By Claire Walter on May 18, 2012
Extra-special Herradura tequila available in Colorado + distillery visits
I rode the Tequila Express from Guadalajara into the Jalisco hill country around the town of Amatitán, where blue agave is cultivated. My trip was part of the Society of American Travel Writers 2009 Convention. My son Andrew is there now and the Tequila Express is on the itinerary. He is a sales rep for a wine and spirits distributor, which is sending him as a performance reward — in his case for, among other things, selling a case of a premium Herradura tequila such as double barrel añejo, and along with his customer (Durango’s El Rancho Tavern, I think), having a say in the way it’s made. It sounds as if his distillery visit following the train ride will be more VIP than ours. I can hardly wait to
I believe that Boulder’s West End Tavern previously purchased a barrel not long ago. When my husband, our friend Dave and I went there for a bite to eat on a recent Sunday afternoon, we didn’t spring for a super-pricey premium adult beverage, but the West End’s beer is cold and the margs tasty, and that’s what we were after as we waited for our meals. Continue reading “Like Mother Like Son On Tequila ExpressTrain”
Posted in Boulder, Cocktails, Restaurant | Tagged Boulder restaurant, Tequila, West End Tavern |
By Claire Walter on May 17, 2012
Boulder family documents its shift in eating from “ordinary” to selling at the farmers’ market
A few weeks ago I bought some lettuce starts and four tomato plants at the Boulder County Farmers’ Market. I bought one tomato plant from Patrick, a precocious and articulate lad of 9 who is also an enthusiastic backyard farmer in a Boulder subdivision. I put in the tomatoes and surrounded them with walls of water that have so far protected them. I also stuffed into a wallet a bright card featuring a caricature of a family of five amid by plants and the words, “Fresh Mouth – Boulder, CO – familyfresh.blogspot.com”.
Today, as I finally pulled a bunch of receipts that I’d stuffed into my wallet, I found the card. Of course, I went to the Fresh Mouth blog and am quite enchanted by what I read. Right under the drawing, Eileen and Dirk, explain their blog: ”FRESH MOUTH is about one family. A dingy American diet. How we try to feed ourselves without mutiny, bankruptcy, Red Dye #40 or sounding like total locabores.” I love that, so I went back to their first post, written on February 8, 2008:
Our family diet was in trouble when the exchange rate for eating a single blueberry was four gummy frogs. One bite and an actual swallow of broccoli netted a heaping bowl of strawberry ice cream for our four- and six-year-old boys.
We’ve decided to do an experiment and teach the kids about healthy eating and real, whole food as a way of life and not as a means to scoring sugar. Our 10-month old son is motivation, too. He’s on the cusp of eating real foods, and we want to sustain his untainted palate for as long as possible.
. . .
And as a requiem to all of our lost foods and our kid favorite – the chicken nugget- we offer “Nugget o’ the Day” on each post. Those little nuggets of goodness that happen when you change the diet of a family of five.”
Four years and a couple of months and many posts later (with great photographs and recipes), they opened a family stand at the farmers’ market. Remarkable!
Posted in Blogs, Boulder, Cookies, Farming, Locavore and farm-to-table |
By Claire Walter on May 17, 2012
District Meats to become Charlie Palmer’s District Tavern and serve fewer “off-cuts”
Chef Charlie Palmer
In other cities (New York, Washington, Dallas, Las Vegas, Costa Mesa and others), many of super-chef Charlie Palmer’s restaurants are known for dining — really fine dining. Denver got the dregs — cheaper off-cuts of meat that have become suddenly chic when prepared in a very good restaurant. I attended a pre-opening event at District Meats, and didn’t get a chance to taste all that many offerings. The efficient waitstaff didn’t pause long enough for me to take a bite after a took a picture, and though I expected I’d go back, it wasn’t all that high on my list since I’m not all that crazy about organ meats or off-cuts, and besides nearby Euclid Hall does them so well that Denver doesn’t need a second.
Seems I was not the only one who felt this way, because District Meats will go away after this weekend and re-open on Tuesday as Charlie Palmer’s District Tavern. It’s smart to put Palmer’s name on the door, because inhabits the pantheon of leading American chefs. The tavern’s ambitions are not to the lofty culinary stratosphere that Palmer’s remarkable Aureole fills, but it its modern American menu will be more approachable, more upscale tavern and, to be blunt, serve less weird dishes than District Meats’ fare. Stay tuned. The restaurant is at 1631 Wazee Street, Denver.
Posted in Chef, Denver, Restaurant |
By Claire Walter on May 16, 2012
Winery Row’s Bonacquisiti hosted preview of Colorado Wine Week highlight
The Colorado Winefest debuted last June as a three-day offspring of the long-running Colorado Mountain Winefest in Palisade. It’s back for 2012 with a new name and a new venue. Click here for my report on last year’s inaugural.
This fine festival moving. Last year, it was infused personality into the sterility of Stapleton-Northfield, whose main positive attribute is abundant free parking (it is, after all, an outdoor shopping mall). This year, it is going to Denver’s sculpture park between Speer Boulevard and the Denver Performing Arts Center. To reflect its new location, it also has a new name: Colorado Urban Winefest. A preview tasting yesterday evening at Winery Row on Pecos just south of I-70 provided the trade and media a small glimpse of the makeover. I’m glad I was able to attend, because I will be out of the country during Colorado Wine Week itself.
Colorado Winery Row's logo. .
Bonacquisti Winery hosted the tasting, which featured 42 Front Range and Western Slope wineries. Like the winefest itself, the preview featured a palate-training component. The preview version was pretty simple — half-a-dozen glasses in which such materials as citrus fruits and cedar chips were placed for sniffing, and two wines to practice on. A real “wine wheel” will be at the festival. For the preview, the organizers also brought in a food truck, because food trucks will assemble at the winefest too.
The "training table" held aromatics that can be detected in wines and a couple of wines to train people how to identify them without looking at the label.
Colorado Wine Week (May 30 to June 9), which is well over a week, features wine-oriented events including free in-store tastings ( May 30 to June 9) and a glass of Colorado wine paired with special dishes at participating restaurants scattered throughout the metro area (June 3 to 9). The festival includes a number of new events, including athe Colorado Wine Cocktail Celebration (June 4), East Meets West (pairing of Front Range wineries and Grand Valley vineyards), Colorado Wine Farmers Market (June 6), Colorado Governor’s Cup (wine tasting of the American Wine Society regional competition winners at the Governor’s Residence, June 7) and a Cruiser Ride through downtown Denver from a starting point to be announced to the Winefest.
Click here for ticket information or to purchase online.
Posted in Denver, Event, Wyoming | Tagged Colorado wines, wine festival |
By Claire Walter on May 14, 2012
Visit by Guy Fieri of “Diners, Drivie-Ins & Dives” big boost to business
Food Network image
“Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” celebrates independent, family-owned restaurants across the country that prepare timeless regional specialties. Customers expect personal service – and they get it. It’s no secret in the restaurant biz that when a televised Guy Fieri is shown pulling up in his cool convertible of muscle car vintage up, hanging out in the kitchen with the owner, praising the food to the skies and interviewing regulars who have been eating there “for years” (always), business picks up.These places are local institutions that have stemmed the chainification tide. Eat at a distinctive local place and you know where you are. Eat at a McBurgerDoodleBellKing-Fil-A “concept” and you could be anywhere — or nowhere at all, and what you chew and swallow will have been designed by a product development group and named by a marketing staff. Why bother?
This is a common rant of mine, but I was quite surprised when RestaurantNews.com, a trade site slavishly devoted to chains, acknowledged “The Fieri Effect,” since he simply doesn’t do big franchises. Here’s what they wrote:
“Diners, Drive-ins and Dives reaches 30 million viewers a month, and devoted fans turn to web sites like flavortownusa.com to track featured restaurants and report on recent visits. Before social media, an appearance on the show caused one massive surge in business, followed by subsequent pops each time a rerun aired. Now, with Twitter and Facebook making news of show appearances public earlier, business picks up before the show even runs.
“Restaurants have come to view an appearance on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives as an instant windfall. Those featured on the show in the past have reported doubled revenue, and some much more. But that increased revenue can come at a cost to restaurants, too, as their capacity to meet exploding demand is pushed to a brink. There’s even been talk of a Fieri Curse.
“Jason Boso, the owner of the Twisted Root burger chain, handled his new stardom flawlessly. After the show aired in 2009, sales at his original store tripled, growing from $50,000 a month to more than $150,000 a month, he says. But he was ready for the onslaught, he says, in part because Fieri warned him about smaller businesses that had been overwhelmed in the past.”
I was wondering why Fieri visited a Twisted Root Burger Company in the first place, but it turns out that it is a very small chain — seven locations at this writing, all in Texas. I don’t know how many there were three years ago it appeared on DDD. Twisted Root, a dive-theme burger place, was founded in 2005 by Jason Boso, a culinary school grad, and it’s garnered kudos from restaurant reviewers as well as the DDD team.
Posted in Franchises | Tagged Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives, Guy Fieri, Twisted Root |
By Claire Walter on May 13, 2012
Award-winning chef’s “Dinner In the Country” was a 7-course dazzler
Chef Rob Corey and a glass of champagne.
Chef Robert N Corey and I have crossed paths at culinary events over the years, notably at the Denver International Wine Festival‘s ‘Taste of Elegance’ chef competitions. More often than not, he has been on the podium for one of the categories. He currently wears several toques. Himself a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he is a culinary arts instructor at Denver’s Johnson & Wales University, runs 12 Seasons Personal Chef & Sommelier Services and every few months puts on a “Dinner In the Country” in a private Niwot home, with farms and ranches not far away.
Johnson & Wales culinary students meticulously plating the "Dinner In the Country" dinner.
Rob invited me and my husband to yesterday evening’s “Dinner In the Country,” which displayed Corey’s style that is at once sophisticated and earthy. He calls his food “nouvelles classics” and uses natural, organic ingredients, cooks them with care, plates them with an artist’s eye and an engineer’s precision, an ethic and aesthetitic truly combining both old and new culinary practices. One of the guests was Bob Munson of nearby Munson Farms, who said that all the produce and herbs were picked that very morning, some by himself.
We started with hors d’oeuvre and Carbo Cava Brut sparkling wine, then sat down at two tables that together could accommodate just 20 guests, so congenial conversation lasted through the evening. By the time the guests assembled, most of the cooking had been done, but eight Johnson & Wales students did much of the perfect plating of complicated, multi-ingredient dishes for which Corey is well known. Jesse Slaughter, whose regular gig is at Hapa Sushi in Cherry Creek, performed sommelier duties. Continue reading “Country Dining With Chef Rob Corey”
Posted in Boulder, Chef, Colorado, Event, Locavore and farm-to-table, Menu, Sustainable Agriculture, wine | Tagged chef dinner, Rob Corey |
By Claire Walter on May 12, 2012
Fab bakery hosts monthly showcase combining skills and talent in three fields
Breadworks‘ monthly Community Artist Showcase has been on my list of events to check out for a long time. After all, it offers an inexpensive Friday evening meal at one of the metro area’s very best bakeries at a price that can’t be beat ($10 per adult, $5 per child and BYO wine or beer). The event presents an opportunity to look more closely at the art on the walls, which I never take time to do when we’re running in for baked goods or a breakfast treat for the drive up to Estes Park. And there’s never live music on a weekend morning.
My husband and I went for the first time yesterday evening, because our friend Margaret Donharl and her bright and luminous acrylics of flora and fauna were featured.
Margaret intensely talking about art. She and her husband attend other events both for the community spirit and to see what other local artists are doing.
One of Margaret's works. This one resembles a collage of vintage fabrics or wallpaper. Like many others she selected for the show, it harmonizes with Breadworks' long south wall.
When Breadworks initiated these Community Artist Showcase events, the menu was more ambitious but also cost more. Now, the format appears to be tapas or pizza/salad, but guests can still bring their own adult beverages. Last night, they put out the pizza option, and frankly, the pizza wasn’t all that good. If it been hot, not lukewarm and drifting down to room temperature, it would have been a whole lot better. And the salad and gelato options were minimal. But we weren’t there to dine. Good thing. Continue reading “Food, Music & Art at Breadworks”
Posted in Bakeries, Boulder, Event, Pizza | Tagged Boulder food and art |
