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Best Social-Media Beer

Twitter Brew

What could go better with a social beverage than social media? Last spring, Odell Brewing Company asked beer enthusiasts to tweet suggested styles for the company's first Twitter Brew poll. After the votes were tallied, the brewery asked followers to tweet suggested qualities such as color, strength, body and hop character, as well as the name and tap handle design. The resulting Twitter Brew, a schwarzbier, went on tap in June, and the ten kegs were quickly drained. Odell, which now has 4,500 followers on Twitter, will create a new Twitter Brew later this year. Call it a retweet.

Best Oyster Shooters

Deluxe

In 2003, when Dylan Moore opened Deluxe on a stretch of South Broadway that was better known for its bar brawls than its restaurants, he knew was taking a risk. But his first menu, a straight-ahead California board, was a quick hit. Since then, even as he's added new ventures (Delite next door, Deluxe Burger over on East Colfax), he's occasionally added new dishes to Deluxe's lineup — but the one constant has been the masa-fried oyster shooters, which are so brain-numbingly transcendent that we wouldn't be the only ones to kick Moore's ass from here to the California coastline if he ever dared to shuck them from the menu. He arranges the shelled meat on five Asian soup spoons couched with a tomato, lime and cilantro-studded salsa fresca, then tops the bronzed jackets with a smoky jalapeño aioli. And that, people, is love at first bite...after bite...after bite.

Best Hot Dog

Biker Jim's Gourmet Dogs

Danielle Lirette

Biker Jim, aka Jim Pettinger, a former repo man who slings Denver's best wieners from his polished stainless-steel carts downtown and, more recently, from the parking lot of Argonaut Liquors, knew he'd struck culinary gold when acerbic food mouthpiece Tony Bourdain declared publicly, to a full audience at the Temple Buell Theater, that he'd "been to the mountaintop and found enlightenment" at Jim's stand at 16th and Arapahoe, where Bourdain had spent the afternoon stuffing weenies down his throat. All of Jim's sausages are creatures of beauty, but the Alaskan reindeer showboat takes top dog for its mildly gamey flavor, woodsy earthiness and slightly spicy kick. As with all of his offerings, Jim splits it down the middle, sears it on a blazing grill and tucks it into a crusty roll speared with a shot of cream cheese from a rifle-sized caulking gun, then heaps it with a mound of grilled onions soaked in Coca-Cola. Hot dog!

Best Neighborhood Italian Restaurant

Gaetano's

Cassandra Kotnik

It's worth hanging out at Gaetano's just to banter with the endearing kooks who belly up to the bar. There's the guy who insists on having his burger well-done and a half dozen "pats" of butter with his basket of white bread; the woman who orders shot after shot of Jack and never seems to slur or stumble; the old-timer who starts every sentence with "Remember when..." And his buddy who kicks his stool, a reminder that Gaetano's isn't that place anymore. But while the barflies definitely keep the conversation interesting, it's also worth stepping behind the bulletproof front door for the pizzas, pastas with arrabbiata sauce and the "Tasty Treats," ribbons of roasted New Mexican chiles wrapped around a fat, fennel-specked Italian sausage link tucked inside a gold-tinged crust slicked with olive oil and dotted with parsley. The kitchen serves them with a respectable marinara that's pelted with chile flakes, but these Mexican/Italian treats are just as tasty naked.

Best Chips and Salsa

Tacos y Salsas

So here's the thing: Tacos y Salsas, the canary-yellow, slightly seedy, fluorescently lit and stridently loud taquería with six locations throughout the metro area, has always pimped an unassailable salsa bar stockpiled with a six-pack of flavor-bombed reds, oranges and greens bolstered by vats of pickled jalapeños and carrots, cool radishes, cilantro, diced onions, lime wedges and a sweat-inducing pico de gallo — everything you could ever want for dressing up your tacos. But it's only recently that the outlets have introduced chips to the lineup, and while they're not made in the joint's own kitchen, they're free — a perk that's becoming very rare in this city. And here's an insider tip: If you hit up any one of the Tacos y Salsas outposts during a lull in the action and ask the kitchen to whip you up a batch of chips in the fryer, more often than not, they're happy to oblige.

Best High-End Steakhouse

Elway's Cherry Creek

The Cherry Creek Elway's is a bastion of big spenders, big deals and big steaks. While the hormone-charged bar is a meat market for pin-up cougars with head-turning cleavage and the young, moneyed cads who want to take them home, and the dining room is a swell of starched shirts, pressed pants, high heels and more cleavage, the real showpieces here are the wet-aged, primal cuts of Prime beef. They're judiciously seasoned, grilled to your exact specifications and percolating with juices, the very essence of medieval decadence. But there's more, much more, to appreciate at Elway's. Fish is treated with the same respect as steer, a rarity in a steakhouse kitchen; the appetizers are clever and could make a meal on their own; the cult-classic side dishes never disappoint; and the wine list, while predictably expensive, is anything but predictably ordinary. In a town filled with high-end steakhouses, Elway's never fails to score.

Best Thai Restaurant

Dancing Noodle Thai Cuisine

At noon on a Friday, Dancing Noodle Thai Cuisine, a tiny storefront restaurant, is anything but dancing. It deserves to be packed, though, because the Thai dishes turned out here shimmy, spin and sway with penetrating, provocative flavors that don't just dance, but sing, too — loud and proud. The coconut-laced curries are redolent with the stink of garlic, ginger and heat; even the overexposed pad Thai is shockingly good. And the couple who runs this surprisingly great joint is sweeter than Thai tea.

Best French Restaurant

Z Cuisine

A coveted seat at the frolicsome bar of Z Cuisine, chef/owner Patrick Dupays's lovely French bistro, is still one of the most pleasurable spots to spend an enchanting Denver evening, especially when you can share the time and a bottle of wine with a like-minded devotee who appreciates the virtues of Z Cuisine as much as you do. From day one, Dupays has blessedly stood his ground, archly resisting conceit and never falling prey to culinary clichés or gimmicks. And we should be incredibly thankful for that, because while so many restaurateurs are looking for the Next Best Thing, Dupays keeps it real with astonishingly good mussels, a seriously amazing charcuterie plate, and a rusticated cassoulet that's still one of the best dishes we've ever eaten.

Best Bakery

Buffalo Doughboy Bakery

Just a block off Broadway, a Popsicle-hued Victorian is home to Buffalo Doughboy Bakery, a hustling bakehouse and confectionary whose glass cases brim with scratch-made savory cheese galettes, crumbly scones, sweet turnovers that pop with cherries, cupcakes, breakfast quiches and warm and buttery croissants, lighter than froth and so flaky that the softest blow turns the golden shards into confetti. You can order them naked, stuffed with feta and spinach, pumped with chocolate, or swelled with salty tarps of prosciutto and Asiago, the last of which is the equivalent of falling head over heels in lust for the first time.

Best Fruity Pancakes

Snooze

Lauren Monitz

It's easy to flip for the flapjacks at Snooze, the mod breakfast barn for hipsters who stumble in and congregate at the counter or the crescent-shaped vinyl booths for steaming jolts of java, Bloodies to counteract the bleary eyes and sustenance to soak it all up. Snooze doubled our pleasure with a second location this year, keeping the same menu, which includes our favorite pineapple upside-down pancake, a saucer-sized sphere bundled with squares of caramelized pineapple, dusted with powdered sugar and dolloped with a scoop of cinnamon butter that melts into rivers of sweetness. This is a pancake bestowed upon us by the breakfast gods.

Best Of Denver®

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