Restaurant Reviews
Big Daddy (not Burl Ives) serves up quick, inexpensive meals
It`s been difficult for me to disassociate Boulder’s Big Daddy Bagels from the 1958 film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In this adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Burl Ives’ Big Daddy was a menacing sort, the dying patriarch of a fading...
Huckleberry lives up to the hype
While Louisville’s Huckleberry serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as afternoon tea, arguably its most popular meal is weekend brunch. At least that was my impression after waiting 45 minutes for a table on a recent late Sunday morning. Friend Tertia and I ...
Lovely chocolate, Boulder style
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is a quaint village in the south of France, exuding considerable charm by dint of its vintage stone buildings and picturesque rustic landscape. Walking through the town center, one notices a stone facade marked “Jöel Durand - Chocolatier...
Good ol’ pub fare
Neither an homage to the silent (but perhaps most cerebral) of the Marx Brothers, nor a clandestine Oprah operation, Boulder’s Harpo’s Sports Grill is precisely what its name implies. It’s a casual joint spotlighting affordable drink specials, tavern staples ...
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...
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 ...
A Niwot breakfast without pretense
Many hold the Niwot Market’s Friday evening summer dinners in high esteem. However, it’s also worth noting that this hospitable family-run grocery also dishes out reasonably priced breakfasts and lunches throughout the week...
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) ...
Red Rock Coffeehouse checks a lot of boxes
While recently promoting her latest book, Patti Smith detoured and talked about her love of cafes, an affinity that started in the ’60s.
“Back then,...
The friendly, global curator
I wonder what Teddy Roosevelt would think of a swanky wine bar. You are confronted with that question at Modena Wine Cafe in Longmont. It’s located next to Roosevelt Park, but more pertinently, its large windows open up to a Rough Rider-era Roosevelt, cowboy hat and ...
Eating local
When you travel, one of the first things you tell folks about your trip is how the food was. It’s just a simple way to engage your conversation partners in a talk about your trip, which we care about but don’t really want to hear about, and give them something to ...
The food is the thing
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 ...
















