Welcome to Nibbles, my new weekly food newsletter. Look for Nibbles every Tuesday around lunchtime for a buffet of Boulder County food and restaurant news, restaurant recommendations and practical cooking tips.
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Today’s edition focuses on the culinary pleasures of Hanukkah and other year-round Jewish baked goods. I visited a favorite food truck for a chewy bagel sandwich and cinnamon-dusted kugel. Plus: A new Spanish seafood restaurant is on the way, festive holiday events are coming up, and could a celebrated Denver wine bar be heading to Boulder?
Send comments and information about Boulder County restaurants, food classes, events, tastings and tours to nibbles@boulderreportinglab.org.
— John Lehndorff
If there is a more comforting food than potatoes, I haven’t found it yet. In fact, if I had to plan my final meal, potatoes would definitely be on the menu.
I am not alone in my spud love. According to yougov.com, the No. 1 most popular food in the U.S. is french fries. The top 10 dishes also include mashed potatoes, hash browns, steak and fries, and steak and baked potato.
World cuisines celebrate variations on the potato pancake theme, including French galettes de pomme de terre, Korean gamja-jeon, Irish boxty and Iranian kuku sib zamini.
Every autumn, potato pancakes have their star turn as latkes are featured at Hanukkah gatherings, which run Dec. 14 at sundown to Dec. 22 this year.
Boulder Reporting Lab offers this guide to finding and making latkes and other Hanukkah favorites like sufganiyot, as well as the Jewish baked goods and deli classics, from babka to black and white cookies to smoked fish and rugelach, that round out many family celebrations throughout the year.
Six variations on a potato pancake theme
You can fry your own latkes using this gluten-free recipe from Boulder’s Havenly Baked Goods, a Swedish-inspired gluten-free bakery, or sample potato pancakes at local restaurants:
The Huckleberry: Latkes with applesauce, sour cream and eggs.
Moe’s Broadway Bagels: Breakfast and lunch sandwiches served between latkes instead of bagels.
Morning Glory Cafe: Latkes with eggs, black beans, mango-peach salsa, sour cream and greens.
Bohemian Biergarten: Potato pancakes with pork belly and apple butter.
Vinca: Rösti with Cheddar, fried pancetta and lingonberries. Call Your Mother: Latkes, as well as babka, black and white cookies, smoked fish and bagel sandwiches are on the menu.
Taste your way through the challah of Boulder County
All praise to challah, the sweet, eggy braided loaf designed for pulling apart and bringing families together. You can bake your own high-altitude challah using these two local recipes (here and here), or find loaves at bakeries and eateries across the county:
Loaves of Zimmer Honey Challah made using a pre-World War II recipe are baked every Friday at River and Woods.
Other Boulder challah sources include Moe’s Broadway Bagels, Moxie Bread Co., Whistling Boar, Blackbelly and Great Harvest Bread Co.
Denver-baked loaves from Talia’s Challahs (and sweet babka, too) are stocked Fridays at Lucky’s Market. Boulder’s Havenly also offers challah loaves and buns.
Tracking down matzo ball soup, hamantashen and other deli delights
Besides deli sandwiches, egg, tuna and chicken salad, and Haagen-Dazs ice cream, Lindsay’s Boulder Deli offers lox and bagel platters, and classic matzo ball chicken soup.
Jewish deli and bakery items including Hanukkah staple sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts), plus babka, hamantashen, rugelach and smoked fish can be found at the following iconic Denver restaurants: Zaidy Deli, New York Deli News, The Bagel Deli, Rosenberg’s Deli and East Side Kosher Deli.
To top those potato pancakes, Community Fruit Rescue is offering jars of applesauce and apple butter created using fruit harvested from Boulder-area trees. Order here.
Chewy bagels and kugel with noodles are a few of my Fleishman’s favorites
Hanukkah has always been the best food time of the year, according to Danna Fleishman.
“The first five years that I lived in Boulder, I was known as ‘Aunt Danna’ to all my niece’s friends. At every holiday gathering they always asked: ‘Did you make the kugel?’ Fast-forward 15 years and I still get asked the same question: ‘Aunt Danna: Did you make the kugel?’”
Kugel, a sweet, cinnamon-dusted egg noodle pudding, along with matzo ball soup and latkes are on the Hanukkah menu at Fleishman’s Bagels and Delicatessen. The food truck is semi-permanently parked at Mike’s Bikes, 2355 30th St.
I stopped by Fleishman’s to grab The Dankster — cream cheese, bacon, onion and tomato on a freshly baked chewy onion bagel. Fleishman’s isn’t a kosher deli, so the menu includes both dairy-and-meat combinations and pork options.
I’m also a fan of the truck’s breakfast bagel loaded with juicy pastrami, eggs and Swiss cheese on a garlic bagel.
Sunday Vinyl, Spanish seafood and a generous holiday hospitality donation
Will Sunday Vinyl, the award-winning music-focused wine bar, relocate to Boulder? Frasca Hospitality Group has announced that the six-year-old location near Denver’s Union Station will close New Year’s Eve to create extra space for its sister eatery, Tavernetta.
Sunday Vinyl is a busy, popular destination that was named one of the favorite wine bars in the world by the editors of Wine Spectator.
According to Bobby Stuckey, co-owner of the group that operates Frasca Food & Wine and Pizzeria Alberico, Sunday Vinyl would be a perfect fit in Boulder, especially with the Sundance Film Festival on the horizon.
“We would love to bring Sunday Vinyl to Boulder, but it depends on several factors. We need the right location with rent we can afford, which is hard to find,” Stuckey says.
“We also need a strong sign from the City of Boulder and the city council that they will listen to restaurants. Right now, it is really hard, if you are a small restaurant, to make it work in Boulder.”
Former Frasca Food & Wine Culinary Director Eduardo Valle Lobo and his wife, Chef Kelly Jeun, will open Casa Juani at 901 Pearl St., the former location of My Friend Felix, in 2026. The new Boulder Spanish-influenced eatery will focus on authentic seafood dishes.
While most hunger relief efforts focus on giving boxes of food, Boulder’s T/aco has donated $50,000 in gift cards to 50 Boulder-area families facing food insecurity. T/aco has partnered with Whittier Elementary School to give the cards to families through the City of Boulder Family and Resource School Program.
Closings
Pizza 3.14, specializing in Chicago tavern-style pizzas, has closed at 1313 College Avenue on the Hill.
If you are feeling nostalgic about the burgers, beer and ambience at the 50-year-old World Famous Dark Horse, you may want to dine before the end of the year. The planned redevelopment of the surrounding shopping center includes a timeline that would have the Dark Horse vacated and demolished by Dec. 31, unless there is a last-minute reprieve. Stay tuned for BRL’s reporting on this.
Boulder JCC will host the annual “Chanukah on Pearl” at 5:30 p.m. Dec. 15, on the 1300 block of Pearl Street. The free event includes live music, a menorah lighting ceremony, treats and hot chocolate. Register here.
On Colorado Gives Day, which is today, Dec. 9, consider donating to the nonprofits struggling to feed Boulder County neighbors amid SNAP benefit cuts, delays and layoffs.
Boulder’s Pizzeria Alberico hosts its annual Hanukkah at Bubbie’s meal on Dec. 18 with challah, matzo ball soup, latkes, pizza with salmon and banana pudding. Make reservations on their website.
Velvet Elk Lounge hosts Latkepalooza on Dec. 18 with latkes, dancing and klezmer music. Make reservations here.
“The bagel is a lonely roll to eat all by yourself. In order for the true taste to come out, you need your family: One to cut the bagels, one to toast them, one to put on the cream cheese and the lox, one to put them on the table and one to supervise.” — Actress and producer Gertrude Berg
Want more Boulder bites?
The rise and fall of Boulder’s Broken Drum Tavern — the city’s last 3.2 bar, on Pearl Street
Once a hub for mechanics, laborers and early-morning regulars, the Broken Drum was demolished in 1983 to make way for the 15th Street parking garage. Continue reading…
Nibbles: Which Boulder restaurants truly walk the farm-to-table talk?
Slow Food’s Snail of Approval honors local spots living their sustainability values. Plus, a chocolate-croissant obsession at Dry Storage, Bobby Stuckey’s Julia Child Award and what’s cooking at Jax Fish House and Gold Hill Inn. Continue reading…