Author: Nathaniel Glen

It’s hard not to judge a restaurant by the restaurant that inhabited its building before. Especially if it’s is the same kind of restaurant. So, naturally, Manitou’s new Sahara Cafe is held up to its predecessor, Nile Cafe. Based on that comparison, Sahara is absolutely stupendous. Sahara serves up such Middle Eastern favorites as falafel…

Paradise Pizza is based on a good idea: Make a breakfast-themed pizza piled with cheese, eggs, bacon and other morning goodies, even country gravy or hollandaise. Then, instead of the standard wheat crust, put it on a surprisingly thin, crisp crust of hash browns. And it works. The hash browns are warm and starchy in…

When you walk through the old wooden door of Juniper Valley Ranch Dining Room, past the little stone patio where cholla cactus and yucca lean against the red adobe wall, you don’t feel like a customer. You feel like company coming for Sunday dinner. And in a way, you are. Juniper Valley, a humble, mud-brick…

When you walk through the old wooden door of Juniper Valley Ranch Dining Room, past the little stone patio where cholla cactus and yucca lean against the red adobe wall, you don’t feel like a customer. You feel like company coming for Sunday dinner. And in a way, you are. Juniper Valley, a humble, mud-brick…

Springs Orleans is everything its predecessor on Tejon Street, Il Postino, was not. It’s lively. It’s fun. And — here’s a concept for a restaurant — the food tastes good. The grand and gently dim dining room is packed with people, the chatter mixing seamlessly with piano jazz. Servers whisk by with dishes of shrimp…

Springs Orleans is everything its predecessor on Tejon Street, Il Postino, was not. It’s lively. It’s fun. And — here’s a concept for a restaurant — the food tastes good. The grand and gently dim dining room is packed with people, the chatter mixing seamlessly with piano jazz. Servers whisk by with dishes of shrimp…

Showing up early — say about 11:30 — at Phat Hatties Smokehouse Barbeque is a lovely thing. Because you might just catch the first brisket of the day. That means you can watch as owner Anne Morris or window master Lisa Matiski peels back the foil from a steaming, juicy hump of beef the size…

Some things just should not be messed with. Bacon is one of them. So when Naturally’s Market and Cafe serves a breakfast taco with “fakin’ bacon,” made of vaguely smoky, vaguely salty and definitely funky soy strips, it’s hard to forgive. Hard, but not impossible. That’s because this crunchy little vegetarian-focused Manitou cafe does so…