Restaurant Reviews

100% Mexicano, which has been open a little more than a month, is the latest local eatery to deliver an authentic “south of the border” street food experience...

Long before Tom Cruise portrayed Jack Reacher on film, I had been reading the popular series of novels featuring this ex-military investigator’s suspense-filled adventures. Reacher, a hulking fellow well over six feet tall, (I had always pictured Viggo Mortensen ...

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...

There’s no way around it; with its efficient combination order-counter/steam-heated prep line, brightly colored walls and easy-clean tile floors packed into a strip mall unit on Arapahoe Street, Yellowbelly looks just like a fast food restaurant. And the contents of ...

When we go out for a dining experience, there are expectations, many of which we can’t even articulate, but know viscerally when they’re not met. That’s why as a food writer, I spend so much time writing about a restaurant’s environment and atmosphere. The food is ...

You’ll have to be OK with picnic casual: good food made simply by friendly people. If you like that, you’ll like Caspian Deli & Grocery — an unassuming Middle Eastern market on Pearl and 26th Street that does nothing but charm as soon as you walk in the door...

The best food transports you. Where Volta transports you is to a long, green lawn on the side of a lake for a reunion of friends and family on a late spring day. You can smell it — in the drink and in the food, and in that place in your mind where the senses create ...

My first job out of college was working for the U.S. Forest Service in Rutland, Vt. Unfortunately, lunch choices in this town were limited, and I ate most meals at the family-run Sandwich Shoppe. Pricing was in line with my entry-level salary — today, you can still ...

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 ...

In the clown car kitchen of China Gourmet in Boulder, a dozen cooks are calmly doing two dozen things. Composed but busy, the kitchen is preparing Chinese-American standards like cashew chicken, mu shu pork and Szechwan beef alongside “Shanghai specials” like cold ...

Aside from its distinctive flavor palettes, food has more abstract emotional appeals to the senses as well. Dessert tastes like joy. A giant chunk of meat roasted over an open flame tastes deeply, primally, invigorating, like surviving a plane crash or the thrill of ...

Editor’s note: This is Clay Fong’s last restaurant review for Boulder Weekly...