Amid portion concerns, here's to restaurants that still think big.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: SMALL [biz] - Pete's Kitchen - Viewpoint essay

A friend and I have a ritual we call our "traditional breakfast" in which we meet at Pete's Kitchen on Fast Colfax every Sunday morning.

There's much to recommend: immediate seating if you arrive before 9, coffee cups kept constantly full, plus walls covered with photos of owner Pete Contos posing with Carmelo Anthony of the Nuggets, ex-Broncos quarterbacks John Elway and Jay Cutler, and actress Drew Barrymore, to name a few.

But most importantly, the food at Pete's is not only good, the portions are huge. Whether it's the smothered breakfast burrito with green chili or the three-egg Kitchen Omelet, the meals at Pete's cover the whole plate.

Volume is no small consideration to me--we're in a recession, after all--which is why my other favorite dining spots include Chipotle featuring burritos the size of a youth football, and Crown Burger on South Colorado Boulevard boasting the massive pastrami-topped Royal Burger.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

And yet, online diet columns like Men's Health's "Eat This, Don't Eat That" rip Chipotle despite its mostly natural ingredients because of its oversized burritos, and the column dismisses other restaurants on similar grounds.

I couldn't agree less. A few weeks ago I slopped at the grocery store and picked up three microwavable, "Eating Right"-brand TV dinners: chicken tamale with green chile verde sauce; five-grain chicken with plum sauce; and turkey lasagna. They sounded great, tasted OK. I ate all three of them, 970 calories total. They barely hit the spot. I don't see anything laudable about comically tiny meals even if they are healthy as advertised.

I bring this up in a small-business column as an appreciation of restaurants that haven't given in to what seems to be a nationwide crusade for portion reduction.

And yet I also realize that discussing dietary and portion beliefs can get messy, as I found out last summer on a road trip with a woman friend to Southwest Colorado. We were famished after a hike in the San Juans, so we made our way to a bar and grill in downtown Durango. Though my friend is a workout fanatic who normally eschews carbs and counts calories, on this occasion she ordered a one-third-pound cheeseburger with fries and wolfed the burger down in short order.

I was impressed, and told her so.

"I'm glad you're not one of those women who eats like a little bird," I said as she started in on her french fries. She did not take that as a...