Restaurant Reviews

Long before Tom Cruise portrayed Jack Reacher on film, I had been reading the popular series of novels featuring this ex-military investigator’s suspense-filled adventures. Reacher, a hulking fellow well over six feet tall, (I had always pictured Viggo Mortensen ...

Charm is the currency by which I quantify the value of a coffee shop. Red Frog Coffee in Longmont has vast reserves of it...

One of the required American barbecue trail pilgrimages is Dallas’s Sonny Bryan’s, a joint renowned for its meltingly tender beef brisket. There are several locations scattered throughout the city, but the cognoscenti know that the food is best at the original shack ...

On the far western edge of the Hill’s business district sits a building that used to be the Second Kitchen Food Co-op but has since been remodeled and made the home of Alpine Modern Café. It’s the restaurant of a company that publishes the Alpine Modern magazine, a...

Boulder’s strict growth boundaries make heading north on Broadway a bit of a cliffdrop, with the city ending abruptly as the street y’s into U.S. 36. But nestled right up against the edge is a restaurant that would be as at home in the urban core as it is on the ...

Formely housed in a smaller, more intimate spot on Longmont’s Main Street, Pinocchio’s is an Italian- American eatery now ensconced in a newish shopping center dominated by national chains. Granted, the current venue may not have all the charming homespun ...

While I am admittedly a carnivore, I’ve observed there are two main paths that vegan restaurants can follow. On one hand, there are the eateries that use soy and other non-animal ingredients to create compelling stand-ins for such products as cheese, chicken and ...

Aside from its distinctive flavor palettes, food has more abstract emotional appeals to the senses as well. Dessert tastes like joy. A giant chunk of meat roasted over an open flame tastes deeply, primally, invigorating, like surviving a plane crash or the thrill of ...

I’m not entirely sure why I hadn’t paid a visit to Longmont’s Tortugas in the last few years — in the late ’90s, I thought it was one of the best restaurants in the county. Combining a hospitable, homey, Key West feel with a menu of fresh seafood, prepared in the ...

College buddy Jeff recently paid a visit, and I figured a dose of semi-rural Colorado hospitality would be a welcome respite from his usual routine as a Vegas casino executive. To meet my friend’s need, my venue of choice was Hygiene’s Crane Hollow Café...

We’re taught in early language arts classes to write what we know. But in writing about food, the adage creates a paradox: When a...

Meeting up with old friends Michael and Allison, a dining dilemma posed itself. Michael describes himself as the antithesis of a vegan, while Allison is a self-proclaimed picky eater straddling the line between vegetarianism and full-tilt veganism. While there’s more...