Year-end favorites list from local eateries

...to The Denver Post's site

By Kyle Wagner, Denver Post Restaurant Reviewer

'Tis the season for food critics to make a list, and check it twice, of restaurants that were good in the past year. So, here are my favorite dishes from the past year:

Best amuse-bouche: Vega (410 E. Seventh Ave.), hands down. Chef Sean Yontz just gets it, and he sends it out. Not content to cheat by wrapping nori around a teeny bit of tuna and cucumber, Yontz makes mini masterpieces that combine five or six ingredients in interesting and appealing ways.

Best appetizer: All of the starters at Highland's Garden Café (3927 W. 32nd Ave) are so superb, it's hard to pick just one. Loved the goat cheese quesadilla with lobster mango salsa, loved the smoked salmon omelette with vodka-spiked sour cream, loved the golden-crusted crab cakes. Love Highland's Garden.

Best soup: A friend and I took our kids to Marigold Café and Bakery in Colorado Springs (4605 Centennial Blvd.), and not only did we watch one kid slurp down some of the best escargots I've had in ages (I managed to extract one), she and I also fought over the French onion soup, an amazingly deeply flavored version covered with a mantle of Gruyere.

Best salad: Simplicity is the keyword for salads, and Tiramisu (2191 Arapahoe St.) knows how to make that work. Chef/owner Patrizia Rossi piles fresh arugula on a plate with perfect pear slices, large sheets of grana cheese and pine nuts, all of which is held together with a good-quality olive oil. Sweet, bitter, nutty, salty. Heaven.

Best side: As long as Radek Cerny has a restaurant somewhere, the best whipped potatoes ever will be available. The guy just loves his spuds, and so do we. Of course, it's hard to say if there's any actual potato in there, but something's holding together all that butter and cream. Get them now at L'Atelier (1739 Pearl St., Boulder).

Best meat: The duck at Emma's (603 E. Sixth Ave.) comes soaked in a three-pepper sauce that includes the smoky depth of chipotles, a refreshingly non-sweet treatment for the savory-skinned flesh. The kitchen also makes some nice lamb chops.

Best seafood: Junz (11211 S. Dransfeldt Rd., Parker) is one of the top sushi bars in town, but this classy spot also cooks up Chilean sea bass and lobster with the best of 'em.

Best pasta: Luca d'Italia (711 Grant St.) simply does the most innovative and exciting pasta dishes around right now. Consider duck liver-stuffed ravioli awash in sage-sweetened brown butter, agnolotti (little "priest's caps' of pasta) filled with butternut squash and combined with melting gorgonzola and pine nuts, or pappardelle bolognese, thick, wide noodles layered with a ragu made from wild boar. Whoa.

Best dessert: Brasserie Rouge (1801 Wynkoop St.) makes its own sorbets and ice creams (the fig is stunning) and also offers giant profiteroles swimming in a to-die-for chocolate sauce and a dead-on classic crème brulee.

Gone but not forgotten: Triana (1039 Pearl St., Boulder), which never really hit its stride again after losing chef James Mazzio, has closed. The eatery will redeem any gift certificates issued after Sept. 15 of this year. The restaurant going into its space is going to be called The Kitchen, but those are all the details available.

No wine-ing here

A new idea in France is one that we would do well to adopt in this country. Because France has begun to crack down on drunken drivers, French restaurants are now offering wine "doggie bags' to customers so that partially finished bottles can be taken home.

According to a story in the International Herald Tribune, the effect of the crackdown was that diners were ordering a significantly smaller number of wine bottles (a reported 10 to 15 percent). Mon dieu!

The coolest part is that the restaurants are using a special pump that sucks the air out of the opened bottle, meaning the wine keeps for another few days.

Of course, here in Colorado, we're still trying to figure out why we can't take our own bottles into restaurants, so the wine doggie bag is probably still a few centuries away.

A new cooking school for the home chef is now open. The Passionate Palette (9623 E. County Line Road, Englewood) is run by chefs Ben Davis (who once cooked for Mel's Restaurant and Bar and Panzano) and Jennifer Suydam (most recently food service specialist for Tony's Meats & Specialty Foods), and their classes range from hands-on workshops to "guy grub,' kids classes, baking, dessert and wine seminars.

Too late for a Christmas present but not a bad idea anytime for folks who like to eat out with their toddler is the Clean Diner, a cotton-quilted thingy that Velcros around a restaurant high chair. In this day of flu viruses, not a bad idea. Of course, there's also the novel concept of restaurants disinfecting the high chairs, but from what I keep seeing around town, that may be too much to ask.

You can find the Clean Diner online at several sites, including www.babyscholars.com and www.kidsurplus.com; it retails for about $20.

Kyle Wagner's Dish column appears Fridays in Weekend Entertainment. You can contact Kyle at 303-820-1958 or kwagner@denverpost.com.