Restaurant Reviews
Off the beaten brunch
As friend Lisa and I drove on Hwy. 36 north of Boulder, we couldn’t help but notice the landscape’s arid harshness. Even though the sun was shining, we couldn’t shake a feeling of wintry desolation. Happily, the mood shifted for the better once we entered our ...
Fettuccine a la ESPN
Some things I’ll never fully understand, like string theory, the jokes in Lolita or why people pay Michael Bay to make movies. Sitting just below advanced calculus, and just above pickles on that list, is why otherwise nice restaurants insist on installing ambiance-...
Rain or shine
The Hungry Toad was built for rainy days. It makes for a cozy pint when you can sit in the corner and watch the wind beat rain into the windows with wooden jambs. The fixtures are natural, from the exposed brick wall to the leather bar chairs to the wooden tabletops...
A culinary effort to infuse with brews
Back in the ’80s, before microbreweries and tap rooms had entered the public consciousness, my parents and underage self took a tour of Washington’s now-defunct Olympia brewery. While I recollect that the bar at the end of the tour was an ornate carved wood affair, ...
Going mod
When a restaurant is named Modmarket, one expects a certain menu and ambience distinct from say, a place called the Doofusateria. Indeed, this Boulder quick-serve outpost serves fresh and healthy flatbread pizzas, salads and soups in a Twenty Ninth Street Mall spot...
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 ...
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 ...
Tavern fare with a twist
Whenever I visit a place calling itself a tavern, I half expect it to be populated by a clientele consisting of Revolutionary War colonists plotting their next move against the monarchy. More realistically though, I anticipate that a self-proclaimed tavern is an ...
An authentic Chicago dog, hold the ketchup
The finer points of the Chicago-style hot dog have always been a bit cryptic for me. A few layover meals of sausage in a bun at O’Hare did little to deepen my understanding of this Windy City nosh. Unsurprisingly, I was happy to have friend and Windy City native Paul...
Another hit for Big Red F
What I like most about GoodBird Kitchen, and what I like about its brother, The Post Brewing Company, and indeed what I like about...
