Rod "rodhilton" H.'s Profile

Alright, I'm not going to bother saying too much about the theater because other reviews already talked about most aspects (screens are quite big, seats are pretty comfy, parking situation is awful, etc).

I want to mention a specific issue with this theater that has led to me deciding I will no longer frequent it.  Keep in mind, this is most conveniently located theater for me, so this wasn't an easy decision to make, but I've had enough with this theater and I can't take anymore.

I know that action movies are supposed to be loud, and I'm not some 50 year old guy complaining about loud movies these days or anything.  I have no problem with LOUD, I have a problem with TOO LOUD.  And the last 5 movies I've seen at this theater have been TOO LOUD.

What I mean is, the speakers in the theaters all support a certain wattage.  If you push too much sound to the speakers, more sound than they are capable of producing, you get a clipping effect.  When the sound clips, it sounds far louder than it actually is, and you lose a lot of nuance in the sound.  Explosions just sound like loud messes of static.  This theater consistently plays their movies with the sound turned up to the point of clipping.  If I were working on the sound engineering teams for some of these movies, I'd be appalled at what's happening to my work at this theater.

The sound is so loud that you can actually hear the background white noise turn on and off when clips of ADR are used in scenes.  It's distracting.  Action scenes are absolutely brutal.

This theater has ruined five movies for me, consecutively, because the folks running their sound systems don't understand that you can't just keep turning the volume up and expect your speakers to support it.

This hasn't been a problem at either of the other AMCs in the immediate area (Flatirons and Orchard) just this one.  I give up.

Do you like uncomfortable wooden chairs?  Do you enjoy lukewarm barbecue?  Do you like barbecue chicken that has no flavor until you pour sauce all over it?  Do you enjoy said sauce to be extremely watery?

If you do, then this is the place for you!

There isn't much redeemable about Dickey's, to be totally honest.  The chicken is flavorless, the pork is extremely fatty.  They only have two sauces to select from: a sweet sauce and a ridiculously sweet sauce.  If you like spicy barbecue sauce, too bad.

The potato salad is way too mustardy (my potato-salad-loving wife was unable to eat it).

On the plus side, the food is cheap, and they offer free unlimited soft-serve ice cream (combine it with root beer from the fountain for a custom root beer float).

Otherwise, stay away from Dickey's, there's way better barbecue around.

Like others have said, this is a chain Italian restaurant.  The food isn't half bad, but it won't knock your socks off either.  Lots of red sauces, very heavy food, but pretty tasty.  The lasagna is excellent.

One thing going for this place is they have a "Dinner for 2 for 19.99" special, where you can select from a limited set of entrees and get soup/salad, bread, two entrees, and two mini desserts.  I really liked this because the portions for the food were a bit more appropriate than usual restaurant fare, and the mini desserts were just the right amount of dessert to finish a meal.

The service is quite slow, but the waitstaff is friendly and pleasant.

I have one critical piece of advice, though: GET A BOOTH.  It doesn't matter if you normally don't mind sitting in the dining room at a table with chairs, you will want a booth here.  The chairs are, quite possibly, the most uncomfortable wooden chairs in which I have sat at a restaurant.  It was incredibly painful and irritating.  I would have waited 20 extra minutes for my table if I could have had a booth if I had known.

All in all, this is decent Italian in the middle of a decent shopping area and movie theater.  It's better than the Olive Garden, but it's not as good as some other Italian places in the area.  It's definitely a restaurant whose location works in its favor.

I love Heidi's.  Really, really love it.  When I lived in Broomfield, Heidi's was my go-to place for cold sandwiches.  They have warm sandwiches too, of course, but I prefer the cold ones at Heidi's (I like my warm sandwiches from Snarf's).

In any case, I moved away from Broomfield, and Heidi's was one of things I missed the most.  When I noticed that familiar Brooklyn Deli sign while driving down 104th, I did a double take.  Is that really a Heidi's?  Is it... er, is it inside a car dealership?

YES! IT IS!  This Heidi's is inside the Ford dealership.  I had to fight the wife pretty hard to get her to agree to check this Heidi's out.  She was concerned we'd be pestered by car salesmen.  We parked on the Heidi's side of the building and went straight in, didn't have to walk through the car dealership at all.  The Heidi's has its own seating and you can comfortably ignore the fact that you're eating in a car dealership.

And it won't be hard to ignore either, because you'll be distracted by deliciousness.  Heidi's has a very large menu of food options, and is one of the few restaurants where I actually have a tough choice to make when I walk in (usually I go with the same thing at any given restaurant).  Like I said earlier, I prefer the cold sandwiches, but the warm ones are excellent as well.

This particular Heidi's had a more varied menu than what I was used to.  In addition to the usual sandwiches (and Nathan's Hot Dogs), they offered chicken tenders, mozerella sticks, cheeseburgers, and chili dogs.  I was tempted to see how these items were, but I went with my favorite: cold roast beef on butter top white.

The service was, well, stunning.  Seriously, the two people working the deli were insanely friendly.  An incredibly enjoyable experience.

One negative, however, is that this particular Heidi's doesn't carry the brownies I am accustomed to at other Heidi's locations.  They offer chocolate cake or some crap, but screw that noise: I WANT MY BROWNIE.  

Despite the brownie disappointment, I can't even bring myself to subtract a single star from the rating.  Damn I love Heidi's.

If I had walked into this establishment with the intention of eating some excellent Mexican food, this review would be very different.  I'd probably echo the thoughts of other Yelpers: they use store-bought shells, the food is made by non-Mexicans, etc.  It would be a 1 star review, in all liklihood.

But that's NOT how I experienced Los Lagos.  I called them up, and they delivered to my door. MEXICAN FOOD! DELIVERED!

I'm a lazy bastard, and when the wife and I don't feel like cooking or putting shoes on to go out somewhere, we make some poor teenager drive his ass to our house to deliver food to us.  Sadly, when you're in the mood for delivery, it's basically a choice between pizza or chinese.  

When you aren't in a pizza or chinese mood, you have to order food that smacks of desperation.  Maybe ordering a sub or wings from a pizza joint, or even sushi from a chinese place.  It's rarely a good idea, but if I'm starving and lazy I'll do what I need to (except leave the house.  I won't do that).

A few nights ago, we were going through our pile of delivery menus, rejecting everyone.  No to pizza.  No to chinese.  No crappy wings or subs.  Ugh, no fake sushi.  Whoa, whoa.  What's this?  Mexican food?  DELIVERED?

So, yeah, the food wasn't great.  About on par with Taco Bell, maybe a bit better.  But what WAS great was being able to have a bit of variation in delivery.  Something reasonably tasty resembling mexican food, delivered to my door?  Hell F**king Yes Please.

I'm not sure why people keep bagging on the decor here.  It's small and cramped and slightly run down, but it doesn't seem dirty or anything like that.  It's just a local food shop.  I didn't find the decor particularly bad at all.

The food, however, wasn't for me.  I'm not a huge fan of fried food, but my fiancee loves fish and chips so I suggested we try this place out.  I assumed she could get fish and chips and I could find something else.  Not so much.

I'm not sure they serve anything that hasn't been covered in a pound of batter and deep fried.  It reminded me of Long John Silvers.

The fries (chips) were utterly flavorless, not even worth eating.  The fish was decent, very heavily fried but pretty good.  The clam strips were excellent, but now you're talking about food that has more batter per piece than meat.

The flavor of the food reminded me a lot of fried fish from the northeast, so it was a little nice to relive my youth living on the east coast, but I left feeling almost sick to my stomach.

If you're really into fried food, feel free to waddle your fat ass into the place and order some grease, I guess.  Otherwise you might want to visit a place with a bit more variety in their seafood selection.

The first thing you'll notice when looking at the menu at the Egg & I (at least if you're looking at the pancakes section) is that the word "Pancake" is always singular.  They don't have "Blueberry Pancakes" but "Blueberry Pancake".  It seemed a little odd, but I figured it was just a writing quirk.

Turns out, no, when you order a pancake you get one pancake.  One enormous pancake that takes up the entire plate.  Actually it hangs off the plate a little bit.  This pancake was huge, easily a foot in diameter.  And it was DELICIOUS.

The pancake was one of the best pancakes I've ever had.  In fact, I can't think of a better one.  And it's a whole-wheat pancake too, so you can fool yourself into thinking it's healthy and smother that bad boy with butter, syrup, and fruit topping!

The sausage patties were good too, and I normally don't like sausage in patty form.

The eggs, however, were pretty crappy.  I found this a little odd since the restaurant is named after them.  I actually thought they had used Egg Beaters, but the waitress said they didn't when I asked.  It tasted like they did.

Skip the eggs, order a gigantic pancake.

The Butterfly Pavilion is much smaller than you might imagine looking at it from the outside, but it's definitely worth a visit.

They essentially have three sections - one with various kinds of insects/bugs, one with water creatures like starfish, and of course the big butterfly house.  There is also a section with giant plastic ants and such called "shrunk" but there aren't any live creatures there.

The butterfly area is the most interesting, as you might expect.  Walk around, butterflies everywhere, landing on you occasionally.  A pretty educational and experience, but I wouldn't allocate more than three hours to the entire thing.  Make sure you are there for the 12:30 or 3:30 release of just-hatched butterflies.

All in all, a decent way to kill a few hours.  Discount available for Westminster residents.

This is a decent pool hall, plain and simple.  Decent area, decent tables, decent atmosphere.

I didn't try the food, so I can't vouch for it, but I played about two hours worth of pool with my father on a holiday evening and we had a large portion of the place to ourselves.  

They have a wide selection of run-of-the-mill quarter-based bar tables as well as a number of regulation side hourly tables.  I played on an hourly table, but from the looks of things all of the tables were in about the same condition.

The felt was running a tad thin on most of the tables, but it was about what you'd expect from a bar.  They had advertisements for regular tournaments as well, but I'm way too rusty to participate in such a thing.

They had brushes for the tables (big plus) but no talc (big minus).  The cues were all in decent shape - a few missing butts but nothing was warped that I tried.

All in all, a good pool hall.  I'd probably give it three stars normally, but I have to give it an extra star just because it's nice having an actual pool hall near me.

It's not the best barbecue in the world, but it may well be the best barbecue in Colorado.

Famous Dave's has absolutely delicious food, but it takes a few visits to learn what's great there and what's sub-par.  Normally when I go to a BBQ joint, I get pulled pork.  At Famous Dave's, the pulled pork is very good but not anywhere near as good as their BBQ chicken, which is phenomenal.

One important thing though: they do not take reservations and they are always crowded.  Expect to wait for a table for quite some time, there's nothing you can do about it.

If you're looking for good BBQ in Colorado, Famous Dave's is probably the best you can do.