

When a candy specifies bodily harm in its name, it's pretty much manly.

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In the most recent Esquire, Chris Jones extols the virtues of Jujubes, calling them "the only candy a man should eat." This, of course, is utter bullshit, as are his claims that they should be pronounced "joo-joobs," which is only slightly less precious than referring to Target as "Tar-zhay." Jujubes are about as manly as a Reba marathon on Lifetime.

This isn't to say there's no such a thing as a manly candy. There aren't many of them, granted -- most candy is made for kids and, judging from their marketing, women. (Dove Dark Chocolate Singles: Made with 100 percent real estrogen!) But a few candies are very appropriate for men to consume. So here are the ten manliest candies ever -- and trust me, joo-joobs ain't on the list.

​One of my first columns was about the way green chile changes on the way from southern New Mexico to Denver -- from the pure verde kick in Hatch to the thin, soupy sauce of Albuquerque, and the steady thickening as you travel north along the green chile trail until you reach the gelatinous goop of Denver, studded with pork, completely missing the original vegetable sweetness of the fruit and encompassing varying levels of heat, from granny-safe to scorching. At the time, I could not stand the Colorado version of green chile. I found it repugnant and horrible and wrong. Over the years, though, I have come to appreciate the place of Colorado verde in the pantheon of green chile preparations, recognizing that this unique green chile (with its infinite variations) is truly one of those tastes that will always be associated with Colorado.

And will also inspire more bar fights than almost any other subject. What's the best green chile in Denver? Here are our ten picks, in no particular order except for #1,

10. Taqueria Patzuaro, 2616 West 32nd Avenue
A classic Colorado green, sweet and hot, served in a classic northwest Denver spot.

​Every kid knew it: lunchboxes meant something. And it wasn't just that you were a fan of whatever it was that you sported on your lunchtime luggage. It was your proclamation of identity. A window into your third-grade, paste-eating soul.

So the question was this: with what are you aligning yourself? Star Wars? Marvel Comics? Dukes of Hazzard? Care Bears? Muppets? Pele? They all made a statement -- especially the bad ones, the thoughtless ones, the downright inappropriate ones. So, here, the 10 Worst Lunchboxes Ever, and what they said about the kids who carried them.

Mark Manger

Organixx is Sheehan's most recent green adventure. But is it his favorite?

​ This week, I talk a lot about green -- about green restaurants and the green movement, about organic foods and natural foods and the perils of being a mountain locavore.  So for this week's List, it seems only appropriate to slap together a spread of restaurants which, while sticking tooth-and-nail to their political and social convictions, also manage to put out some pretty decent grub as well.

So for those of you going out this weekend looking to bump up your karma or assuage your consciences along with getting your belly full, here's a spread of joints where the intentions are almost as good as the food.

Park Burger. (Photo by Mark Manger)

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I've been writing a lot about burgers lately, so this week's list reflects nothing more than my personal obsession du jour. Below are my top five burgers in Denver (and beyond).

If I miss your favorite, be sure to add it in the comments.  With any luck, together we can come up with a comprehensive listing of all the greatest hamburgers in Colorado -- which, not for nothing, is a noble undertaking and the sort of thing that balances out a lot of culinary sin in the eyes of the food gods.

Somewhere between breakfast and a cup of coffee lays this middle ground of stupid -- food that isn't really food, but still seems appropriate to consume for the (allegedly) most important meal of the day.

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show exposed the ridiculousness of the pancake-wrapped sausage years ago, but for the sake of real breakfast foods, it behooves us to extend the list beyond just the AM corndog. So we present the "Ten Stupidest "Breakfast Foods Ever."

10. Pop-Tarts

Pop-Tarts are not food. They're edible -- and there's a difference. In 2006, Kellogg's was asked to cease advertising that Pop-Tarts were "made with real fruit." They actually were, but only in the way that high-fructose corn syrup is made from corn, or heroin is made from pretty flowers. In the 1967 commercial above, you'll notice that early on, breakfast is hardly mentioned -- they seem made for dessert. As a dessert, Pop-Tarts make at least some semblance of sense. As a breakfast, they make about as much sense as eating leftover pizza and claiming it's like having a V-8.

Smoked duck breast at Olivea.

This past week I reviewed Sketch--a restaurant that serves almost nothing but meat.  And a little cheese.  And a few scattered, random plates of olives, cherries, bits of this, pieces of that. I liked the place for its simplicity, for the plain way that it offers some of the best stuff on earth.  I have long said that when the day comes that I am no longer doing this job and am free to eat the way I want to, whenever I want to, entire years will go by when I eat nothing but sushi, diner pie, barbecue and the fruits of the charcutiere's art.

With such an end in mind, I'm going to list a few places where you can enjoy the best of the meats-and-cheeses world right now. As always, feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments section.

1) Osteria Marco, 1453 Larimer Street. If for no other reason than the prosciutto, the lovely salami and Frank Bonanno's hand-made buratta, Marco would be high on my list.

2) Frasca, 1738 Pearl Street, Boulder.  It might seem like a shame to snag a seat at this wonderful restaurant and then eat nothing at all from chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson's kitchen, but trust me: It isn't. Frasca has some of the best charcuterie in the state.

3) Z Cuisine A Cote, 2239 West 30th Avenue.  It's more than just meats and cheeses (and actually, if I recall correctly, it doesn't include any meats), but the assiette de charcuterie at A Cote is an amazing snack for those in the crowd who want to eat the way the French do.

4) The Berkshire, 7352 East 29th Avenue. Two words: Bacon flight.

5) Olivea, 719 East 17th Avenue.  Why?  Because it's John Broening.  Because, long ago, John Broening used to work at Brasserie Rouge.  And because Brasserie Rouge had the best charcuterie around -- a style that Broening has brought back now that he's installed behind the scenes at Olivea 

Mark Manger

White Fence Farm: It's freakin' weird.

This week?  Total Heart-of-Darkness trip with my voyage through the chintz end of the American cultural spectrum.  White Fence Farm blew my mind and, in the process, served me one damn fine plate of fried chicken.  Thinking about that got me considering some of those other only-in-Colorado places where one must first screw one's courage to the sticking point before stepping inside, those places that, through their extreme example, better illuminate what it means to truly be a Coloradoan.

Remember: drop the acid about forty-five minutes before arriving for maximum effect.  Possible side effects include uncontrollable shrieking, brain damage, spontaneous religious conversion and, in some cases, serious Mountain State addiction.

1) Casa Bonita, 6715 West Colfax. The only restaurant in Denver so freakin' bizarre that Matt and Trey built an entire episode of South Park around it. You can't call yourself a Denverite if you haven't been once.  You may want to seek intensive psychological counseling if you have visited more than twice.

This week, I talked about Dougherty's -- a fantastic neighborhood bar that's perfect for getting into all kinds of lightweight trouble, which just happens to have a very decent restaurant attached and a chef in the back who knows his way around the cuisine of the whiskey-sodden Micks.

I followed that with a different kind of neighborhood joint -- Pho-Yo, a brand-spankin' new pho shop and frozen yogurt stand out in Aurora that's already winning raves from just about everyone who goes there.  It isn't a neighborhood bar, exactly, but if you live in the neighborhood I do, it's definitely an indisposable fixture for those looking for a super-fast, super-cheap lunch and dinner place bringing forth the flavors of distant and much-loved homelands.

I wrapped up this week with my own neighborhood bar, the Fainting Goat: a place that has become indispensible to me over the past few months simply because it is close to the office, well-run and has no problem handling grumpy, thirsty journalists hanging out on its rooftop patio smoking cigarettes, drinking too much and plotting any number of weird schemes.

So to follow all that, this week's list focuses on neighborhood joints (not all of them bars) that are, for one reason or another, as indispensible to their particular crowds as the Goat is to me and mine.  This is far from a canonical list and, as always, I'd love to see comments from those of you regarding other places that, for whatever reason, you simply could not live without.

Rough week for Big Red F. I wasn't all tht happy with Happy Noodle House; wasn't cuckoo for the Cocoa Puffs at Centro. But that doesn't mean I don't like some of Dave Query's other restaurants. Matter of fact, he runs two other joints that are among my favorites in the city.

Which leads me to this week's List: the best single locations in town run by multi-unit operators. I'm not counting the chains in this list. Or any of the really big restaurant groups (save one, arguably). These are just guys who've used Colorado as the base for their own mini-empires.

1) From the Dave Query stable, Jax and Lola.  Yes, I know that these are two different restaurants (really, three, since there are Jax outposts in both Boulder and Denver), but they're two really fantastic restaurants -- one an oyster house with a killer menu, one a coastal Mexican joint with one of the best brunches and bars around.

2) From Jesse Morreale and Sean Yontz, Mezcal. Although they went on to open Sketch, then close it and turn it into Tambien, and then open another Sketch, this pair has never topped their original effort. Mezcal remains the high-water mark of their collaboration.

3) From his Highness, Lord Kevin Taylor, Restaurant Kevin Taylor.  KT has seen some ups and downs over the years, and has s probably closed more locations than he has open right now (a number that stands at seven, I believe).  But on its best nights, his namesake restaurant at the Hotel Teatro is one of Denver's best restaurants.

4) Frank Bonanno has gotten a lot of ink over the opening of Bones, but I still think his best restaurant is Osteria Marco.  Seriously, a bottle of wine, a plate of prosciutto and a bit of hand-made burrata?  It just don't get much better than that.

5) Richard Sandoval has never been one of my favorite restaurateurs, but he hit on some weird kind of fusion magic when he came up with the concept for Zengo.  Most fusion restaurants -- not just in Denver, but anywhere -- just flat-out suck. Zengo is the exception to this rule.

Extra-credit: Jet Entertainment Group sort of exploded on the scene a few months back, snapping up addresses like drunken heiresses shopping for hats. Then the economy went in the toilet and the buying spree came to an abrupt halt. But now they're getting open all those places that they promised us months and months ago. The newest -- their noodle bar in the Jet Hotel called XO -- looks like its shaping up to be their best yet, but only time (and a couple more meals) will tell.

The Q is a required stop on our BBQ road trip.

The Q Worldly Barbeque (which I reviewed this week) might claim to have the market cornered on all manner of international barbecue styles, but like all other 'cue joints in this town, it doesn't offer everything that a big hungry boy needs when he's got barbecue on his mind.

Like cornbread, for example. There's no cornbread on the board at the Q. Corn fritters, sure.  But no corn bread.

And what about pie? Peach cobbler, in particular. And the Q's potato salad isn't very good...

This week's list?  My favorite places to get all manner of BBQ necessities, sides and related ephemera -- everything you need to create the one perfect barbecue meal. As always, post your disagreements and alternate suggestions in the comments section below.  And have a great holiday weekend.