The DINR Deck, a nifty deal cooked up by the Denver Network of Independent Restaurants, is a playing card-style deck that costs $50 and contains 52 cards, each good for $10 off a food purchase of $25 or more. The impressive list of participating restaurants includes some real stars in Denver and environs. Purchase one for yourself and others for gifts and enjoy the savings for months to come. Also, $1 from each deck goes to the Food Bank of the Rockies. Buy online (but you do have to add sales tax and a disproportionate shipping charge or $3.64 per deck) or at the Tattered Cover. If you order online, the shipping charge is waived with four or more, so think about stuffing a lot of stockings with an incentive to dine out in some of the Denver area's top dining spots.
Showing posts with label Event. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Event. Show all posts
Deal Yourself a Dining Deal
Dining Deck promotion saves dough and supports independent restaurants
The DINR Deck, a nifty deal cooked up by the Denver Network of Independent Restaurants, is a playing card-style deck that costs $50 and contains 52 cards, each good for $10 off a food purchase of $25 or more. The impressive list of participating restaurants includes some real stars in Denver and environs. Purchase one for yourself and others for gifts and enjoy the savings for months to come. Also, $1 from each deck goes to the Food Bank of the Rockies. Buy online (but you do have to add sales tax and a disproportionate shipping charge or $3.64 per deck) or at the Tattered Cover. If you order online, the shipping charge is waived with four or more, so think about stuffing a lot of stockings with an incentive to dine out in some of the Denver area's top dining spots.
The DINR Deck, a nifty deal cooked up by the Denver Network of Independent Restaurants, is a playing card-style deck that costs $50 and contains 52 cards, each good for $10 off a food purchase of $25 or more. The impressive list of participating restaurants includes some real stars in Denver and environs. Purchase one for yourself and others for gifts and enjoy the savings for months to come. Also, $1 from each deck goes to the Food Bank of the Rockies. Buy online (but you do have to add sales tax and a disproportionate shipping charge or $3.64 per deck) or at the Tattered Cover. If you order online, the shipping charge is waived with four or more, so think about stuffing a lot of stockings with an incentive to dine out in some of the Denver area's top dining spots.Denver Restaurant Weeks in 2010
Two weeks, two multi-course dinners for $52.80
Denver Restaurant Week 2010 is doubling from one week to two, stretching from February 20 through March 5 to become Denver Retaurant Weeks. Even if you eat out every single night, that's still only enough time to sample a small fraction of the participating restaurants. There were 225 last year, and 100 have already signed up for 2010. Participating restaurants typically offer a multi-course, fixed-priced meal for $52.80 for two, referencing Denver’s 5,280-foot elevation, or $26.40 for one. Last year, with a record 298,200 meals served, about 75 percent of the restaurants extended their Restaurant Week specials beyond the scheduled week of February 21-27, so this year, the second week becomes official.
Denver Restaurant Week 2010 is doubling from one week to two, stretching from February 20 through March 5 to become Denver Retaurant Weeks. Even if you eat out every single night, that's still only enough time to sample a small fraction of the participating restaurants. There were 225 last year, and 100 have already signed up for 2010. Participating restaurants typically offer a multi-course, fixed-priced meal for $52.80 for two, referencing Denver’s 5,280-foot elevation, or $26.40 for one. Last year, with a record 298,200 meals served, about 75 percent of the restaurants extended their Restaurant Week specials beyond the scheduled week of February 21-27, so this year, the second week becomes official.
Beaujolais & Beyond: Débutante Party for a Favorite French Wine
Chefs competition, wine tasting, silent auction and glorious food
The November release of nouveau Beaujolais is a reason, or an excuse, that the French-American Chamber of Commerce uses to organize Beaujolais & Beyond, a transcontinental celebration of this annually anticipated new wine. Each FACC affiliate selects its own precise date, venue and event details. Denver's FACC's Beaujolais & Beyond fête was Thursday, November 19, and for the second time in consecutive weeks, I was thrilled to be a judge for the chefs competition. My co-panelists were Stacey Brugeman of Denver Magazine; Vanessa Martinez, online editor for 5280 Magazine and Lori Midson of Westword. The event took place at Mile High Station, which had hosted the Denver International Wine Festival the week before. I half-expected the place to festooned in the French tricoleur, but elegant white was selected instead. Space in the center of the soaring hall was reserved for the entertainment, especially the stunning aerial dance act. But the real attraction was the food and the wine -- or the wine and the food.
Once again, participating chefs prepared fantastic dishes, crafted to pair with the evening's Gerorges Duboeuf nouveau. They could enter one, two or all three categories. Below are the winning dishes:
Best Appetizer - Beaujolais Braised Petite Redbird Coq au Vin by Michael Long, Opus Restaurant, Littleton. Beautifully sauced drummettes served with pearl onion and a shave of black truffle. The dish was similar to one that Long prepared the previous week the Denver International Wine Festival, where it was also much praised. Long likes to serve three drummettes on a three-compartment plate, but only two are visible here, shown as he presented it to us judges. Not a flattering photo of the chef, but the judging moved along fast and so did he.
I couldn't get a good photo angle of Chef's hands, shaving the black truffle on each drummette -- but I did get a good taste!
Best Entrée - Duck Cordon Bleu by Cade Nagy, Catering by Design, Denver - Mushroom-spätzle casserole, grilled arugula, dried cherry salad and house-cured prosciutto chips made a multi-textured, multi-color dish with complementary flavora. The chip actually was standing up straight out of the casserole, a distinctive presentation that doesn't really show in this image.
Best Dessert - Cranberry Tart with Brie Fonduta by Brendon Doyle, Jonesy's EatBar. "Tart" is an Americanized name for a French clafoutie in which the fruit combines into the batter. The fruit of choice was, cranberries which make me think of autumn, and this tart was topped by a creamy melted Brie encircled by Pinot Noir reduction and additional Brie. Doyle said that he likes these grandmotherly plates. To my eye, the busy pattern detracted from the presentation, but nothing could detract from the taste.
People's Choice Winners
Best Appetizer - Duck Raviolis in a Duck Jus Reduction by Jean-Luc Voegele, Westin Tabor Center. Truffles and leeks, julienned and crisp-fried, made this a winner. Interestingly, he was also the People's Choice winner at the Denver International Wine Festival. Bottom line: the "people" really like Voegele's dishes -- an so do I.
Best Entrée - New York Strip with Huckleberry Demi-Glaze and Best Dessert - Creme Brulée Cake, David Oliveri, both Farraday's Steak House, Black Hawk. I goofed big time on this, especially since Oliveri won two out of three categories. For the judges, Oliveri plated a small portion of the meat on one end of a large oval platter and the cake on the other. I took pictures of neither, and attendees voted for both. I guess FACC will just have to ask me back to judge in 2010. I'll do better with photos. I promise. Meanwhile, apologies to the organizers, to Chef and to the fans who voted for him.
The best I can offer, photographically, is a bit of the People's Choice ballot station. Each chef prepared and plated his dish(es), which were arrayed on a fall-festive table with the ballot box as the centerpiece.
Other Noteworthy Dishes
Creativity reigned in several other dishes, a couple of which are worthy of a photo and an explanation here. Restaurant 1515's Chuck James prepared sous-vide lobster that he smoked at the table. He inverted a martini glass over the lobster and smoked it via a hose stuck under the rim. When the martini glass was lifted, aromatic smoke rose from the plate and the smoley flavor permeated the rich lobster meat. James served it with a corn/truffle waffle, garlic butter "caviar," arugula and lemon dust -- yes, dust, not zest.
Catering by Design's Cade Nagy upscaled and deconstructed the infamous Egg McMuffin: braised pork belly, fried quail egg, Hollandaise and a biscuit. He described it as his homage to fast food. Unlike its inspiration, I called it delicious.
More Eating Than Blogging This Week
This might seem more like a Facebook entry than a blog post, but I want to show a sign of life here. In the last week, I've cooked a few meals, enjoed happy hour at Brasserie Ten Ten with media colleagues, attended the champagne reception celebrating the opening of the gleaming new Sheraton Denver Downtown, attended a preview of part of the winter menu of Beaver Creek's Restaurant 8100 in the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek, been a judge at the chefs competition at the Beaujolais and Beyond festival and enjoyed two First Bite Boulder dinners, one at Arugula Bar e Ristorante and one at Trattoria on Pearl. I know you're feeling terribly sorry for me. Not! In any event, images are on the computer and I will try to catch up on posting. But not tonight. Be patient, please.
2009 Taste of Elegance Competition Winners: Corey and Long
Judging a chefs' competition is a delicious but difficult job
Chris Davies CEO of Wine Country International, which runs the festival, took the picture, below, of us judges just before we set off on our appointed tasting rounds. We discussed whether to stick together or split apart and decided to move from station to station in a cluster so that the chefs would only have to describe their dishes just once. Below, from left, Hosea Rosenberg of Jax Fish House, Boulder, and winner of last season's "Top Chef" honors, moi, Amanda Faison of 5280 magazine and Teresa Farney of the Colorado Springs Gazette. We did not look quite so perky after we had tasted two dishes from each chef and wines to match -- plus Belgian beers.
Once again, I was honored to be a judge at the "Taste of Elegance" chefs competition at the 2009 Denver International Wine Festival. As was the case last year, each competitor is given a bottle of red and a bottle of white in advance to taste and then create two dishes to pair with those wines -- wines that had previously place in September's Denver Wine Competition. We judges were charged with evaluating dishes based on presentation, tasted and food/wine compatibility to come up with the best overall chef and the most creative chef.
Chris Davies CEO of Wine Country International, which runs the festival, took the picture, below, of us judges just before we set off on our appointed tasting rounds. We discussed whether to stick together or split apart and decided to move from station to station in a cluster so that the chefs would only have to describe their dishes just once. Below, from left, Hosea Rosenberg of Jax Fish House, Boulder, and winner of last season's "Top Chef" honors, moi, Amanda Faison of 5280 magazine and Teresa Farney of the Colorado Springs Gazette. We did not look quite so perky after we had tasted two dishes from each chef and wines to match -- plus Belgian beers.
Wine glasses ready for the sell-out crowd of 400 at the entrance to the festival, which this year moved to Mile High Station, a new events facility.
Before 6:00 p.m. when the public was allowed in, the competing chefs and their teams worked quickly and quietly to stage their two dishes.
There was only so much I could do at the same time -- tasting, evaluating, snapping quick pictures and scribbing notes in the hopes of matching images with restaurants and chefs. It was beyond my multi-tasting talents to do it all, so below are just some of the dishes we tasted. I can identify some but not all, so I won't label any. Just know that there was a lot of good food, a lot of well-thought-out plating and a lot of care displayed by "Taste of Elegance" chefs.
Attendees milled around, also tasting and sipping, often with considerably less restraint than those of us who had a job to do.
Let me tell you that the decision was difficult. There was a lot of good food preapred by local culinary talents. In the end, we selected Robert Corey of Sandoval's Kitchen, Denver as Most Creative Chef and Michael Long of Opus, Littleton as Best Chef. Jean-Luc Voegele of the Westin Tabor Center, Denver took the People's Choice award. Congratulations to all.
Last year, I managed to write a post immmediately after the festival, and you might want to read it for a backgrounder. Other than the venue and the number of chefs competing, the format was largely the same both years.
2009 Taste of Elegance Chefs
Jeff Bolton, Second Home, JW Marriott, Denver
Chad Clevenger, Mel's Bar and Grill, Greenwood Village
Austin Cueto, Restaurant Kevin Taylor, Denver
Robert Corey, Sandoval's Kitchen (overall Best Chef winner)
Eliza Goodwill, 221 South Oak, Telluride
David Harker, Meritage, Omni Interlocken, Broomfield
Daniel Joly, Mirabelle Restaurant, Avon/Beaver Creek
DeWayne Lieurance, 5280 Chef/Clandestine Chef
Michael Long, Opus Restaurant, Littleton (named Most Creative Chef)
David Olivieri, Farraday's Steakhouse, Isle of Capri Casino & Hotel, Black Hawk
Eric Riviera, LaLa's Wine Bar & Pizza, Denver
Eric Skokan, Black Cat Bistro, Boulder
Jeremy Thomas, Parisi's Italian Market & Deli and Firenze a Tavola, Denver
Jean-Luc Voegele, Westin Tabor Center, Denver (People's Choice winner)
Kelly Yepello, Yepello Chocolates & Confections, Steamboat Springs
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