Restaurant Reviews
Bento heaven on Pearl Street
One of the enduring institutions of Japanese working life is the bento. Bento means "meal in a box" and can refer to anything from a homemade aggregation of fish, rice and preserved plum to ekiben, the pre-made meals encountered in train stations. In the U.S., it's ...
Old-school home cooking
Feeling a chill in the morning air, I decided to take advantage of the remaining warm weather days by venturing up to Rocky Mountain National Park for some wildlife photography. Anticipating the taxing nature of this adventure, I sought ample morning sustenance with...
Simply satisfying
After a long flight back from California, I needed something comforting yet not complicated to facilitate my post-holiday re-entry to the working week. Consigliere Keith had been kind enough to give me a lift from DIA, and Louisville’s Via Toscana, an old standby, ...
Yellowbelly is for Boulder´s culinary chickens
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 ...
Empire’s main dishes deliver
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 ...
Easy goes it
One of the best things about food is that you can be astonished by simplicity. By virtue of using fresh ingredients and letting food...
The resurgent cupcake, reconsidered
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 ...
Getting lucky in north Boulder
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 ...
Sun Rose Cafe does things Texas-sized
There I was, sandwiched in between some of my worst restaurant pet peeves (parents at the next table encouraging their child to stop screaming by encouraging it to watch a video on a laptop, and the dull ambiance killing roar of an overly loud refrigeration unit) ...
A well-designed and hospitable Kasa
You’d be hard-pressed to find a restaurant in Boulder with a more conscious design aesthetic than the Japanese eatery known as Kasa Japanese Grill. Decor here is anchored by leafy trees painted monochromatic white, setting off light hardwood floors in a cheerful, ...
The secret
Perhaps one of the greatest joys in eating out is wandering into somewhere new on a whim and finding greatness. That’s probably not an experience you’ll have at Dagabi Cucina...
Parting shot: My favorite restaurants
Editor’s note: This is Clay Fong’s last restaurant review for Boulder Weekly...

















