Restaurant Reviews

Recently, Dessert Diva Danette Randall noted in her column that I ought to have her tag along on a review outing. Class act that I am, I thought it only right to invite her to a spot where a guy ought to wear a sports coat. So I asked her to join me for Sunday ...

One sip of chai too many, and colleague Carin plunged into a caffeine-fueled burst of manic energy where she was seemingly channeling the obsessive Carrie Matheson from Homeland (or as I like to call it, “My So-Called War on Terrorism”). She was bouncing off the ...

West Flanders is a Belgian province known for significant events in both World Wars, notably the bloody fighting around Ypres and the Dunkirk evacuation. It also has a reputation for the peculiar practice of cat flinging. Lastly, and perhaps most relevantly, it has a...

Out of the disemboweled corpse of a failed Chili’s emerged the shiny new Murphy’s Tap House in Louisville earlier this month. And though there are definite similarities in the skeletal structure of the two restaurants, Murphy’s Tap House has done enough in its ...

Just to show that Hollywood doesn’t have a monopoly on contrivance, it’s worth noting how Hong Kong filmmakers dealt with the challenge of making a sequel to the gangster epic A Better Tomorrow. The problem (spoiler alert!) was that the charismatic protagonist Mark, ...

It’s kind of an uphill battle for Wok Eat. It’s located across the street from a similar restaurant (the slightly cheaper Boulder favorite Zoe Ma Ma), and has a touch of the sterile look of a generic chain, despite it being the eatery’s only location...

Once known as Pizzeria Basta, the Boulder eatery now simply known as Basta still serves savory wood oven pies. But this name change more accurately reflects a menu offering much more than just pizza, which is a smart move. Because while I’ve always felt the pies here...

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 ...

Spun off from its namesake Nederland predecessor, Boulder’s recently opened Backcountry Pizza and Taphouse ably occupies the gap between chain restaurants and artisan pizzerias. It retains much of the unpretentious charm of its mountain parent, which is an ...

Creativity is paramount in the coffee game. Hell, creativity is the coffee game. Now, the folks at Folger’s would have you believe it’s about ease, and the hipsters downtown would have you believe it’s all about Bunsen burners and science bottles. But at its core, ...

You’ll have to be OK with picnic casual: good food made simply by friendly people. If you like that, you’ll like Caspian Deli & Grocery — an unassuming Middle Eastern market on Pearl and 26th Street that does nothing but charm as soon as you walk in the door...

In many ways, Boulder’s restaurant culture, with its focus on local, organic and high-quality ingredients and preparation, serves as a model for what the rest of the country could be doing to help Americans eat better. But a significant barrier to that end is that ...