Best Japanese Restaurant 2005 | Domo Restaurant | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
Navigation
Support Us
Search

Best Japanese Restaurant

Domo Restaurant

There are Japanese restaurants in town that do great sushi, excellent yakitori, fine gyoza, wonderful ramen. But only at Domo do the disparate elements of Japanese cuisine come together in one perfect, country-style restaurant. And only at Domo could you enjoy this cuisine in such a zen-like setting, with beautiful service, tree-stump seats, a charmingly understated dining room and -- for those in real need of unruffled tranquility -- a Japanese meditation garden in the back. There's also an Aikido dojo and Japanese cultural center and museum that you're encouraged to visit while your meal is being prepared. But the wonderful farmhouse-style food, served with half a dozen exotic sides, is the real attraction at Domo.

Best Thai Restaurant

Yummy Yummy Tasty Thai

You know you've found a great ethnic restaurant when nothing tastes like anything you've tasted before -- and it all tastes good. You think you've had Thai food before? Not until you've had it at Yummy Yummy Tasty Thai, a great restaurant in an awful location. While the menu reads a lot like every other Thai menu in the city, it tastes like a culinary travelogue of chef-owner Pim Fitt's native Thailand, full of true flavors and a real passion for the notion that to truly know a place, you must first know how its people eat.

Best Thai Restaurant

Yummy Yummy Tasty Thai

You know you've found a great ethnic restaurant when nothing tastes like anything you've tasted before -- and it all tastes good. You think you've had Thai food before? Not until you've had it at Yummy Yummy Tasty Thai, a great restaurant in an awful location. While the menu reads a lot like every other Thai menu in the city, it tastes like a culinary travelogue of chef-owner Pim Fitt's native Thailand, full of true flavors and a real passion for the notion that to truly know a place, you must first know how its people eat.

Best Quick Thai

Spicy Basil

There are those restaurants where you plan to eat -- making reservations, picking out the right outfit, booking the babysitter -- and those you go to when the urge strikes you. Spicy Basil is all about whim. This small Thai-fusion storefront is just the spot for a quick lunch when you've got Asian on the brain, a place that inspires an undeniable hunger for chicken curry and dumplings when you drive by. During the dinner rush, Spicy Basil probably does more take-out business than sit-down, but if you've got the time (and it doesn't take much), the dining room is casual and sunny, the service quick, and the bright Thai flavors at their best and freshest the moment they hit the table.

Best Quick Thai

Spicy Basil

There are those restaurants where you plan to eat -- making reservations, picking out the right outfit, booking the babysitter -- and those you go to when the urge strikes you. Spicy Basil is all about whim. This small Thai-fusion storefront is just the spot for a quick lunch when you've got Asian on the brain, a place that inspires an undeniable hunger for chicken curry and dumplings when you drive by. During the dinner rush, Spicy Basil probably does more take-out business than sit-down, but if you've got the time (and it doesn't take much), the dining room is casual and sunny, the service quick, and the bright Thai flavors at their best and freshest the moment they hit the table.

Best Thai Curries

Tommy's Thai

Tommy's Thai straddles the border between what Thai cuisine truly is and what those who've never had the real thing think Thai cuisine ought to be. As a result, Tommy's offerings can come off muted, those raw edges of ethnic flavor rubbed smooth by continued refinement for the neighborhood palate. But this dialing down works for the kitchen's curries, which are irresistible and addictive. They're still hot where they should be hot, still sweet where they should be sweet, and always milky-smooth with infused coconut milk, but they also have an unexpected depth of flavor. From plain greens to reds and yellows rich with lime leaves and boiled shrimp, to the excellent potato-studded massamun, Tommy's curries take the crown.

Best Thai Curries

Tommy's Thai

Tommy's Thai straddles the border between what Thai cuisine truly is and what those who've never had the real thing think Thai cuisine ought to be. As a result, Tommy's offerings can come off muted, those raw edges of ethnic flavor rubbed smooth by continued refinement for the neighborhood palate. But this dialing down works for the kitchen's curries, which are irresistible and addictive. They're still hot where they should be hot, still sweet where they should be sweet, and always milky-smooth with infused coconut milk, but they also have an unexpected depth of flavor. From plain greens to reds and yellows rich with lime leaves and boiled shrimp, to the excellent potato-studded massamun, Tommy's curries take the crown.

Best Chinese Restaurant

JJ Chinese Restaurant

For those addicted to searching out the true flavors of the mysterious East, JJ Chinese Restaurant is a wonderland of sights and smells and tastes -- highly specific regional cooking featuring dishes native to chef/ owner Kevin Ho's home province of Guangdong. For those who prefer something more along the lines of sesame chicken? Well, then JJ can be flat-out freaky, because Ho's menu offers no fewer than a dozen things that most people don't even consider food. Snakes, for example. Or capelin (a tiny fish, eaten whole), geoduck and pig intestines. But Ho is a man who cooks without fear, and he doesn't worry what his non-Guangdongian clientele might think of a plate full of duck feet and spicy bean paste. A meal here is a real adventure in eating.

Best Chinese Restaurant

JJ Chinese Restaurant

For those addicted to searching out the true flavors of the mysterious East, JJ Chinese Restaurant is a wonderland of sights and smells and tastes -- highly specific regional cooking featuring dishes native to chef/ owner Kevin Ho's home province of Guangdong. For those who prefer something more along the lines of sesame chicken? Well, then JJ can be flat-out freaky, because Ho's menu offers no fewer than a dozen things that most people don't even consider food. Snakes, for example. Or capelin (a tiny fish, eaten whole), geoduck and pig intestines. But Ho is a man who cooks without fear, and he doesn't worry what his non-Guangdongian clientele might think of a plate full of duck feet and spicy bean paste. A meal here is a real adventure in eating.

Best American Chinese Restaurant

Imperial Chinese Restaurant

Man cannot live on pig intestines alone. And on those nights when you crave something comfortingly familiar yet still vaguely ethnic, Imperial Chinese Restaurant fits the bill. Although the dining room here is red-dragon-and-white-tablecloth elegant, it attracts a casual crowd of diners looking for the kind of tame, sterile thrills that only Chinese food done Colorado-style can offer. Which means all of the American-Chinese favorites, executed in exemplary fashion: sesame chicken, sweet-and-sour shrimp, Peking duck, and fortune cookies that deliver only good news.

Best Of Denver®

Best Of

Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our terms of use, our cookies policy, and our privacy policy Westword may earn a portion of sales from products & services purchased through links on our site from our affiliate partners. ©2024 Denver Westword, LLC. All rights reserved.
Do Not Sell or Share My Information
Powered By Foundation