In 2023, the Michelin Guide officially expanded into Colorado, and travelers may have been surprised to find out that the Centennial State’s restaurant scene is nearly as exciting as its national parks and stylish ski towns. While you weren’t looking, Colorado has stealthily emerged as one of the country’s most exciting food destinations. And it makes sense. After all, the Rocky Mountains are a dream for foragers, hunters, and fishers, and 300-plus days of sunshine mean that its farms produce ultra-sweet corn and peaches, while ranchers raise prized sheep, cattle, bison, and even elk. Add to that a growing and diversifying population, which has turned Denver into a globally minded food town that draws inspiration from such cuisines as Mexican, Ukrainian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Israeli. You could spend years dining around the state—and I have!—and these 17 spots are a delicious place to start.
Alma Fonda Fina, Denver
When the second edition of the Michelin Guide was announced this year, there was only one new starred restaurant, and it went to this high-end Mexican spot in Denver’s Lower Highlands. Born into a family of chefs in Guadalajara, Johnny Curiel got his start as a dishwasher at the age of 14, and he’s worked his way up to become one of the most respected interpreters of Mexican flavors in the state. Every bit of the menu is thoughtfully elevated: A simple tostada is topped with applewood-smoked tuna and mayonnaise made with chicatanas (or flying ants!), while a humble plate of beans inspired by his mom is studded with red chorizo and a chili de arbol salsa. An unexpected hit is the camote asado, an agave-roasted sweet potato with broken salsa macha and whipped requeson (like Mexican ricotta). Curiel recently opened a sister restaurant in Boulder named Cozobi Fonda Fina after the Zapotec god of corn, and corn—which is flown in from Mexico and then stone-ground daily—factors in everything from tacos and chilaquiles to a sweet corn margarita.
Known for its innovative Vietnamese cooking and cocktails, Sap Sua has quickly emerged into one of Denver’s hottest reservations.
Sap Sua, Denver
This decidedly untraditional Vietnamese restaurant is the brainchild of husband-and-wife chef duo Ni and Anna Nguyen. It’s already gained a devoted following since opening in June 2023, even being named a James Beard semifinalist for best new restaurant in the country. Colorado creeps into the cooking in clever ways: Pork larb, for instance, is reimagined as a tostada with avocados, while its take on cha ca la vong swaps out catfish for Rocky Mountain rainbow trout. The standouts are some of the humblest dishes on the menu, including simple soft-scrambled eggs with brown butter, fish sauce, and trout roe atop steaming rice. It’s a bowl of comfort food you might imagine a Vietnamese grandmother serving you when you get home from school. Don’t skip out on the cocktails, which include ingredients like pandan (an aromatic tropical plant), shiitakes, fish sauce, and sweet potato shochu.
Molotov Kitschen + Cocktails, Denver
Note the playful misspelling of “kitchen” in this Eastern European restaurant’s name, and you’ll get a sense of what chef-owner Bo Porytko is going for. Opened in 2023, the restaurant is an ode to his Ukrainian heritage, but it’s an homage that’s mischievous rather than overly reverential: There are colorful cuckoo clocks above the bar, a wall that looks like an oversize vinok (flower crown), and a menu of horilkas (infused vodkas) in flavors like horseradish that often spark exuberant call-and-response toasts from the staff. Porytko and his team thoughtfully remix dishes, often with seasonal Colorado ingredients, meaning you’ll find bites like elk tartare with buckwheat blinis, corn and crab varenyky (dumplings) in cold-smoked corn broth, and beet and plum borscht with “beet gummies.”
Rootstalk gets an added dose of homestyle coziness thanks to its location in an 1880s Victorian house on Breckenridge’s Main Street.
Photo by Tim Chester (L); Michelle Heimerman (R)
Rootstalk, Breckenridge
This summer, chef Matt Vawter of Breckenridge’s Rootstalk picked up the James Beard Foundation Award for best chef in the mountain region—a surprise considering how often ski towns get unfairly overlooked. But it’s hard not to be charmed by this homey place, which occupies an 1889 Victorian house and serves unfussy dishes that source heavily on Colorado farms, ranches, apiaries, orchards, distilleries, breweries, and grain mills. Menus change with the seasons, so you’re always eating what’s freshest: Late summer might bring heirloom tomatoes with fennel panna cotta, pine nut butter, and eggplant or Palisade peach semifreddo, while winter means warming classics like mussels with gnocchi, house fennel sausage, and ‘nduja brodo.
Pêche, Palisade
Renowned for its stone-fruit orchards and especially its peaches, the small Western Slope town of Palisade has emerged as one of the most exciting wine regions in the country. A great wine region needs a great restaurant, of course, and husband-and-wife team Matt and Ashley Chasseur—who met while working at Chicago’s three-Michelin-starred Alinea—stepped up in 2019 and opened Pêche. Here, the influences are far reaching, driven by seasonality, so your meal might include red snapper street tacos, strawberry and goat cheese flatbread, or Thai fried chicken. Pro move: Order anything and everything that comes with fresh local fruit, whether it’s a salad, an entrée, or a dessert.
Meals at Brutø begin with artfully plated bites like beet tartare on puffed tapioca, bison carpaccio, and asparagus tartlets with trout roe.
Brutø, Denver
Chef and restaurateur Kelly Whitaker changed the game for Denver fine dining, and he cleaned up at the state’s first Michelin ceremony, earning a Bib Gourmand for Basta (an Italian spot in Boulder), a Recommended rating for Hey Kiddo (eclectic bites with a speakeasy in back), and one star each for Denver tasting-menu spots the Wolf’s Tailor and Brutø. Top Chef alum Byron Gomez leads the latter, and while the beautifully plated courses look like works of art, they center flavor over whimsy or avant-garde techniques. Gomez’s Costa Rican upbringing gets a nod in a palmito (hearts of palm) dish with American sturgeon caviar, while a course inspired by South Indian rasam soup and curry potato dumplings is served in a custom-made ceramic vessel with a spout designed for broth-slurping. A zero-waste ethos means the team repurposes nearly all kitchen scraps, through fermenting, pickling, dehydrating them into powders, and even transforming them into cocktail and mocktail ingredients.
Hop Alley, Denver
Taking its name from Denver’s now-defunct Chinatown (which took its name from “hop,” a slang word for opium), Hop Alley has been drawing visitors to an out-of-the-way corner of the River North (RiNo) Art District for nearly a decade. Chef-owner Tommy Lee is unafraid to challenge local palates with his liberal use of spices, in dishes like Uighur-inspired cumin lamb buns and mouth-numbing Sichuan la zi ji (dry chili chicken). As of February, Hop Alley is two restaurants in one, and if you’ve eaten here before, there’s a new reason to return: Lee debuted a six-seat chef’s counter, which is open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays and serves an entirely different, always-changing menu from the main restaurant. With entrées like chicken-fried swordfish and char siu wild boar loin, you just know the team is having a blast here.
The Front Range meets Friuli at Boulder’s Frasca Food and Wine.
Frasca Food and Wine, Boulder
The only Michelin-starred restaurant in Boulder celebrated its 20th anniversary this August, and it’s almost singlehandedly responsible for putting this Front Range college town on the culinary map. The menu is Italian, but with a hyper-regional focus, paying homage to the flavors of an area that doesn’t often get attention in American Italian cooking: Friuli–Venezia Giulia, which sits in the country’s northeastern corner along the border of Austria and Slovenia. First timers should try the full Friuliano tasting menu—with wine pairings if they drink—and be prepared to ask their servers lots of questions. Even if you’re well-versed in Italian cookery, chances are you won’t know many of the regional specialties, such as frico (a crispy, cheesy potato pancake), blecs (a buckwheat pasta), or cjalsons (a sweet-savory alpine filled pasta). If you don’t make it out to Boulder, its sister restaurant, Tavernetta, is a winner in the heart of Denver’s Union Station neighborhood, serving house-made pastas and grilled entrées.
Bosq, Aspen
For a true taste of the Rockies—albeit refracted through a fine-dining lens—you can’t beat Aspen’s Bosq, which has earned back-to-back stars in the first two Michelin Guides. Chef Barclay Dodge and his team get their hands dirty foraging for the natural spoils of the surrounding mountains and meadows, like spruce tips, chanterelles, dandelions, and wild ramps, and then they turn to age-old preservation techniques (pickling, dehydrating, fermenting) to keep those flavors around throughout the year. You can pick your own dishes for a five-course menu or let the kitchen wow you with the full chef’s tasting menu. The restaurant’s name comes from the Spanish word for “forest,” and you’ll find woodsy notes in dishes like lobster grilled over juniper branches.
Bin 707’s new location has one of the most stylish dining rooms in Grand Junction.
Courtesy of Visit Grand Junction
Bin 707 Foodbar, Grand Junction
Located in Grand Junction in the far western stretches of the state, Bin 707 Foodbar moved into stylish new digs this summer, with an Instagrammable mix of pink walls, plenty of potted plants, bright botanical wallpaper, and a dramatic curving open kitchen. But it wouldn’t matter if the food wasn’t as exquisite as the decor. Chef-owner Josh Niernberg is a three-time James Beard semifinalist, and his menu is filled with creative shareable small plates (like smoked ruby trout rillette and elk tartare), salads, and pizzas with unique toppings like green chili marmalade, chickpea miso chimi, strawberries, pistachios, and duck confit. Save room for something sweet from “the pie menu,” like Palisade peach cobbler with sweet corn ice cream from sister restaurant Taco Party or panna cotta pie with lemon verbena and melon syrup.
La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal, Denver
If you’ve never tried pozole, you’re in for a treat: This traditional Mexican soup, made with meat and hominy and a variety of chilies and spices, gets the star treatment at this dark and divey homage to the pozolerías chef José Avila grew up going to in Mexico City. You’ll find guava-juice halibut ceviche, duck confit with black mole, and a wide assortment of tacos and pambazos (sandwiches) with fillings like birria, chorizo, red snapper, and even grasshopper. But the move for first timers is undoubtedly a bowl of steaming pozole. With five caldo bases (rojo, verde, blanco, negro, and vegan), two toppings (chicken or pig’s head), and a slew of toppings (cabbage, radish, lime, avocado, etc.), the customized combinations are nearly endless. Pozole can be enjoyed any time of day, but La Diabla opens at 10 a.m. on weekends, making this a perfect spot to cure a hangover. Or if you’re seeking out a hair of the dog, check out the extensive menu of mezcals, tequilas, and lesser-known Mexican spirits, like sotol, raicilla, and pox.
Come to Safta with a group so you can try its assortment of salatim, dips, salads, and freshly baked breads.
Safta, Denver
After making a name for himself with the New Orleans restaurant Shaya (which won the James Beard Foundation Award for best new restaurant in the country), Israel-born chef Alon Shaya opened Safta (Hebrew for “grandmother”) in Denver’s burgeoning River North Art District. The pillowy, wood-fired pitas and duck matzo ball soup are unassuming showstoppers on a menu that hopscotches around the Mediterranean and North Africa and the Jewish diaspora more broadly. Come with as big a group as possible so you can order plenty of hummus—with toppings like foraged mushrooms and lamb ragu—and salatim like whipped feta with fig vinegar and pecan-cherry tabbouleh.
221 South Oak, Telluride
Set in a refurbished historic home near the base of the gondola, this New American spot is helmed by Top Chef alum Eliza Gavin. Expect plenty of hearty fish and game, such as elk T-bones with polenta and corn cream, bison short ribs with candied pink peppercorn, and striped bass in achiote broth. It’s elevated and elegant, but it’s also the kind of food that could fuel a few black-diamond runs. Also worth checking out is the Sunday brunch menu, which includes unexpected dishes like buttermilk fried quail and smoked trout Benedict with fried green tomatoes.
Santo is filled with nods to chef Hosea Rosenberg’s New Mexico upbringing, including a light fixture shaped like the Indigenous symbol on the state flag.
Santo, Boulder
Top Chef winner Hosea Rosenberg made a name for himself around Boulder with the beloved Blackbelly, a market, restaurant, and whole-animal butcher shop that churns out killer cured meats and charcuterie. His follow-up was Santo, a humble strip-mall spot that’s an ode to his northern New Mexico upbringing. If you only have time for one meal here, order the grab-and-go breakfast burrito: egg, cheese, tater tots, Hatch green chilis, red chili sauce, pinto beans, and optional local chorizo, snugly wrapped in a flour tortilla. Bonus: They make for excellent hand warmers on a cold winter day.
Sweet Basil, Vail
It takes a special kind of restaurant to stay relevant for almost half a century, but Sweet Basil has managed to do just that since it opened its doors in Vail in 1977. It remains the stuff of après-ski legend, but the restaurant has changed with the times, slaloming between white-tablecloth stuffiness and a newer, breezier vibe with a renewed focus on global flavors. That means tuna tiradito with coconut and jicama leche de tigre, French onion lasagna, and Iberian duroc pork with sour cream and chive latkes, which mix and match inspirations from different cultures. The patio is lovely in the summer, the cocktails are inventive, and there’s a thoughtful children’s menu if you’re traveling as a family.
The team at Bramble & Hare craft charcuterie from the pigs they raise on their farm outside Boulder.
Bramble & Hare, Boulder
The phrase “farm-to-table” gets thrown around a lot these days, but at Bramble & Hare, it really means something. Chef Eric Skokan and his wife Jill run a 425-acre organic vegetable farm outside of Boulder, where they grow more than 250 heirloom and heritage cultivars and raise sheep, pigs, chicken, and geese. They run a farm store and a CSA and can often be found at the Boulder Farmers’ Market. In 2012, they opened this farmhouse bistro, where they show off their hyper-seasonal spoils alongside wild ingredients foraged on the Front Range and charcuterie made from the pigs they raise. Keep an eye out for their Dirt Dinner series, four-course tasting menus centered around a single ingredient, such as squash blossoms in the summer, pumpkins in the fall, and parsnips in the winter. The restaurant recently became one of only 30 across the United States to earn a Michelin Green Star, which honors places that show a real commitment to sustainability.
MAKfam, Denver
A pop-up and then a food-hall stand before going fully brick-and-mortar last November, MAKfam serves what it calls “Chinese food made by ABC Kids”—that’s American-Born Chinese to the uninitiated. Drawing on Cantonese flavors that you might encounter in Chinatowns around the country, the menu is filled with recognizable favorites like crab and cheese wontons (with duck sauce, of course), scallion pancakes, and chicken and chive pot stickers. Don’t sleep on the brunch, which includes salted egg yolk Hong Kong French toast and bacon, egg, and cheese jian bing (like a Chinese crepe). And, yes, they proudly use MSG!
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Publish date : 2024-09-27 07:34:00
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