Restaurant Reviews

Nestled inside the Days Hotel...

It’s open mic comedy night at Johnny’s Cigar Bar. Have any four words ever simultaneously inspired so much giddy excitement and sheer terror as “open mic comedy night...

Fans of the early nineties TV series Northern Exposure may recall the mercurial character of Adam (played by Adam Arkin), an enigmatic master chef, an inhabitant of the town of Cicely. More recently, the science fiction series Eureka introduced Vincent, a gifted ...

The brief email arrived late on Saturday afternoon from old friend Daniel, who I hadn’t seen in years. It was a summons to Lafayette’s Udon Kaisha, which he deemed “the best!” Not one to turn down such an invitation, I soon found myself in a strip mall chockablock ...

A friend recently analogized that Boulder is to Longmont as Manhattan is to Brooklyn. From a dining standpoint, there’s more than a grain of truth in this analogy. Boulder, like Manhattan, has more than its fair share of press-worthy, high-buck eateries whose prices ...

Spun off from its namesake Nederland predecessor, Boulder’s recently opened Backcountry Pizza and Taphouse ably occupies the gap between chain restaurants and artisan pizzerias. It retains much of the unpretentious charm of its mountain parent, which is an ...

My reaction to the cupcake’s resurgence in popularity isn’t all that different to my response to REM’s popularity when I was in college. I get how others might like a red velvet cupcake and/or Michael Stipe, but personally, neither one’s my cup of tea. Speaking with ...

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? ...

Rosario sits down to lunch with her chef and her two waitresses. It’s all slush and pudgy fog this early afternoon, and I’m sitting across the empty dining room from the group when I’m waved over...

Avexing of diminutive slider size. A product of gender bias, culinary conundrum revolves around A&W’s sizing scheme for its hamburgers. It was easy enough to figure out the Baby Burger’s place in the pecking order, as it was the Mama Burger was larger, but it was ...

One sip of chai too many, and colleague Carin plunged into a caffeine-fueled burst of manic energy where she was seemingly channeling the obsessive Carrie Matheson from Homeland (or as I like to call it, “My So-Called War on Terrorism”). She was bouncing off the ...

Over the past few years, downtown Louisville’s dining options have grown impressively, and the Empire Restaurant and Lounge is one of this burg’s top spots for fine dining in a relaxed setting. While this space can accommodate many diners, it feels smaller and more ...