Lafayette’s 95a Bistro and Sushi, located on Arapahoe at the former site of the Magnolia Steakhouse is a contemporary and comfortable eatery that features affordable lunches, including $9 burgers with shoestring fries, $12 lamb shank tortellini and a $10 squash agnolotti pasta plate. Dinner choices include some of the light- Susan France er lunch choices as well as an affordable $16 aged ribeye steak and a $15 red snapper garnished with brown butter, caramelized onions and roasted peppers.

I thought Chef Radek Czerny’s L’Atelier, deeply influenced by classic French cuisine, would satisfy this hunger. The ambience here combines elements of the old and the new, melding retro Hummel figurines with an elegant yet modern palette of understated but not drab colors. As always, the service is among the most professionally rendered in town, and during a recent lunch visit, patrons were decidedly quieter than the livelier dinnertime clientele.

Local stalwart Murphy’s retains its longstanding atmosphere of conviviality, being equally suitable for both families with children and the solitary diner seeking a simple brew and burger at the bar.

Arriving at Boulder’s Aloy Thai Cuisine, I wondered if this restaurant is the Ken to its predecessor restaurant, Chy Thai, aka the Mark of this labored analogy. The location is the same, and an exterior banner touts that the food and ownership are the same, although the name has changed. Inside, the most noticeable difference is disappearance of the counter apparatus which gave the former incarnation a down-market, cafeteria vibe.

Our student body president would have felt at home at Minglewood, a new eatery primarily catering to a lunchtime worker crowd near 55th and Arapahoe. Staff wearing Steal Your Face t-shirts, posters featuring Jerry, and a menu paying homage to Beats and bands ranging from Kerouac to Jefferson Airplane (how Grace Slick could go from “Somebody to Love” to “We Built This City” still confounds) give this spot distinctive character.

My friend Auden was visiting from the Western Slope, and it’s customary for us to visit an Asian eatery, since decent ones are mighty scarce in his neck of the woods. To be frank, things didn’t go so well the last go-around. Attempting to prove our foodie street cred to one another, we’d gone to a Vietnamese restaurant and ordered congealed blood cube soup. Each of us tried to be hospitable by insisting that the other polish off this delicacy, but ultimately, much of the bowl remained unfinished. This time, I decided to play it safe by suggesting a visit to Boulder’s Korea House, located on 28th Street and Glenwood Drive.

For some odd reason, when I first heard of Boulder’s new eatery, Tossa Pizza, my mind swiftly visualized Luigi Risotto reciting this restaurant’s name in a comical Italian accent.

"Do you use Fox’s U-Bet syrup in your egg creams?” I asked, in the manner of a character in a spy movie probing the bona fides of a new but unproven contact.

A couple months back, I was chatting on the phone with my sister when I mentioned my fear of becoming a hipster. “Becoming?!” was her incredulous reply. Granted, I hang out with people that drink Pabst Blue Ribbon and wear kilts, ironically, and I even own a few fedoras and have volunteered at the roller derby, but moi, a hipster?

In the late 1990s, I worked on west Walnut Street, a stone’s throw from the Pearl Street Mall. For lunch, I’d patronize now-defunct venues like Juanita’s and the New York Deli, and I’d often pick up morning coffee at the old Bookends Café. Like many, I felt a touch of melancholy when I heard that Bookends was closing, but I’ve also learned to accept that businesses invariably come and go on Pearl.