Jake Adam York (left) and Adrian Miller enjoy Bar-B-Que at Blest Bar-B-Que in Littleton (5654 Prince Street) as owner Louis Washington (standing) stops by their table. (Denver Post file photo, Nov. 15, 2002)

Denver’s “barbecue poet,” Jake Adam York, died Dec. 16, 2012. Read his obituary here.

“You don’t get tired of eating barbecue; it just isn’t done. I think if you look in the Colorado penal code, there is a law that enjoins you from getting tired of barbecue,” York told food writer Ellen Sweets in 2005.

We asked him to pen an ode to the craft. His love of words — and smoked meat — shines here. This essay was published on Oct. 26, 2005, in The Denver Post’s Food section:

By Jake Adam York, Special to The Denver Post

Some people think “barbecue” means “grill,” as in “Let’s throw some steaks on the barbecue.” Etymology supports them — almost.

When Columbus arrived, many Caribbean peoples were curing meat by hanging strips of meat or fish on a grille-work of green sticks over a low wood fire. The Tainos called this barbacoa. The Spanish took this word to signify a grille-work, and this is the root of the English sense of “barbecue” as “grill.”

But not everyone accepts this definition of “barbecue.”
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Poet Jake Adam York, associate professor of English at the University of Colorado at Denver, won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in November shortly before his death.

By Claire Martin, The Denver Post

Jake Adam York, who died suddenly Dec. 16 in Denver at age 40, was a poet relentlessly dedicated to the foot soldiers of the civil rights movement, with occasional forays into celebrating the virtues of barbecue.

His poem “Grace” invoked both:

“The smoke from the grill
is the smell of my father coming home
from the furnace and the tang
of vinegar and char is the smell of Birmingham, the smell
of coming home, of history, redolent
as the salt of black-and-white film
when I unwrap the sandwich
from the wax-paper the wax-paper
crackling like the cold grass
along the Selma to Montgomery road,
like the foil that held Medgar’s last meal, a square of tin
that is just the ghost of that barbecue
I can imagine to my tongue
when I stand at the pit with my brother
and think of all the hands and mouths
and breaths of air that sharpened
this flavor and handed it down to us.”

Less than a month ago, York, an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Denver, was named a 2013 Literature Fellow of the National Endowment For The Arts. His was one of 40 applications chosen from a field of more than 1,100.
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Nice taps. Boulder will get lots of of ‘em – more than 30 – at Under the Sun, a pub scheduled to open in January from the people behind the Mountain Sun pubs. (Mountain Sun)

If a Grateful Dead tour could be reincarnated as a bunch of brewpubs, then the tour – say, Fall ’72 – would live in Boulder and Denver, and be named Mountain Sun, Southern Sun, and Vine Street Pub. And here comes another joint, Under the Sun, set to open in Boulder in January. At its best, the Dead was welcoming, improvisational, informal, inspirational. In their own way, I think the Sun pubs capture the same vibe.

Before I delve into Under the Sun, let me rattle on a bit about the Suns (and the Vine).

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Dancing Pines Distillery makes liqueurs, gin, rum, bourbon and brandy in Loveland, CO (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

A longer version of this story by Douglas Brown will appear in Wednesday’s (Dec. 19) Food section. But if you have a liquor aficionado on your holiday shopping list, here’s a guide:

Just a few years ago, American whiskey choices did not veer far from stuff made in Kentucky and Tennessee. But the microdistillery revolution changed all that; distilleries across the nation are pumping out floral gins, brandies redolent of fruit and persuading sippers to go find a fireplace, rums that evoke Martinique, and much more.

And lots of these little jewels call Colorado home; the state has issued licenses for 36 distilleries (not all of them are up and running yet), said Kristian Naslund, the owner of Dancing Pines Distillery in Loveland and a leader at the Colorado Distillers Guild.

“People from around the country are looking to Colorado to see what we are doing,” said Naslund. “People have been paying attention to microbrews for so long, it made sense with microdistilling. We have great water, and great creativity.”
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Vesper fundraiser

This just in from my favorite Jersey girl, Wendy Aiello, who writes an excellent press release:

Because of strong New Jersey roots that made the sting of Hurricane Sandy hit close to home, Denver restaurateur Frank Bonanno and a group of his New Jersey transplanted friends are opening the doors to the new Vesper Lounge on Tuesday, December 18 at 5:00 to raise money for the Westfield Rotary Club in New Jersey that will go to support the Community Food Bank of New Jersey.

Frank Bonanno was born and raised in New Jersey before moving to Denver and becoming a community fixture. Same for Wendy Aiello, Phil Cortese, Sean Duffy, Ken Fellman, Carmine Iadorola, Michael Kearns, Sean Kenyon and Gene Sobczak. The group has banded together to invite fellow Coloradoans, those with and without ties to New Jersey, to come check out Denver’s coolest new neighborhood bar, and help.

Thanks to Bonanno’s generosity, 100 percent of all the door, food and liquor sales will go to helping New Jersey recover from the devastation Hurricane Sandy delivered in late October. For a cost of just $20 at the door, guests can enjoy Bonanno’s award-winning cuisine and some New Jersey-style camaraderie while providing much needed aid to New Jersey.

WHEN: Tuesday, December 18, 2012, 5:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m.
WHERE: Vesper Lounge, 233 East 7th Ave Denver, CO 80203 (click here for map)
WHO: Wendy Aiello, Frank Bonanno, Phil Cortese, Sean Duffy, Ken Fellman, Carmine Iadorola, Michael Kearns, Sean Kenyon, Gene Sobczak

Handy Mill pepper grinder

Lemme give you a hand with that seasoning.

The Handy Mill pepper grinder from HomeToolz makes meal time (or work time, if you open the package at the office) way more fun. Just imagine the messages you can send with the moveable fingers. (Every person who saw it had the same instinct.)

Available in right and left hands (salt and pepper!), the mill has a smooth-operating ceramic grinding mechanism.

Find the Handy Mill, $66, at the Peppercorn , 1235 Pearl St. in Boulder, 303-449-5847, and $60 at Amazon.

Already have a pair of hands? We have more gift ideas from Colorado retailers in this week’s Food section.

Italian-Americans have long had a beef with Hollywood’s seeming obsession with the Mafia, from Oscar-winning epics such as “The Godfather” to dese-and-dose stereotyping of low-level thugs. (Need a heavy? Find a guy with a heavy Brooklyn accent and have him threaten the hero with a pair of cement overshoes. Presto. Cut and print.)

It’s a legitimate complaint, despite the equally legitimate fact that it’s a universal truth that we tend to find villains more fascinating than the good guys. Why else did Milton make Satan, the angel cast out of heaven, the central figure of “Paradise Lost”?

Still, the fact that some Italian-American restaurants use Mob lore as a drawing card is off-putting. You don’t find Chinese restaurants putting up photos of Tong members or Mexican restaurants putting up pictures of drug-cartel honchos, even if a few bad apples in those cultures do engage in organized crime.

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If this makes your heart skip a few beats, in a good way, then you’d better steel yourself. Pizzeria Locale, the Boulder pizza mecca owned by the Frasca folks, is opening a new Locale in Denver next year. (Pizzeria Locale)

The Frasca guys, Bobby Stuckey and Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson, wowed Colorado with their exquisite Italian restaurant Frasca, their splendid, vestpocket sandwich shop Caffe, and their paean to traditional Neapolitan pizza, Pizzeria Locale. The three joints dominate much of a block of Boulder’s Pearl Street.

The empire, which started in 2004 with Frasca, is expanding. Sometime this spring, a second Pizzeria Locale is set to open, at 550 Broadway, in Denver. The 3,000-square-foot, 70-seat restaurant will fill the space of a former pizzeria, Il Vicino.

“We’re excited to be part of Denver’s dining community and we’re coming to Denver because it is a city that loves well-executed food, whether it’s coffee, sushi, craft beer or pizza,” said Stuckey. It’s been a long time coming: Stuckey and MacKinnon-Patterson started looking for a Denver space nearly a year ago.

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Espresso Macarons from “Mini Treats & Hand-Held Sweets” (Photo by Kristen Browning-Blas, The Denver Post)

Be not afraid of the length of this recipe. Start with plenty of time, as you need to let the meringues rest for at least an hour before you bake them. I tested this recipe at home and they turned out exactly like the picture in Abby Dodge’s well-written book, “Mini Treats and Hand-Held Sweets.” Be sure to have the baking sheets ready and a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip ready for piping the batter. You can use a Ziploc bag with the corner snipped off, it will just be a little messier.

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Business is booming at Pizza Republica, a Greenwood Village Italian place with wood-fired pizzas and a huge Italian wine list. The owner is opening a new Republica, at 14th Ave. and Champa St. in downtown Denver. (Pizza Republica)

With its wood-fired Neapolitan-style pizzas, its huge and Italian-only wine list, its friendly and festive vibe and its from-scratch kitchen, Pizza Republica has won ‘em over in Greenwood Village. And now owner George Eder is opening another Pizza Republica, in downtown Denver. The new restaurant, slated to open in early-2013, will fill a prominent spot, at 890 14th Ave. – right beside the Colorado Convention Center. His new landlord? The city of Denver.

On the inside, the 5,000-square-foot, 160-seat space will look nearly identical to the Greenwood Village joint, but the Denver Republica will also have a 4,000-square-foot, 100-seat patio facing 14th St.

That’s one heckuva’ patio for downtown Denver. Expect to see more Republicas, and patios, along the Front Range.

“We have the dream of building five in Colorado, and bringing a little bit of the flavors of Italy and my family recipes to the state,” said Eder, who grew up in Detroit in a German-Italian family. Among other cities, he wants to open a Republica in Fort Collins. “For now, we are heading downtown.”

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