Latest news with #MannyBarella
Axios
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Axios
Best bites and sips from the Big Eat in Denver
The annual Big Eat — one of Denver's top foodie events — never fails to wow the palate with bold flavors. Dig in: This year's event featured more than 70 local food and beverage vendors, including acclaimed restaurants like Olivia, Lucina and Mizuna. Best bites: I went to check out the spread. Here were my favorites: Riot BBQ serves Texas barbecue with a Mexican twist, celebrity chef Manny Barella told us. And he delivered with juicy smoked pulled pork with esquites cornbread. Blackbelly brought the perfect one-two punch with its lardo and stonefruit toast topped with Colorado peaches. That paired nicely with a gazpacho shooter featuring tomato water, cucumber and chile. Samosa Shop surprised us with its hearty but delicate kesar mango salad made with farro, asparagus chutney vinaigrette and pomegranate.
Axios
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
New spots to eat and drink in Denver
Texas-style barbecue. Middle Eastern fare. Scandinavian coffee. The big picture: Denver's food and drink scene continues to evolve with new openings across the city and flavors from around the world. Here are six to know: 🍖 At Riot BBQ, chef Manny Barella, a "Top Chef" alum, and pitmaster Patrick Klaiber are serving up a fusion of Texas-style barbecue and northern Mexico's asado traditions. The new Overland joint — located in the former AJ's Pit Bar-B-Q space — is getting rave reviews. 🇾🇪 Yemen Grill & Cafe has expanded from Aurora to Denver's University neighborhood, bringing authentic Middle Eastern flavors with a focus on Yemeni cuisine. The baba ganoush is a must. 🇳🇵 Mantra Cafe opened its doors at 1147 Broadway, offering a cozy spot for Nepali and Indian dishes, including momos, fusion platters and a wide range of vegetarian options. 🥪 Mendocino Farms, a fast-casual restaurant founded in Southern California, made its Colorado debut in Cherry Creek North, where it offers chef-driven sandwiches and salads. ☮️ Green Bus Cafe transitioned from a mobile coffee operation to a '70s-themed brick-and-mortar cafe in the Whittier neighborhood serving up specialty coffee and plant-based gluten-free goods. ☕️ Kaffe Åre (oar-eh) is a Scandinavian-inspired, New York City-based coffee shop that recently debuted in Denver's Highland neighborhood. It serves coffee and smoothies along with house-baked pastries and freshly made sandwiches in an open, sunlit space. The intrigue: The Brown Palace, now under new management, has launched Le Palais Frites — a new dining experience offering an "inventive twist on traditional French flavors" through a three-course prix fixe menu for $49. What's next: Vegan restaurant Gladys — a spot we absolutely love — is scheduled to reopen in a bigger, newly built space inside Edgewater Public Market on July 14.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Secrets to making better burgers, according to award-winning chefs
Backyard barbecue season is almost here, which means it's time to clean off your grill and start planning your backyard cookouts. Want to level up your burger game, too? As a food and travel writer based in Colorado, one of my favorite events every summer is the Denver Burger Battle (sadly it's on pause for 2025). The event draws chefs from around the Mile High City, giving them carte blanche to come up with creative toppings or win people over with the classics. Attendees get a token to vote on their favorite burger. Over the years, some of my favorites have been a Juicy Lucy, a Minneapolis-style of burger with a molten cheese in the middle, and others that are topped with green chile, a nod to the Pueblo, Colorado-born 'slopper.' To find out what it takes to make the best hamburger, though, I chatted with Chef Manny Barella, a contestant on Season 21 of Bravo's 'Top Chef' who was among those on last year's judging panel. He's the culinary director of Camp Pickle, which is set to open Denver and Tulsa in 2025, and Jaguar Bolera, which opened in Raleigh. I also chatted with the team at Cherry Cricket, a popular Denver-based burger bar and Burger Battle repeat winner that took home the People's Choice award in 2024 for its French onion soup-inspired burger. In 2023, the team's award-winning Cricket Royale burger that featured braised short rib and bone marrow among other accouterments. Here's the secret sauce to an award-winning burger, according to the experts: Most burgers in America are seasoned with a little salt and pepper and tend to taste the same, says Barella, who grew up in Mexico. His trick? Cook down vegetables like onions and garlic then fold them into the meat with your seasonings. 'That way, the meat is also seasoned inside and not just on the outside,' Barella says. If you're cooking on a flat top, try adding extra pepper on the outside—open fire burns the peppercorn too quickly. If the burger tastes great on its own, the cheese, toppings, and bun are there to play a supporting cast role. Barella's motto: 'In order to be extraordinary do ordinary things extraordinarily well.' (Though, he admits, he's a sucker for a truffle mayo). After you pull a burger from the grill, it's a habit to start piling on the toppings. But there's an art to how everything is layered. Barella recommends this order: Bun, onions, lettuce, tomato, burger patty with cheese, bun. The weight of the patty weighs down the toppings and the tomato provides a nice barrier to keep the lettuce fresh. 'The more things you put on a plate, the more things you're going to get judged on.' That's some advice that celebrity chef Tom Colicchio once gave Barella. If you're hosting a barbecue, go the extra mile and toast your buns instead of serving them straight out of the package. 'When you heat up a brioche bun all that butter in the bread warms up and creates a nice layer of crispiness,' Barella says. Returning and repeat champ Cherry Cricket knows a thing or two about creating award-winning burgers. The team dreamed up 'The Cry-Baby' for this year's burger battle. It's a creative twist on the classic comfort food: French onion soup. The meaty masterpiece is topped with a toasty crostini, cave-aged Gruyère, bone marrow caramelized onions, frico (a crispy-crunchy fried cheese), and onion strings. It's cradled between a rosemary potato bun with a schmear of French onion dip and a sidecar of soup for dipping. 'This way, we can cater to both adventurous foodies looking for something new and those who appreciate the comforting taste of a classic burger,' says Alex Bunn, CMO and VP of Growth for Breckenridge-Wynkoop, LLC. Cherry Cricket prepares for battle months in advance. All three Cherry Cricket locations come up with what they believe is an award-winning burger, Bunn says, experimenting with ingredients, testing flavors, refining the concepts, and taking into account consumer trends. Then, employees participate in a blind taste test to pick the burger that has the strongest shot at winning.
