Best Thai Curry Soup, Korean Beef and Sushi 2008 | Uoki | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Thai Curry Soup, Korean Beef and Sushi

Uoki

American restaurants are good at mashing a dozen ethnic or regional favorites onto a single menu and calling the resulting mess "comfort food," "American regional" or something even goofier. Ethnic restaurants do the same thing when they throw Americanized Chinese dishes, Vietnamese favorites and sushi together on a single board, under the inclusive banner of "Asian fusion." And both the American and Asian versions are usually abject failures, because in trying to be all things to all people, they wind up being nothing to nobody. A rare exception: Uoki, which does a great job with Asian comfort foods, including an absolutely wonderful bowl of green-curry-and-potato soup that makes for a universally satisfying lunch when you combine it with an order of tekka maki and a plate of Korean beef with rice.

Best Thai Restaurant

US Thai Cafe

Mark Antonation
We've spent years wandering the streets of Denver, looking for good pad thai, masamun and papaya salad — and found a lot of versions that were mediocre, even bad. And then we discovered US Thai Cafe. At this tiny spot, all the classic dishes of Thai cuisine have a depth and breadth of flavor quite unlike anything we'd ever tasted before. And on top of that, they're offered in an ascending scale of heat, from total pussy to nuclear conflagration, that can be endlessly tinkered with and adjusted according to how much pain you want with your pleasure.

Best Tibetan Restaurant

Tibet's

How lucky are we to not only have a Tibetan restaurant, but a genuine competition for the best Tibetan restaurant? This time, Tibet's takes the prize. Started last year by former staffers from other local Tibetan restaurants — and a chef who once cooked for the Dalai Lama at a Tibetan monastery! — Tibet's celebrates both the culture and cuisine of that country, with prayer flags and photographs of mountains, with excellent dumplings, huge bowls of aromatic stew and glasses of chai tea that you can enjoy before a crackling fireplace. While most of us may never have the opportunity to actually visit Tibet, a meal at Tibet's is the next best thing.

Best Torta

Tacos D.F.

Mark Antonation
At Tacos D.F., a former taco-truck-turned-restaurant-proper, the most extreme torta on the board might be the cubano — a monstrous thing made of ham, milanesa, cheese, beans, lettuce and a whole hot dog, split lengthwise and seared on the grill. But the best is the simple ham with avocado: ham stacked thick on a soft, lardy bun with sliced avocado, shredded lettuce, tomato and a chile-spiked dressing that's like a rémoulade after a semester spent hitchhiking through Chihuahua. It's beautiful, comforting, perfectly balanced — a work of peasant culinary art easily on par with the best, fanciest sandwiches served anywhere in town. Better, maybe, if you get to eat it while sitting in Tacos D.F.'s dining room, watching Mexican game shows on the TV in the corner and surrounded by people who understand that getting the best sometimes means looking in the least likely locations.

Best Traditional Vietnamese Restaurant

Ha Noi Pho

Jellied blood. Fishscale mint. Unpronounceable soups filled with unidentifiable ingredients. Sound like your kind of dinner? Then you need to get down to Ha Noi Pho for a taste of the authentic peasant/market/street-corner cuisine of Vietnam. This spot doesn't boast much in the way of decor, and on a slow night, the staff might be sitting around playing cards. But once you get past the brief culture shock, you'll find a meal unlike any in the city. From the simplest pho to the more complicated soups of Hue and Hanoi, from plainly grilled meats and noodle bowls to plates of completely alien flora, every dish here is an adventure — and a chance to get a taste of what comfort means to one of Denver's largest expatriate communities.

Best Vegetarian Restaurant

WaterCourse Foods

Danielle Lirette
Though we've never been crazy about restaurants that self-identify as vegetarian (believing that starting from such a limited culinary position can only serve to strangle any creativity or free thinking in the kitchen), WaterCourse Foods has been in the game long enough to overcome any such restrictions. The result is a restaurant that has the vegetarian and vegan ethos worked into its DNA, that creates meatless cuisine simply as a matter of course, not as a reaction against anything external. And while the tempeh bacon, scrambled tofu and seitan Buffalo wings still drive us bonkers, the kitchen does a good stack of pancakes, excellent (if bacon-free) breakfasts, and surprisingly flavorful tamales, fried-potato tacos and vegetable-centric pastas. And it's all served in a brand-spanking-new space with lots of room for the crowds WaterCourse draws.

Best Vietnamese Breakfast

Ha Noi Pho

Not everyone has the time, the taste or the temperament to forgo their morning bowl of Muesli or Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs in favor of the flavors of Southeast Asia. But for those who do, there's Ha Noi Pho, which offers not only traditional breakfast pho and a tall glass of Vietnamese coffee thickened with a shot of sweetened, condensed milk, but also the beautifully simple and incomparable banh mi op la: eggs sunnyside up with a French baguette. It kicks the hell out of an Egg McMuffin.

Best Vietnamese Restaurant

Kim Ba

Kim Ba
Denver has many good Vietnamese restaurants, but our favorite is Kim Ba. There may be better places for pho, for frogs' legs, for other individual dishes. But no crew works the grills better than the one at Kim Ba, and there's no other Vietnamese kitchen in Denver that does everything with such simplicity, confidence and excellence as Kim Ba's.

Best Whiskey List

Pints Pub

Before any of you dedicated drinkers of the Irish dew get all up in arms, we'll admit that the whisky list at Pints Pub, though unbelievably deep, broad and inclusive, is primarily a list of Scotch whiskys. And while there are a few Irish whiskeys-with-an-e listed toward the bottom — Bushmills, Clontarf, Connemara and Tyrconnel, as well as pop-cult classics like Japanese Suntory and Colorado's own Stranahan's — they are not the primary draw here. But who needs 'em when you can get a glass of thirty-year Laphroaig, a vintage 1966 Balvenie from the cask or one of the rarest Scotches from Banff, where the distillery itself has been demolished?

Best Wine Bar

Z Cuisine À Côté

Patrick Dupays already operated one of the city's best French restaurants, Z Cuisine, so when he announced that he'd picked up a second spot just two doors down from his original restaurant and was planning on turning it into a wine bar, Denver's francophiles were (literally) beside themselves with joy. And with good reason, too, because Z Cuisine À Côté stands as its own destination — a warm, beautiful tribute to the Parisian wine-bar culture of the 1900s, offering plenty of wines by the glass, cheeses, charcuterie and a selection of small plates (like frisée aux lardons, petit chèvre and asparagus quiche, and onion soup gratinée) made to the same high standards of rustic Frenchiness exemplified by Dupays's original restaurant. From A to Z, this is one class act.

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