It’s Sunday morning, and we don’t know if the Broncos are going to the Super Bowl. But I know someone who is. Chef Frank Bonanno from Mizuna and Luca D’Italia is once again representing Denver at the Feb. 4 party Taste of the NFL.
Touted as the Super Bowl’s Party With a Purpose, organizers line up a chef from each NFL city to cook a dish. A former team member also makes the scene – Randy Gradishar will be our guy. Money raised goes to America’s Second Harvest.
I can’t believe that Bonanno is doing this again. Last year he went to Jacksonville, Fla., for the event – on plane rides that took him all over the country. He stayed in a hotel 90 minutes from the event. And the NFL didn’t give him a ticket to the game and flew him out of town just as the game started.
This year, he says, it’s much friendlier. He got to book his own tickets, and he’s staying just five minutes away from the event.
But he learned one thing – cook what you know. Again this year he’ll serve up toffee date cake with whipped cream and caramel sauce. He starts cooking 2,000 of them today.
And once again, he doesn’t get to stay for the game. “I didn’t get a ticket, so I’m flying out that day and I’ll watch the game on my couch. Which is fine with me, but if the Broncos are there, it would be great.”
Darn that dame
It’s dangerous to sit up close at Dame Edna’s show at the Buell Theatre. Just ask former Lt. Gov. Mark Hogan. He served with the late Gov. John Love – but he didn’t get much love from Edna.
Hogan, who turns 75 next week, was brought onstage Wednesday night – where he played out the role of Dame Edna’s senile, incontinent husband with a prostate problem, while he was hooked up to an IV wearing a hospital gown.
“I was given a little script,” he says, which I hear he delivered with authority. “It was a lot of fun. Whether this will lead to a theatrical career, I don’t know. I’m waiting for offers.”
Baby band
The Jonbenet is a Houston-based band that’s touring the country these days, no Denver or Boulder date set. Its latest CD is titled “The Plot Thickens,” on Pluto Records. Its website describes the band’s music as “a blend of indie stylings, metallic urgencies, and a post-hardcore sense of delivery laced with Southern elements.”
City spirit
A second show at 5 p.m. has been added for Bill Cosby’s one-nighter March 11 at the Buell … Dem big Howard Dean comes to Aspen on Feb. 25 to stump for Colorado and national Dems … And conservatives Ann Coulter, Kate O’Beirne, Hugh Hewitt and Stephen Moore are at the Broadmoor Friday and Saturday for the Leadership Program of the Rockies retreat … Club man Regas Christou celebrates his birthday with a private party Friday night at Milk … Euro, the restaurant in the former Manhattan Grill space, set to open Friday with Olav Peterson, formerly of 1515, behind the stove. It’s also proprietor Marco Colantonio’s 40th birthday – which seems a tad young. (“I’m going to be 40 for a long time,” he says.) Bar Luxe next door is already open, the coolest-looking joint in Cherry Creek … Sez who: “I’ve never been drunk, but I’ve often been overserved.” George Gobel
Bill Husted’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Husted also appears Thursdays on Fox 31 News at 9. You can reach him at 303-820-1486 or at bhusted@denverpost.com.
