Restaurant Reviews

The word “riff” implies improvisation and excitement. It instantly brings to mind a memorable guitar solo, and applied to food, the expectation for something inspiring. Unfortunately, in the case of Riffs Urban Fare, there is such a thing as too much riffing...

Being new-ish to town, it’s always interesting to hear what longer-term Boulderites focus on when describing various restaurants. For example, the way BW editor Joel Dyer summarized Mamacita’s on University Hill: “burritos as big as your head...

Some local Italian restaurants trace their culinary lineage back to the venerable Americanized red sauce haunts of San Francisco or the East Coast. Alternatively, they may possess a more direct link to the old country without the hindrance of flavors compromised to...

There’s no better name for Precision Pours in Louisville than what they chose. Like many in the craft coffee world, there is a focus on acquiring the best beans from around the world, and there is a second focus on using the best methods available to extract flavor, ...

Thunderbird Burgers & BBQ faces the formidable challenge of being a locally owned business in direct competition with big multinational chains. To effectively compete, it needs to be at least comparable in price and, ideally, superior in quality. For the most part, ...

Bramble and Hare — the name evokes an English countryside pub, perhaps a spot in the Cotswolds. Waggish diners may initially dismiss this as Black Cat Bistro Chef Eric Skokan’s attempt at creating a sort of Locale Next Door. Yet this new self-styled farmhouse ...

There is no better conversation about stuffed mountain lions than the conversation about stuffed mountain lions you have at Vern’s. If you’re headed north, it might be your first of many dining conversations about taxidermy; if you’re headed back to Boulder County, ...

Hotels are not on the average diner’s radar. But Jill’s at the St Julien in Boulder ought to be. A boutique hotel in the style Colorado does best — casually elegant — the restaurant carries this same kind of elegance, and makes it even more pleasing with the value ...

Pressed for time, colleague Carin and I weren’t enthused to seek a blah lunch at a ho-hum sandwich shop or fast food joint during a recent journey to Broomfield. I also realized it had been some time since I had enjoyed a bowl of pho, Vietnamese beef noodle soup. ...

It was one of those chilly, grayish Saturdays that was a harbinger of upcoming winter. Too cold to go out on the bike and not enough snow on the ground to enjoy wintry sports, so why not go out for a leisurely breakfast? In this spirit, friend Justin joined me on an ...

Sometimes hunger can sneak up on you like a pouncing cat or a stealthy ninja, and this is precisely the dilemma colleague Carin found herself in one fair weekday morning. Given that it was a tad late for breakfast, and a touch early for lunch, we figured that North ...

In the 2004 movie Dodgeball, there is a scene in which the lead, played by Vince Vaughn, walks into the house of his love interest, Kate Veatch, played by Christine Taylor, for the first time and finds himself in a full-on unicorn den, surrounded by hundreds and ...