My first exposure to crepes was in high school, when a friend who had seen the film “Breaking Away” a few times too many and was a hopeless (and brief) Francophile, tried to make them. I still don’t know what he did wrong, but this first memory is of a flattened and tasteless sponge.

He soon after dropped France, discovered the musical calisthenics known as Rush (this was the mid-’80s) and disappeared into suburbia. >> MORE

Dim sum is the new tapas, or actually the old Tapas, since Dim Sum has reputedly been around since the third century.

For the uninitiated, dim sum consists of small plates of a variety of Chinese food (more specifically Cantonese) eaten family-style, accompanied by lots of tea. Dim sum means, literally, “dot heart” or “order heart” - better expressed as simply ordering as one desires. >> MORE

This time of year thoughts turn to the glorious prospect of roasting birds. We’ll see lots on the turkey in the coming week, but here I want to talk a little about the chicken.

There is little agreement on the best way to roast a chicken. There are questions and strong opinions on basting, trussing, temperature, prep and sauce. Intrigued that a simple bird and a simple process can have such passionate debate, I consulted a few friends, trusted cookbooks and the web to get a flavor for best practices. >> MORE

I imagine very few Foodmob readers are unaware of the fabulous central Denver cheese and specialty shop The Truffle (2906 East 6th Avenue, 303-322-7363.)

But you may not know that The Truffle can solve probably half of your holiday shopping needs through its tasty and unique cheese of the month deal. Last year we purchased four “subscriptions� – for aunts and uncles, friends and colleagues to whom I needed to suck up. >> MORE

Glenn Jones, an oceanographer from Texas A&M (and if you are like me, you are automatically thinking: Oceanographer in … Texas?) had a novel idea: study thousands of old restaurant menus — some back to the 1860s — to chart the evolution (via the availability and price) of different seafood.

The study is in progress, but some of the early findings seem to suggest that we are essentially (as an economist who writes on food sites), eating down the food chain. If we are what we eat, we may all be destined to end up as kelp. >> MORE

I went up to Boulder this week to see a logistics business. I met with the guy who runs the place, and since it was lunchtime, he suggested grabbing a sandwich.

We went to a neighborhood sandwich shop: Snarf’s. >> MORE

The onslaught of cold weather on Monday made me hungry, but in a different way. I wanted comfort food - hearty, filling, robust.

Pasta always tops my list when the weather turns. Lasagna is the easiest, but also a little bland. I’m always interested in taking a staple dish - like Pasta - and introducing a different slant - something sharper. The home comfort of pasta but with modern furnishings.

So for those of you looking for a warming meal with a sharper taste, here is a pasta dish almost as good as mom used to make. >> MORE

An update on my summer post about Liks Ice Cream:

Apparently Guinness got word that Liks was using their name for its mouth-watering Guinness Carmel Fudge Ice Cream and put an immediate stop to it. They have a hard and fast (and silly) rule against using their brand.

So the formerly famous “Guinness Carmel Fudge� is now “Irish Stout Carmel Fudge.� Same great taste.

But I now have a new crush at Liks. >> MORE

I have two basic food rules.

The first is to avoid anything that pretends to be something else (Tofu Burger; Soy Cheese). The second is not to mix cultures. There is a reason that Japanese and Italian food developed differently, and you would no more want to mix the two together than you would hang a geisha Mona Lisa in your living room.

I still hold to rule one. However, rule two has some pretty serious asterisks – in fact, enough so that it looks like a meteor shower. >> MORE

I appreciated John Lehndorff’s barbeque roundup in for the Rocky last summer.

I too, have several southern friends who scoff when I mention barbeque here in the Mile High City. They counter with their own tales of pulled pork in Memphis, and spareribs in Mississippi. Lehndorff does
a nice job summarizing the various and very tasty BBQ joints in our town and gives a great rundown of the must have side dishes at the restaurants.

But his sparse coverage of Yazoo (2150 Broadway; 303-296-3334), did not do justice to this little gem of a dive. >> MORE

Despite the accoloades New Saigon restaurant has received in recent years, I still encounter too many people in the Denver area who have no idea about the wealth of vietnamese cuisine in the metro area. Dex lists 17 results for Vietnamese cuisinne in the metro area and I suspect that doesn’t count the fabulous and often nameless holes-in-the-walls on Federal. >> MORE