A couple years ago, a friend had a family member marry into the Hearst family. Yes, that Hearst family. When he told me was heading to the Hearst Castle in Nor-Cal for the wedding, I asked him to do me a favor.

He agreed, and as a result today, inside a curio cabinet near the entryway to the castle, nestled among various pictures of generations of Hearst family members, resides an unassuming little silver frame that houses a black- and-white photo of yours truly.

It's a gag the German and I came up with years ago - leaving our likenesses in unlikely places. Kind of a "gentlemen's graffiti." Seeing a rare opportunity such as this present itself was too good to pass up.

So, now bearing a slim kinship to the Hearst family, it was only natural that I'd be a little more than interested to check out Randolph's Restaurant and Bar in the Warwick Hotel.

Named for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Randolph's is an elegant, slow-paced hotel bar that smells like old Denver. It's the kind of place that might have provided midday respite to oil barons in the '70s. Indeed, rumor has that the Denver Playboy Club once operated in this building.

Of course, that was when Denver was still an oil town; today the clientele is largely tourists and business travelers. Over the course of last weekend, that included most of Mrs. Buzz's extended family and friends, in town for a wedding.

Rarely do I get the opportunity to visit a place four times before I write up the experience, but in this case, Randolph's became the center of my social life - and it was something it handled pretty well. Because Mrs. Buzz's family sees conversation less as a means of communication and more as a means of competition, the noise level was probably higher than I imagine the stately Randolph's was used to.

But no matter - we stayed confined to the comfortable garden patio as much as possible, so as to not disrupt the baronial digs inside. Indeed, the only time we spent inside the bar was when they closed down the patio (a bit too early for our tastes). The dark wood and wide, comfortable seats made it easy to lose big chunks of time getting caught up with the out-of-towners.

Drinks were reasonable, especially during happy hour, which lasted most of the night Friday. I fell in love with the sushi-grade tuna squares, which were complemented with Randolph's signature drink: the Denver Rosebud, made of Stoli vanilla, cranberry, citrus and peach vodkas, pomegranate juice, shaken and served in a martini glass with a sugared rim and garnished with a lime and a raspberry ($8).

Aside for some long lapses in service (due probably to the fact that much of our party ran the heck out of the poor servers), Randolph's performed admirably in the face of a daunting collection of boisterous Midwesterners.

Randolph's Restaurant and Bar

1776 Grant St. 303-318-7272

• Happy hour: 4-6 p.m. Monday–Thursday; 4-10 p.m. Friday, $5 select apps, $3 domestic beer and well, $4 house wine

• Live jazz: Friday nights

• Try: tuna sushi squares