Restaurant Reviews

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, ...

As applied to restaurants no less than to novels or films, the adjective “critic-proof ” is usually a backhanded compliment, acknowledging the consumer savvy rather than the craftsmanship of the producer in question. There’s just no point in arguing with the easy ...

True to its name, the Boulderado’s landmark Corner Bar has a menu featuring tavern staples such as chicken wings, nachos and burgers. Many of these are available as happy hour specials, but the bill of fare also reveals more ambitious choices on the fine-dining end...

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, ...

One of downtown San Francisco’s busiest lunch spots is Sushirrito, whose menu you should be able to ballpark from the name. Like the Wu-Tang Clan, its forearm-sized sushi rolls ain’t nothing to mess with...

Pan-Asian  variety is the name of the game at Pearl Street’s Moongate Asian Bistro, which features a diverse and affordable Asian menu. Classic Chinese-American cookery is one of the stars of the show here,  with such venerable chestnuts as Kung Pao chicken and ...

Nestled inside the Days Hotel...

It had been a while since I poked my head into Mateo, noteworthy for its fine charcuterie and cheese-laden happy hour and accessible South of France cuisine. Warm, sunny days evoke recollections of tooling around Provence’s gorgeous lavender-scented landscapes. As a ...

When I announced plans to review The Rowdy Mermaid, Boulder’s new kombucha taproom, a co-worker swiftly warned me reading on the Internet that kombucha, a sparkling fermented tea drink with live yeast and bacteria cultures, can cause “fatal diarrhea,” to which ...

Claiming regional or ethnic credibility at a restaurant not located in that region can be a dubious prospect. Sometimes it’s a genuine transplant bringing the recipes of their youth and culture to the uninitiated hinterlands; sometimes it’s just run by someone who ...

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” famously wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Perhaps a modern corollary to this pearl of wisdom is “A foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of short-lived restaurateurs.” We’ve all fallen in love with particular ...

The food at Frasca Food & Wine was so good that, at one moment, I cried. It had never happened to me before, nor should it have — the only times one should cry while eating is if they’ve been rescued by a cargo ship and offered a hot meal for the first time in ...