Alison Cook

The tattered strip center at Richmond and Woodhead divulges few clues that inside, a Montrose institution is aborning. First you notice that cars often throttle the parking lot in front of a Spartan corner grocery and faceless taqueria. Then you become distracted by the engagingly named You-All Laundromat. Many drive-bys...

Random Thought: It never fails to amuse me how a restaurant can underwhelm me on the food front and still manage to endear itself. Tutto Bene in the Heights -- oh, okay all you jingoists, in the obscure Old West End -- is a prime example. The many forms of...

Flipped inside out of its shell, and scored to unfold like a chrysanthemum, the two-pound Australian lobster tail looked as if it were not entirely of this earth. And it wasn't. "It's $69.95," murmured the waiter at Lynn's Steakhouse, presenting his exhibition platter of mountainous raw meats for our inspection...

Sometimes it seems as if there's a Texas-genre food place on every other corner. You know: fajitas, burgers, steaks, fried things, mesquite-grilled things, Mexicanized things. Often, there is a dreadful sameness to these establishments. So it's refreshing to stumble across one that does a pretty good job on the standards...

What a dinner party it would be. In my mind's eye, I can see them bellied up to the red-checked linens at Mandola's Family Table: George Foreman; Tom Arnold and Roseanne, together again; Rush Limbaugh; Chris Farley; Shaquille O'Neal. Stalwart eaters who would not flinch from the monumental logs of...