Restaurant Reviews
The tastes of Provence and beyond
It had been a while since I poked my head into Mateo, noteworthy for its fine charcuterie and cheese-laden happy hour and accessible South of France cuisine. Warm, sunny days evoke recollections of tooling around Provence’s gorgeous lavender-scented landscapes. As a ...
Creation Story
Creativity is paramount in the coffee game. Hell, creativity is the coffee game. Now, the folks at Folger’s would have you believe it’s about ease, and the hipsters downtown would have you believe it’s all about Bunsen burners and science bottles. But at its core, ...
Getting into the Gindi
Boulder’s Gindi Café has a European influence exemplified by offering both food and ambience best described as fresh and modern. One is certainly glad this eatery chooses to emulate these continental qualities instead of, say, those of the Inquisition or Serge ...
Parking your butt
Not to disparage the noble roach coach, but for many budding restaurateurs, the food truck is mostly a vehicle (pun intended) to open a sit-down storefront, offering them a low-cost way to vend and market their chow. But like so many things, more dream the dream than...
Burgers and shakes with style
I used to mess with my friend Andrew by feeding him false reports that a popular burger and milkshake chain had set up shop in Colorado. As it turns out, that chain now does have a Denver-area outpost, but it’s far enough away to require advanced planning, and who ...
Middle Eastern eats and sweets
There’s something inherently enigmatic about a restaurant calling itself Pickled Lemon, as this moniker raises more questions than answers. Is this a venue for citrus-based cocktails? Does the menu focus on fruit? Is this a cryptic reference to a Tina Fey character? ...
Classic breakfast, without the rush
College buddy Jeff recently paid a visit, and I figured a dose of semi-rural Colorado hospitality would be a welcome respite from his usual routine as a Vegas casino executive. To meet my friend’s need, my venue of choice was Hygiene’s Crane Hollow Café...
Moving on up
The ugly truth is that for all Boulder’s highminded foodieism, it’s no picnic finding a decent taco to take on a picnic. Sure there’s some decent facsimiles, but because of Boulder’s obscene rents and completely absurd food truck regulations, if you want the real ...
A shrine to flavor
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 ...
Aloy succeeds Chy for Thai
Just to show that Hollywood doesn’t have a monopoly on contrivance, it’s worth noting how Hong Kong filmmakers dealt with the challenge of making a sequel to the gangster epic A Better Tomorrow. The problem (spoiler alert!) was that the charismatic protagonist Mark, ...
An oldie but a goodie
For folks that have been in Colorado awhile, Beau Jo’s Pizza is a familiar quantity where nostalgia is as much a part of the experience as its signature pizza. Many fondly recall chowing down on Beau Jo’s “mountain” pies at its Idaho Springs location on the way back ...
Making the familiar seem new
Opened earlier this year, Louisville’s Bistro 4 provides an unexpectedly elegant venue to enjoy a thoughtfully prepared breakfast or lunch. Tucked away in a strip mall a waffle’s throw from the local multiplex, this eatery’s ambience easily rises above its prosaic ...


















