From the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, Denver’s dining scene has been hot in the press recently, and now residents and visitors will have an opportunity to see what all the buzz is about with substantial savings during Denver Restaurant Week through March 1.

For 10 days, nearly 300 of Denver’s finest restaurants will offer multi-course dinners for the tasty price of $30 per person. Menus and details can be found at DenverRestaurantWeek.com.

With so many choices, how do you decide where to go?  Here are 10 Denver Restaurant Week trends, compiled by the boosters at Visit Denver, to get you thinkin’ eatin’.

1. Gluten-free or vegan? There are 169 restaurants offering gluten-free items and 93 have vegan options.

2. The new kids on the block. It’s always exciting to try a restaurant brand new to Denver Restaurant Week. Here are a few hotspots that should make your list: Cart-Driver, Cebiche Highlands, Cheeky Monk Belgian Beer Café, Chowder Room, Dorchester Social Eatery, Timberline Steakhouse DIA, Season’s 52 and Stoic & Genuine.

3. Tried and true. Many of Denver’s top restaurants participate in this culinary event year after year. You can’t go wrong with one of these Denver Restaurant Week staples: Barolo Grill, Bistro Vendome, Broker Restaurant, Carmine’s on Penn, Denver Chophouse & Brewery, Elway’s Cherry Creek, The Fort, The Greenbriar Inn, Luca D’ Italia, Maggiano’s Little Italy, McCormick’s Fish House & Bar, Rioja and The Summit Steakhouse.

4. It’s all about the extras. Many restaurants are offering a bottle of wine, cocktails, beer or a fourth course as part of their restaurant week menu. Here are a few of the restaurants offering something extra: At Southern Hospitality choose a Colorado draft beer, house wine, whiskey or Moscow Mule; enjoy a glass of house wine or house made limoncello at Colore Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria; iFish Japanese Grill & Sushi is offering both a sushi starter and large carafe of hot, cold or house infused sake; share a bottle of wine at Racines and at Limon choose an amuse bouche to share.

5. The spirit of dessert. With most restaurants offering some sort of dessert in their multi-course meal offering, this is not the time to count calories. This year, several restaurants are boozin’ up their desserts with beer, wine or whiskey. Try one of these over-the-top desserts: Modena Wine Café is featuring a selection of alcohol infused ice creams including Left Hand Nitro Stout and a Cosmo Sorbet, the Figgy Pudding Brandy sauce with orange ice cream at Duo, Belgian Chocolate Torte with Housemade Porter Ice Cream at Cheeky Monk Belgian Beer Café and bourbon Vanilla Bean Crème Brûlée at Charcoal Restaurant.

6. No shortage of short ribs. Colorado is ranching country, and as you would suspect, beef is what’s for dinner on many Denver Restaurant Week menus. Blackbird, The Berkshire, Coohills, The Dorchester, Spruce Farm and Fish and Spuntino are just a few of the restaurants offering short ribs. Randolph’s Restaurant will feature a buffalo short rib and – not to neglect chicken entirely – Altitude Restaurant is offering a chicken fried short rib.

7. How would you like your mushrooms? Mushrooms are hot in 2015, and some of the tastiest offerings include: Winter Mushroom Ragu from 1515 Restaurant, Crespelle ai Funghi from Panzano, Wild Mushroom Duzelle Arancini from Charcoal Restaurant and Cup of Morel Mushroom Soup from Bent Fork American Grill.
8. There is no shortage of exotic items on Denver Restaurant Week menus. Some of the more memorable ones: Bones is offering Escargot Potstickers, The Nickel will have Squid Ink Cavatelli; Corridor 44 will have Caviar Potato Chips and Coohills will offer Wild Burgundy Snails.

9. There’s something “fishy” happening in Denver. When you realize most fish is shipped by airplanes, then airports become seaports – making Denver one of the largest and busiest “seafood ports” in America and Denver restaurants are offering excellent fish choices during Denver Restaurant Week. For example: Humboldt Farm Fish will be dishing out smoked trout dip with potato chips and sweet onion jam; while Kevin Taylor, Vita and Beatrice & Woodsley will offer their own versions of Colorado Striped Bass with plenty of delicious complementary sides.

10. Some of the restaurants recently featured in articles on Denver in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal that are participating in Denver Restaurant Week include: Rioja, Euclid Hall Bar & Kitchen, Bistro Vendome, The Squeaky Bean and Jax Fish House.

See the full list of restaurants and menus at DenverRestaurantWeek.com.

When Colorado legalized marijuana, it only seemed logical that Hollywood would be calling.

Word leaked last year that a Hollywood studio was developing a pilot about the day-to-day operations of a marijuana dispensary in Denver. The rumor’s now reality.

The burgeoning Colorado marijuana industry will take a comedic turn in “Buds,” a comedy project bought by NBC for the 2015-16 development cycle.

According to a story on Deadline.com, “‘Parks & Recreation’ co-star Adam Scott is teaming with the departing NBC comedy writer Joe Mande on the show, which hails from Gettin’ Rad Productions, Scott’s production company with his producer wife, Naomi Scott. This marks the first sale under the first-look deal Gettin’ Rad inked with Universal TV last fall.

“Written by writer-comedian Mande, ‘Buds’ revolves around the day-to-day operations of a marijuana dispensary in Denver. He is executive producing with the Scotts.”

Read the whole story at www.deadline.com/2015/02/adam-scott-produce-buds-marijuana-dispensery-comedy-nbc-1201377223/.

The votes are counted and the results are in for the winners of Colorado AvidGolfer magazine’s 2015 CAGGY Awards for The Best in Colorado Golf.

Online voting took place took place between Aug. 16 and Dec. 16, 2014. Participants had to vote for a minimum of 20 categories for the survey to count. That’s a total of at least 60,880 votes.

To complement reader selections, AvidGolfer employees made “Staff Picks” for each category. These are listed alphabetically, not ranked numerically. After all, says editor Jon Rizzi, “Asking me, or any CAG staff member, ‘What’s your favorite course?’ is akin to asking, ‘Which of your children is your favorite?’ You shouldn’t have such conflicts.”

Here are your 2015 CAGGY winners:

Public/Resort Categories

Private Club Categories

Instructor Categories

Top Nationwide Travel Destinations

More information: www.coloradoavidgolfer.com/blog/2015-caggys-and-the-winners-are.

The venerable Grizzly Rose is the only Colorado hotspot named to the trade publication Nightclub & Bar ‘s annual Top 100 List, the nation’s only annual listing of high-volume nightlife venues, identifies the foremost revenue-generating nightclub, bar and lounge venues in the U.S.

Inclusion in the Nightclub & Bar Top 100 list has become a coveted label for premier nightlife destinations throughout the United States.

While Grizzly Rose was ranked a respectable No. 70, the top of the list was dominated by Las Vegas joints with a few Miami clubs sprinkled in. Grizzly Rose earned between $5 million and $10 million last year.

See the entire list at www.nightclub.com/2015-top-100-list.

School’s never out at School House Kitchen & Libations, a new whiskey bar and eatery at 5660 Olde Wadsworth Blvd., in the heart of historic Olde Town Arvada.

The restaurant, which opened earlier this month, serves lunch and dinner seven days a week. The building dates back to 1882 as the original Arvada schoolhouse. Owner Scott Spears also owns Scrumptious, an ice cream parlor around the corner.

School House offers more than 450 different whiskeys, 50 beers, and a sizable menu that reads like a multiple choice test. With the Library Bar, Home Room Dinning Area, and the upstairs Teachers Lounge, School House is sure to trigger school memories (if your learning institution had a bar and restaurant).

School House boasts one of the largest whiskey lists in the country with selections from American to Canadian, Japanese to Scottish.

For more information, go to http://schoolhousearvada.com/.

Eavesdropping on a Facebook post about corporate phrases that would not work at home:
“We need a deep-dive readout with our son’s teacher to drill down on collaborative skills, this is table stakes for his advancement to third grade.”

Five Colorado entries for the 2015 James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards have been named semifinalists in the coveted contest. They are:

• Outstanding Pastry Chef - Yasmin Lozada-Hissom. She has been nominated several times but never won. The Beard Foundation seems to think she is still at Spuntino, but she and her husband, chef John Broening, sold it last year. According to the blog Culinary Colorado, she is developing products for Udi’s Granola.

• Best Chef: Southwest - Alex Seidel, Fruition and Mercantile Dining & Provision; Dana Rodriguez, Work & Class and Steven Redzikowski of Oak at Fourteenth and Acorn. Rodriguez was previously executive chef at Bistro Vendome, where she was the culinary protégé of James Beard winner Jennifer Jasinski.

• Outstanding Restaurant – Frasca Food and Wine.

The James Beard Foundation will announce the final Restaurant and Chef Award nominees, as well as the nominations for the Book, Journalism, Broadcast Media and Restaurant Design Awards, at the James Beard House in New York City on March 24.

The 2015 James Beard Awards gala will be held at the Lyric Opera of Chicago on May 4. The Foundation’s Book, Broadcast & Journalism Awards Dinner will take place at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers in New York City on Friday, April 24.

See all of the 2015 nominees at www.jamesbeard.org/blog/2015-restaurant-and-chef-award-semifinalists.

Five distinguished journalists have been chosen to be inducted into the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame during the 20th Annual Denver Press Club Hall of Fame Banquet, beginning at 7 p.m. Sept.18.

The class of 2015 includes photographer Rich Clarkson, political reporter (and, for my money, the best reporter in Colorado) Lynn Bartels, architecture writer Mary Chandler and Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Keefe.

They join the legendary Damon Runyon, for whom the club’s Damon Runyon Award is named.

“This is a great class of inductees, with one of the nation’s top sports photographers, a topnotch political writer, a reporter who knows everything about Denver architecture and a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist,” said Bruce Goldberg, president of the club’s board of directors. “We look forward to a great night of nostalgia and honoring solid journalism.”

Clarkson is a veteran photographer who has documented the NCAA Final Four men’s basketball tournament for more than 50 years. His company, Rich Clarkson and Associates, has done amazing work photographing the Colorado Rockies. Clarkson has taught techniques to countless photographers through his workshops.

Bartels covers the Colorado Legislature and politics for The Denver Post, a beat she once covered for The Rocky Mountain News. The Washington Post honored her as one of the nation’s best Statehouse reporters. She previously worked for the Albuquerque Journal.

Chandler worked for The Rocky Mountain News as its architecture critic. She is the author of “Guide to Denver Architecture,” now in its second edition. She currently works as business development and communications specialist for the GH Phipps Construction Companies. She previously worked for Fentress Architecture.

Keefe was an editorial cartoonist for The Denver Post from 1975 through 2011. He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2011. His work is still available in syndication. During the 1990s, his cartoons appeared regularly in USA Today and America Online. He is a past president of The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. His books include “Keefe Kabob,” “The Ten Speed Commandments” and “Running Awry.”

Runyon worked at both The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post, and was an early member of the Denver Press Club. He later moved to New York, where he became an internationally known columnist. He is known best for “Guys and Dolls,” which was based on his short stories.

The Denver Press Club’s Hall of Fame honors journalists for terrific careers in Colorado as well as for service to the club. The 88 previous honorees constitute a veritable who’s who of Denver journalism.

The banquet will be held at the club’s landmark building at 1330 Glenarm in Denver. Seating is limited and this event is always sold out. To purchase a ticket, go to www.blacktie-colorado.com, and click on Sept. 18. Tickets cost $65 per person.

The Denver Press Club is America’s oldest such club, tracing its roots back to 1867. Today it includes about 400 members from Denver’s media community and many other professions.

For more information, contact Bruce Goldberg at bgindenver@aol.com.

BMC Investments and Sage Hospitality have commenced construction on their $70 million hotel and retail development in the heart of Cherry Creek North at 245 Columbine St.  Groundbreaking occurred Jan. 19, and the project is expected to generate in excess of 750 construction jobs.

The development will include 155 hotel rooms, a roof deck pool and bar, 5,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space and two ground floor restaurants.  As reported in late 2014, one of the ground floor restaurants will be Departure by Sage Restaurant Group.  The first Departure Restaurant is located in Portland, Ore., in the Nines hotel, and lead by Executive Chef and Top Chef Season 12 finalist Gregory Gourdet.  The additional 6,000 square feet of retail space is available for another restaurant operated by a third party.

The hotel will be a luxury independently branded experience unique to the Denver market with a name to be released at a later date.  The structure will contain 100 percent valet parking in the two levels of below grade parking being constructed.

“We are very excited to deliver what we expect to be another transformative project not only in Cherry Creek but for the Denver hospitality market as a whole,” said Matt Joblon, CEO of BMC Investments. “We’ve assembled an incredible team that has worked tirelessly to get the project to the groundbreaking, and they will deliver a successful and impressive product upon completion.”

Mortenson Construction is the general contractor and JG Johnson and Klipp Architects are the architects for the project.  New-York-based AvroKO fashioned the public spaces and the rooms, AvroKO is also responsible for the Great Hall public space in the newly renovated Denver Union Station.  Portland, Ore., based Skylab fashioned the Departure Restaurant and the roof deck pool and bar.

“This project will mirror the big changes that have been taking place in the Cherry Creek North neighborhood,” said Walter Isenberg, president and CEO of Sage.  “The hotel and restaurant we have planned will deliver the luxury experience for locals and visitors, we’re proud to bring these concepts to Denver.”

The retail space will be ready for tenant improvements in late 2015, and the hotel is expected to open in April of 2016.