Food & Drink

The Bull & Bush, which is modeled after an old London pub with its low ceilings, dark wood and brass rails, didn’t start out as a brewpub. But then, back when the Peterson brothers founded the B&B in 1971, there weren’t any brewpubs in Colorado. Instead, it racked up another first when it hooked up to satellite dishes for sports programming, arguably becoming the country’s original sports bar. That worked when Glendale was the swinging-singles center of Denver, but as the neighborhood changed, so did the Bull & Bush. The next generation of Petersons put the emphasis back on pub, adding a microbrew operation that turns out a small but impressive lineup of beers. Today the Bull & Bush remains small, friendly and very Cheers-like, a place where everyone may know your name, but they won’t spill if you want to keep a low profile. And when the Petersons aren’t brewing the stuff, they’re likely to be behind the bar, pouring you your next beer.

Everyone should be so lucky as to have a restaurant like Radda in their neighborhood. It’s a great restaurant, but it’s also a comfortable restaurant, an unassuming restaurant, a restaurant where families come to eat penne al cinghiale and rogue CU economics professors argue over plates of golden-brown pressed chicken. The board is made up mostly of small plates, little tastes, brilliant snacks and expert whetters of appetite, and the kitchen crew — led by Matt Jansen and exec Don Gragg — executes everything brilliantly, with a beautiful simplicity and a passionate understanding of ingredient over artifice. In Manhattan, Radda would be wickedly hip and successful. But in Boulder? It’s just a little neighborhood spot, with plenty of parking and always room for another customer, another table, another party waiting to sing its praises.

It’s late. You’re feeling peckish, but you have neither the patience for a full sit-down meal nor the intestinal fortitude for a dirty-water hot dog or street-corner tamale. Head directly for this Famous Pizza outlet, where there’s absolutely nothing to recommend about the service, decor or crowds — but the slices are incredible. They’re always hot and always fresh (provided you’re willing to take what’s available behind the glass at the counter). Better yet, they come fast: You step up, state your preference, throw down a couple bucks and walk away with a big, foldable slice of excellent, New York-style pizza, just the thing to fuel you for a long night back on the street.

Big Bill’s is packed with the sort of shlocky, I-heart-New-York paraphernalia that generally makes us run screaming from the premises. But we make an exception for Bill’s, because it actually knows a thing or two or three about true New York-style pies. The pizzas here are big, thin and perfectly cooked, redolent of char, covered in sweet red sauce and stretchy, gooey cheese. And, of course, every pie has the magical orange grease that sets a true New York thin apart from the legions of imitators. Bill’s has a bunch of other stuff on the menu (including calzones, heroes and salads), but when you hunger for a taste of the Big Apple, look no further than the classic Neapolitan.

Biker Jim Pittenger is still our top dog. No other vendor shows the kind of careful dedication that he brings to Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs, his cart parked in Skyline Park. He’s got a cool portable grill, offerings ranging from Alaskan reindeer sausage laced with sriracha to white veal brats to serious grilled dogs with mustard-and-nothin’, and crowds lined up three deep at lunch every day.

The D Note is many things to many people. Its space is full of art and live music, its newsletters full of poetry, and its menu full of pizzas tagged with musical references, both obscure and not so. Are you a fan of They Might Be Giants? Check out the Particle Man, a combination of pepperoni, black olives, spinach, red peppers and mushrooms over a smear of basil pesto. The Pixies more your speed? Then go for the Debaser, a sausage, portabella and artichoke pie smothered with Italian cheese. And if you opt for the Ballad of a Thin Man, we guarantee you’ll get the best high-stacked, Bob Dylan-esque jalapeño, garlic, onion, tomato and BBQ sauce pizza available anywhere.

When owner Dave Query set out to remake the West End, a longtime Boulder institution, a few years ago, he made a decision to lay in the area’s biggest stock of bourbons. Today, the bar offers everything from the once-bum-juice/now-cool Bulleit Bourbon and old friends like Wild Turkey and George Dickel to Sazerac rye and the $45-a-shot Jim Beam Distiller’s Masterpiece. So fans of this classic American should head directly to the West End. With their wallets, because one drink won’t be enough.

It helps to have the right help in a restaurant. You want well-trained and passionate people working at every stratum — from chef to dishwasher. That’s the ideal situation, and while many restaurants fall short of the ideal, one does not: Frasca. Everyone here knows his job, is passionate about his job, does his job as best he can. And nowhere does this show more than in the wine department, because Frasca is one of only a couple of restaurants in the country that has not just one, but two certified master sommeliers on the floor. And they’re not just strolling around with a silver cup, reverentially pouring bottles of Petrus; they’re ardently pimping the small, the weird, the bargain and the interesting. They’re pouring tajuts and giving out free samples, attempting to educate their customers while they coddle them with this unusual Spanish vintage, that killer bottle from Argentina, or a glass of something that’s not going to be found anywhere but at Frasca.

It’s a well-established fact that the best pizza in the world is a New York-style thin crust, dripping with orange grease, topped with nothing but double cheese and pepperoni. But if you’re one of those people who simply must have pineapple or Peruvian mountain potatoes on your pie, then you need to head directly to Sazza. Here a plain red-and-white pizza is merely a departure point for such culinary stops as Mexico (chicken enchilada pizza), France (French onion pizza), Hippieville (baked tofu and pineapple pizza) and points beyond. The board does include some quasi-normal offerings, but the kitchen is at its best when it’s working far out on a limb, and not even within shouting distance of Brooklyn.

Here’s the secret of the Oven’s success: Everyone from owner Mark Tarbell to the cooks in the kitchen to the servers on the floor understand that they’re cooking for friends. And when you’re cooking for friends, you want to take care of them. Which the Oven does, turning a simple pizza dinner into an event, full of friends and good times, drinks from the bar and raised, happy voices. And great pizza, of course: artisanal, homemade and rustic, topped with such quality ingredients as housemade mozzarella and smoked ricotta.

While Denver certainly boasts more than its fair share of upscale steakhouses, there’s only one Bastien’s — a place where people feeling more Humphrey Bogart than Gordon Gekko have been going for great steaks for decades. With its own kind of strange magic, Bastien’s pulls everything — service and food, booze, decor and history — into one seamless, inimitable, only-in-Denver whole. The joint has been serving (in one form or another) since 1937, and it looks as though it hasn’t been updated since Hugh Hefner banged his first bunny. From the streetside neon to the indoor twinkle lights, the paisley carpets to the battered martini shakers, Bastien’s stands as not just a great steakhouse, but as one of the most honest, revered restaurants in town.

When the Capital Grille came to Denver, people doubted that it would make a dent in a city already fat with high-end steakhouses. But those people were wrong. Capital Grille came to Denver with a deep understanding of what a steakhouse customer wants, and a sharp awareness of what it takes to thrive in an overcrowded market. The managers, chefs, cooks, servers, hostesses, busboys, even the contract valets all knew exactly how good they had to be, because Capital Grille told them how good they had to be, then trained them to be that good. The result? From the minute the door opened, no restaurant in Denver had food like the Capital Grille, served in the most impeccable yet friendly way imaginable.

Funny thing about Izakaya Den: Owner Toshi Kizaki didn’t write the menu for you. He didn’t write it for the market, for the scene, for any specific demographic. He came up with the concept, the cuisine, many of the specific menu items to satisfy the wants and needs of one person only: Toshi Kizaki. See, Toshi, who also owns Sushi Den across the street, loves Denver, but he’d long felt that the city was missing a spot where people who work late (like him and cooks in general) could get something to eat. So finally, he just built that spot himself. And lucky for us he did. Because if the late-night crowds at the bar and in the dining room at Izakaya are any indication, there are a lot of people in this city who want to eat exactly like Toshi does: in great volume, with weird juxtapositions (Japanese-Mediterranean fusion) of flavors, and to do so long after the traditional dinner hour has come and gone.

Elway’s is a beautiful restaurant. The service rides the perfect edge between businesslike decorum and occasionally goofy informality — and so does the menu, which offers both innovative dishes (a handmade spread of s’mores) and more standard steakhouse fare. But there’s nothing standard about Elway’s massive, 22-ounce, USDA Prime bone-in rib-eye, cut so as to preserve the most fat, the best marble and the bone, which lends both moisture during the cooking process and a sense of seriousness on the plate. This is a gorgeous steak, indescribably tender, juicy and delicious, yet humble — merely sitting in its place on the board among all the other steaks, waiting for those of large appetite and discriminating palate to discover for themselves the best item on Elway’s menu.

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.

Yes, Oceanaire is a seafood restaurant — but our very favorite offering here is a plate of nothing but bacon steaks. No garnish, no vegetable, no starch, no health warning from the surgeon general about the dangers of eating a giant plate of pig at a single sitting. To create this miracle, chef Matt Mine, a former fish butcher who now runs the kitchen at Denver’s Oceanaire, simply takes a rasher of bacon, cuts off slabs about an inch thick, fries them up in the pan, then serves them as though a couple of pieces of bacon the size of petit filet mignons were the most reasonable dish in the world. It’s the ultimate delicious indulgence.

Bistro Vendôme has a number of things going for it: the best location in Denver, tucked in the back of Larimer Square with a lovely garden; the buzz of a wildly (and deservedly) popular restaurant; and the sort of weekend breakfast menu that makes unabashed Francophiles weep into their French press coffee. There are gueles de bois hangover drinks, crepe specials and a variety of benedicts, a killer pain perdu drizzled with citrus honey, Belgian gaufre, croques monsieur and madame, and the simplest option of assorted croissant and brioche with rose jam. But the clincher is a quiche stuffed with black truffle, smoked ham, chanterelles and scallions, which is so good that you could be forgiven for stabbing Nicolas Sarkozy if he were standing between you and the last order in the house.

The lunch buffet at this comfortable LoDo spot is an impressive spread. But the more impressive sight comes at dinner, when the North African dishes — soups, tagines, grilled meats — are spiced up even further by the addition of live belly dancing.

Never mind that this restaurant has great food. When it comes to dumping a date, it’s all about location, location, location. And the subterranean pork palace known as Osteria Marco is just the spot to ditch someone. Why? Because at one end of the room is a staircase leading to street level, and tucked off to the side are the bathrooms. So here’s how you do it: Drop the let’s-just-be-friends bomb, wait for your now-former significant other to excuse him or herself and go off to cry in the bathroom. Then make a dash for the stairs. Within thirty seconds, you’ll be up and out, lost in the Larimer Square street traffic. True, you’ll be running out on the check, but after what he/she did to you that warranted such a harsh, public dumping in the first place, doesn’t he/she deserve to get stuck with the bill?

Centro Latin Kitchen & Refreshment Palace may have a funny name, but it takes its booze very, very seriously. From day one, the staff has been exhorted to think of the bar as an extension of the kitchen — a place where only the best ingredients and most rigorous prep will be accepted. The results are some seriously powerful and seriously delicious classic cocktails which, once you’ve knocked back a few, require something equally good and very filling from the kitchen. Which is where the bellies come in — pork bellies, in this case, used to make the incomparable cheesy pork-belly masa cake. On its own, this dish would be reason to drive to Boulder, but it’s just one entry on a menu chock-full of the varied flavors of Central and South America.

Los Carboncitos is a temple to all things piggish, where the humble swine has been elevated to a position of vaunted honor — its loin, its chops, its belly and fat used in marvelous excess. Not everything on the menu is made of pork, but there’s nothing on the menu that doesn’t have a pork-heavy option. And in many cases, you can have two or three kinds of pork on a single plate: chopped pork covered with bacon, pork rib meat over chops. Sure, there’s other stuff available here; there might even be plates coming from the kitchen with no pig on them at all. But if there are, we don’t wanna know about them.

Han Kang seems to give away more food than it charges for — what with all the garnishes, sides, sauces and snacks that come free with every meal at this traditional Korean joint. While English is definitely a second language here, you can easily get yourself fed by just pointing, nodding and doing a little pantomime. And be sure you point to the line on the menu that offers barbecued bacon — as a side dish! You’ll get a platter of sliced slabs of pink and fatty pork belly, which you cook on the sizzling hot-top and then dredge through a bowl of salty and potent garlic oil. There are so many elements at play here that you can do yourself serious damage — from arteries clogged with bacon fat to severe genital scarring if you accidentally tip the grill the wrong way in your excitement and spill hot bacon grease in your lap — but really, what’s life without a little risk? And what better way to go than from an overdose of bacon?

There have been good restaurants in this subterranean space (Bistro Adde Brewster, Sketch), and there have been truly horrible ones. But never before have there been two great restaurants, operating side by side and on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Defying both real-estate and restaurant law, Tambien and French 250 have managed to make their underground digs and odd shapes pay off — one by pulling in the late-night crowd for lowbrow Mexican cantina food and super-call tequila, the other by drawing down the moneyed status-seekers, frog-leg fanatics and oenophiles. And while one successful address does not define an entire part of the city, the combined success of Tambien and French 250 could spell a return to culinary relevance for Cherry Creek North. Taco by taco, bowl of bouillabaisse by bowl of bouillabaisse, 250 Steele is turning this neighborhood around.

Okay, so there really isn’t anything called Irish barbecue. But if there were, it would probably look just like the BBQ masher at Cabin Creek Smokehouse. This is the ultimate barbecue-junkie hangover food: a bowl of mashed red-skin potatoes topped with pulled pork, topped again with cheese and again with sour cream. And while you can continue on from there — adding brisket, chili, barbecue sauce and whatever else is close at hand — we believe that nothing more is needed to make this a perfect meal. Except maybe a couple pints of Sir Arthur Guinness’s best.

Yes, there are things besides BBQ on the menu of Yanni Stavropoulos’s Greek restaurant: dolmades, mezedes, souvlaki, ouzo and all the other stuff you’d expect. But why would you want anything else when you can have barbecued lamb? When the wind is right and the outdoor rotisserie grill is fired up, the odor of roasting meat and garlic and wine will draw you from a mile away. And as you reach Yanni’s, you’ll see Stavropoulos standing over that grill like some kind of minor laughing spirit from an expurgated chapter of The Iliad: The Lamb God, bringer of great barbecue.

Marilyn Megenity has been working to save the world with food for more than three decades, and at the Mercury Cafe, it looks like she’s winning. From wind-driven electrics and a fryer-oil-to-biodiesel recycling plan to a local, sustainable, green but not exclusively vegetarian weekend brunch menu featuring organic egg omelets with quinoa and whole-grain hotcakes, breakfast here is something even the most committed environmentalist can get behind. And true anarchists can enjoy making hard-core sprout enthusiasts squirm by ordering a bloody rare elk steak and eggs, which are also on offer. But the best thing about a meal at the Merc is that while this institution takes its tree-hugging seriously, it approaches cooking with just as much dedication.

While we’re firmly of the opinion that, like jazz or summer blockbusters, barbecue is an American art form, plenty of international practitioners come up with some pretty good versions all on their own. The Chinese, for example. They have one of the oldest food cultures on the planet, and at the center of the canon is Chinese pork barbecue — that slick, super-sweet red stuff offered on just about every Chinese takeout menu in the world. For a taste of the real thing, head to Pacific Ocean International Market, where you can order it by the pound or by the length (usually measured by the space between two fingers — or two spread hands if you’re hungry) straight from the butcher’s counter.

What’s called “Korean BBQ” isn’t really barbecue by the traditional American definition, but grilled meats (and assorted other things) served family style and generally cooked on a tabletop grill. But it’s just as addictive as the American version, and when we get a hankering, we head for Sae Jong Kwan — aka House of Korean BBQ. From the outside, the restaurant looks dark and alien, but inside, the dining room is loud and bright, with a demographer’s nightmare of regulars ordering up round after round of barbecue. But don’t overlook the excellent Korean soups, Korean fish dishes, Korean bacon and such dishes as “black goat meat with assorted vegetables and spicy.”

Here’s how to tell if a barbecue joint is good: Count how many times you’ve been disappointed because it’s sold out of nearly every damn thing. This is a regular problem at the original Yazoo BBQ location (there’s a newer outpost in Greenwood Village), where dinner is often catch-as-catch-can, depending on how many other Deep South barbecue freaks have gotten there before you. But at least the kitchen makes mountains of pork shoulders every day, so it’s unlikely to run out of pulled pork — which is handy, because pulled pork is what Yazoo happens to do better than anyone else in town.

We’ve lost count of how many different versions of dumplings are served at Super Star; of how many different ways pork can be prepared; of how many huge plates of delicious salt-and-pepper shrimp we’ve seen disappear just before the cart makes it to our table. But an unexpectedly delicious dish is always just a cart away. Taro balls, for example — who would’ve thought taro balls could be so good? And even the simplest plate of steamed greens is a treat, Chinese collards redolent of smoke and garlic. Yes, the wait for a table on the weekends is extreme — an hour, easy, sometimes longer — when every inch of floor space is packed and the ladies pushing the carts can start to get overwhelmed by the demand for food on the floor. But those carts still move quickly, and the kitchen keeps them well-stocked with a fascinating array of tiny bites and tastes that changes up day-to-day and sometimes hour by hour.

Jim ‘n Nick’s might be a chain, but it’s a chain backed by real guys: Jim and Nick Pihakis, a father-and-son team who ran the business together until Jim died not long ago. Now Nick is overseeing the expansion of the brand into barbecue-loving parts of America, including Colorado, which should bid Jim ‘n Nick’s a warm welcome. Because not only does it cook up pork ribs and pork shoulder and cheese biscuits and giant baked potatoes covered in pulled pork, but it has a drive-thru, where those in a rush can get a box (or seven) of really good barbecue to go without having to leave the comfort of their cars.

The once-ubiquitous free chips and salsa at Denver’s Mexican restaurants have become harder and harder to come by lately. But Taquería Patzcuaro, one of the city’s most venerable joints, continues this proud tradition, gifting every table with a basket of freshly made chips and Patzcuaro’s extra-hot green salsa. What makes this salsa so good is a secret, but we’ve been assured that it’s tomato-based. Be sure to pick up an ice-cold Mexican beer, margarita or fresh fruit licuado to wash down the salty, spicy treat. You might also want to try the chile relleno burrito — a soft, Mexican style relleno piled with refritos, wrapped in a tortilla and smothered with red or green chile. Patzcuaro also offers crispy Colorado-style rellenos, wrapped in an egg-roll wrapper and fried up so the cheese gets nice and gooey. The free chips are just a hint of the great meal to come.

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.

At City, O’ City — the all-things-to-all-people coffeehouse/restaurant/hangout that Dan and Michelle Landes opened in the former home of their original WaterCourse Foods — everything is laptops and nose rings, hummus, leg hair, Lou Reed on the stereo and twig-and-berry ascetics swooning over fig pizzas and falafel. At night, the place draws big crowds. But we like it best in the morning, when the bulk of the square community is at work and the cool kids start coming in to salve their wounds with earth-friendly breakfast burritos and tempeh bacon. At these times, City, O’ City is quiet, uncrowded and — provided the kitchen crew hasn’t been too damaged by their own night’s rigors — the perfect place to cool out and get right with your karma.

It has been said, often and loudly, that Denver has no great barbecue restaurants. And while this is true to a point, it’s a point beyond which all arguments fall apart. Denver may not have the kind of historic barbecue joints that most folks think of when they think of great barbecue. But what we do have are many places that do one or two things very well, along with one place that does nearly everything better than anyone else — and that place is Big Hoss. At this new joint in northwest Denver, barbecue has been deconstructed to its socio-political roots and rebuilt, like Steve Austin, to be better than it was before. The pork shoulder is excellent, especially when dosed with a little of the vinegar sauce from the barbecued shrimp; the barbecued chicken smells like an Alabama house fire; and the ribs have just the right texture. And while most barbecue joints offer a half-dozen sauces, Big Hoss has only one, a fusion of the best elements of all the other sauces that — true to owner Hoss Orwat’s claim — goes perfectly with just about everything on the menu.

Meat candy. That’s the only way to describe the thin, crispy, lacy rind of caramelized beef juice that fries up around the edges of a perfectly smashed smashburger at Smashburger — the new, homegrown chain that actually came up with a different way to do burgers, smashing them down on a very hot grill, then letting customers pick from a DIY list of add-ons. In retrospect, it’s no surprise that this innovative mix of a Chipotle-style fast-casual operation and gourmet burger-making sensibilities came together in Denver. We are a cowtown, after all, and arguably the birthplace of the cheeseburger, so it’s only fitting that the next evolution of the hamburger should occur right here in the Mile High.

The green-chile cheeseburger was a fixture at Steuben’s back when the restaurant was just a glimmer in the eye of partners Jen and Josh Wolkon and Matt Selby. They recognized that the green-chile cheeseburger is a unique example of Southwestern Americana — a dish with deep roots that inspires the kind of fanatical devotion generally only seen among religious fundamentalists and English soccer fans — so they knew they had to go directly to the source for inspiration: to the Owl Bar in San Antonio, New Mexico. And while it’s taken some time to get it right, the green-chile cheeseburger at Steuben’s is finally a commendable copy of the Owl original, from the soft bun to the shredded lettuce to the way the roughly chopped chiles melt into the cheese.

There are great burgers, and then there are great burger bars. And the best of these is the Cherry Cricket. The kitchen not only turns out a mean green-chile cheeseburger, but also offers a plethora of variations for those poor, deluded souls who like to top their patty of grilled cow with something other than a strong hit of green chiles. And the bar itself not only provides appropriate beverages for those devouring the kitchen’s best product — appropriate in this case being a bottle of Rochester’s Pride or Genesee Cream Ale and a shot of Bushmills Irish whiskey — but also pours just about anything else you could need from a good neighborhood. True, the Cricket experience has changed since the institution of the smoking ban (because the only thing better than a burger, a beer and a shot is a burger, a beer, a shot and a cigarette), but this bar remains Denver’s best burger-centric watering hole, and a true treasure in rapidly changing Cherry Creek.

Although Bud’s Bar still makes the area’s best burger, the burger at My Brother’s Bar comes very close — and it’s flavored by decades of tradition, since this address has been a bar longer than any other location in Denver, back to at least 1880. But unlike a Bud’s burger, which we can take outside and eat while sitting on the hood of a car with no noticeable diminution in its essential excellence, a burger at My Brother’s should be eaten at the bar, where you have handy access to both the plastic condiment carrier (packed with onions, pepperoncini, relish and pickles) and a long, laudable history.

The winner and still the chomp. Bud’s Bar in Sedalia has seen a lot of changes over the years, including a new owner, but this classic roadhouse remains dedicated to the noble art of burger-makin’. In fact, for decades it’s made nothing but burgers: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, double hamburgers, double cheeseburgers and nothing else. Not even french fries. And given the crowds of bikers, locals and dedicated burger fanatics who line up here, the kitchen crew has had plenty of practice. Service can be brusque, the accommodations minimal and the crowds way beyond capacity on a good day, but there’s still no better place to enjoy a burger than Bud’s.

The guys at the Old Fashioned know from good hot dogs. Why? Because they’re from Buffalo, a town that long ago went to the dogs. Here, they’re Sahlen’s brand, boiled to a beautiful ruddy pink and served on a simple bun, with a little twist of casing that makes a tail at both ends. The standard at the Old Fashioned is “flying with everything,” which means topped with everything from Buffalo’s own Weber’s horseradish mustard and dog sauce to jalapeños. But we prefer two simpler versions: either naked with just a shot of Weber’s (the Apollonian ideal of hot-dog topping, as far as we’re concerned), or dirty with hot sauce and slivered onions. The setting is as authentic as the dogs: slightly grungy, with walls covered with pictures of Marilyn Monroe, mismatched tablecloths and tables, and shelves loaded down with Italian dry goods. In fact, the deli is so reminiscent of a million Back East joints that sitting here for an hour is almost as good as a trip home for those born and bred at sea level.

Of all the things that man has invented over the course of history — the wheel, zombie movies, the interweb — fried cheese has to be in the top ten. And no one in Denver does fried cheese better than Hoss Orwat and his crew at Big Hoss Bar-B-Q. Their version is a decidedly Midwestern take — batter-dipped curds of cheddar, perfectly fried, dusted with parmesan cheese and salt and that dried green parsley dandruff, then served in a portion large enough to clog every artery in a grown man’s body. It’s a wonderful dish, completely over-the-top white-trash decadent. And for our money, there’d be no better way to go than a massive, four-barrel heart attack brought on by over-ingestion of Hoss’s fried cheese.

Red Tango does a lot of things very, very well. The menu includes excellent arepas, rellenos, enchiladas with cocoa mole, potato cakes and potato soup and fried potatoes. But what this kitchen does best (and it’s not an easy task) is plantains: fried, thick-cut and buttery, crisp at the edges and gooey in the middle.

Señor Burrito has the breakfast-burrito category all wrapped up. For starters, it serves breakfast burritos whenever it’s open — a big consideration for those of us who keep strange hours. And no matter what time you get a breakfast burrito here, it’s always well-made — big but not too big, with just the right blend of blandness and spice, and filled with cubed potatoes as opposed to sliced, as opposed to all manner of hash browns and home fries. This might seem like a small detail, but it makes a big difference in the texture of the final product. Señor Burrito’s breakfast burritos are served either wet or dry; go with wet if you have time to eat at a table and enjoy the atmosphere as well as your breakfast, or dry — with the chile inside — for the ultimate portable meal. Either way, they’re the perfect way to start, or end, a day.

Lomo saltado. Hot empanadas and a sweating bottle of Cristal or Quilmes beer. Chupes de this and chupes de that, a small plate of ceviche clásico or ceviche mixto and then, of course, the ubiquitous papas a la huancaina. At Cebiche, most of the menu might seem old hat to anyone who’s already discovered the joys of Peruvian cuisine. But for those wise enough to save a little room for dessert, there’s something rare and wonderful: picarones. This is kind of like doughnut soup: four deep-fried pumpkin fritters shot through with little pieces of sweet, earthy pumpkin flesh, served swimming in a bath of mile de chancaca, which is like maple syrup without the maple, just pure, raw, glorious sugar. For a normal person, half of one fritter would be plenty; a whole serving is enough to instigate an instant (and well-earned) diabetic coma.

A few things that are good early in the morning: breakfast burritos, blow jobs, strong coffee, forgiveness for last night’s sins, that first cigarette of the day — and the banana lumpia at Tropical Grill. These tropical pastries are wickedly addictive, and we’ve found ourselves driving to Aurora for another fix as soon as the last grease-and-sugar high wears off.

The British Bulldog is an odd duck even for a city like Denver, which is full of odd ducks. Here you’ll find the British tradition of mixing bangers-and-mash comfort food with Indo-Pakistani tiffin tin in full swing, so you can get an expertly pulled pint, a side of Scotch sausages and a plate of Peshawari chicken or chappli kebabs all in the same place. The Bulldog also does English breakfasts, shows a lot of soccer, hosts a wild crowd of locals and regulars, and exists in a space with such a long-lived bar-room history that there are scars on the long oak far older than most of the customers.

Chicken rice, the unofficial comfort food of Singapore, is exactly what it sounds like: chicken and rice and nothing else. But at Isle of Singapore, these two ingredients add up to big flavor. Officially billed as Hainanese chicken rice, it comes as a plate of white rice piled with chunks of rudely hacked, bone-in and double-boiled chicken. You’re supposed to doctor your chicken rice with a variety of sauces and toppings, but all that’s really required is a touch of hot sauce and a big appetite.

Davies Chuck Wagon was built in 1957, maybe one of the best years for diners, definitely one of the last. It’s a Mountain View, constructed in Singac, New Jersey, and the name is appropriate, because from the street out front, you can see the foothills rising over a hump in the land. It’s doubly appropriate, in fact, because of all the diners bolted together on those grimy East Coast assembly lines, Mountain View #516 traveled the farthest — to Lakewood, Colorado. The classic exterior makes a fitting setting for another classic: Davies’ chicken-fried steak, the best version in town. The steak may be nearly an inch thick, but inside its jacket of crisp breading, it’s tender enough (after having been soaked in milk and beaten into pudding with a mallet) to be cut with a cheap tin fork. The steak comes with a scratch-made white gravy (just flour, butter, cream, pepper and sausage grease) that’s pure white death — and deliciously decadent. We brake for Davies.

There are essentially two kinds of restaurants in the world: those run for the benefit of customers and those run as playgrounds for chefs. The Corner Office is unabashedly one of the former, and that “unabashedly” is why it’s so successful. With no shame, no tongue-in-cheek, smirking irony, the bar will pour you a double whiskey while the kitchen lovingly plates up your requested bowl of Cap’n Crunch (with Crunch Berries). Lemon edamame and fish tacos? No problem. And then there’s the Southern-style fried chicken and waffles, a dream plate with three pieces of perfectly golden and crisp-skinned fried chicken done to order, crowded on top of an excellent Belgian waffle (like a sugary buttermilk cloud, crunchy at the edges, soft in the middle), the whole thing dusted with a drift of powdered sugar and served with a warm jug of syrup on the side.

The difference between good fried chicken and bad fried chicken is a narrow margin — a few degrees of heat on the pan, a few millimeters of breading or batter. But the difference between good fried chicken and great fried chicken is huge, often measured in things like generations, miles and state lines. And while the Rocky Mountain Diner is physically far from Kansas City, the hot, greasy center of the fried chicken universe, it’s very close in spirit. The fried chicken here is as close to the skillet-fried KC original as you’re going to find in Colorado. The chicken is cooked to order in old, heavy skillets, served hot and in huge portions. The batter is just crispy enough, the meat never dry, the sides (mashed potatoes, gravy, forgettable vegetables) comfortingly classic, and the Rocky Mountain Diner itself as cool a place to eat chicken as you’re likely to find outside the Paris of the Plains.

When Encore opened last December, it came equipped with some cool history, since it occupies part of the old Lowenstein Theater, and great neighbors — Twist & Shout and the Tattered Cover. Encore also has a classic long bar, an interesting menu and savvy owners (the folks who brought us the Black Pearl). But what Encore really has going for it are its french fries: perfectly cooked, heavily salted shoestrings that are unbelievably addictive — particularly hit with a drizzle of spicy mustard that’s just one step (heat-wise) below that stuff you get in Chinese restaurants and about ten times more delicious than a squirt of French’s could ever be.

With its ridiculously cheap prices, massive portions, high-volume galley, vintage candy counter and ’50s malt-shop decor that manages to come off as more sincere than shlocky, Rosie’s is a great diner. Just about everything on the menu is award-worthy — from the malts and thick shakes to the chicken-fried steak. The only thing distinctly un-dinery is the bubbly service staff that bends over backward to make every customer happy. But in the case of Rosie’s, we’re willing to overlook that.

Corridor 44 does fans of sparkling wine a service by cracking some truly fine bottles of the bubbly and pouring it by the glass. Perrier Jouët Grand Brut, Moët & Chandon White Star, even Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label — the best champagne you’re going to get before you start paying as much for your booze as your entree. And now, with a menu restructuring courtesy of consulting chef Troy Guard, you can pair your champagne, prosecco or plain brut with tastes of American caviar (at $100 an ounce), cucumber and wasabi oyster shooters, tempura lobster salad or even chocolate fondue.

There’s a flighty kind of magic in the air at El Taco de Mexico on its best weekend mornings, something frail and almost inexplicable, moments when the swirling white church dresses and the tock of cleavers in the kitchen and the fast, hard-edged patter of Spanish at the counter all come together. The spell can easily be broken by a wrong word, a wrong order, just a momentary lull in the action. But even to someone coming down from a long drunk, the magic is discernable — particularly when that someone is returning to the living with each spoonful of menudo. This dish could be the world’s greatest hangover cure. Hot and spicy, done soup-style with a thin, red broth full of soft tripe that turns electric with a spritz of fresh lime, this stuff can not only burn off the worst of last night’s sins, but will get you back in shape to start sinning again.

When you’re celebrating in style and price is (almost) no object, French 250 is the place to pop the cork. All of the major labels are well represented on this constantly changing champagne list, and there are some lesser-known rarities that give it character. And while you’ll pay top dollar by the glass (and three times top dollar for a bottle), sometimes that’s what required for a truly transcendent experience — which is the only way to describe putting down a bottle of the Moët & Chandon Imperial Nectar offered on the dessert board.

When we walk into Jax, the LoDo outpost of a fish house that got its start in Boulder, we still get a twinge of nostalgia for the old Terminal Bar that once occupied this building. But after ten years, Jax has proven itself more than see-worthy. And the great horseshoe-shaped bar — a holdover from the Terminal days — is one of the main reasons why. Settle onto a stool here, and you can order up a plate of oysters or the best burger you’re ever going to find in a seafood restaurant. But the real draw is behind the bar, where Tim Harris leads a crew of inventive bartenders all creating incredible new cocktails featuring infused alcohols and fresh ingredients generally found in a kitchen rather than a bar. And even if you don’t want basil in your martini, you won’t be disappointed by whatever the bartenders mix up. When they pour, you reign.

There’s a twist to the martini at Churchill: You can still enjoy it with a cigarette or cigar. But the fact that this bar in the Brown Palace fits through the anti-smoking law’s cigar-sales loophole isn’t the only reason a martini here is something to savor. There’s the room itself, which is woody, clubby, and filled with leather furniture you can sink into. And then you can sink into the drink itself, mixed to your specifications and delivered in a silver bowl filled with ice, accompanied by a chilled glass. We guarantee a martini here will leave you shaken, if not stirred.

When Jesse Morreale and Sean Yontz decided to duplicate the success they’d had at Mezcal with Tambien, they actually outdid themselves on the margaritas. Although the house recipe is ostensibly the same here as at Mezcal, Tambien puts a little more care — and a slightly larger tequila pour — into these deceptively simple drinks. There’s no sweet-and-sour to make your teeth squeak, no tidy-bowl blue coloring, just good 30-30 tequila, a splash of Triple Sec and, most important, real fresh juice, squeezed that day (if not that hour). Tambien, hit us again.

There are as many good reasons to spend a night drinking tequila and mezcal as there are great places in Denver to do it. But if you’re looking for the best, head directly to Mezcal. Since this Colfax cantina opened four years ago, it’s been like a shrine to the best use of the humble agave cactus. Whether you’re looking to get sloppy on the cheap stuff or high on some of the amazing elixirs poured here, Mezcal is sure to have something with your name on it. The bar stocks over a hundred varieties of tequila and mezcal and has an ever-changing lineup as a result of the owners’ and staff’s obsession with always finding the newest, oldest, best and most artisan south-of-the-border booze there is.

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?

A Penfolds shiraz from 2000. La Tache Burgundy, 1999. A Château Ausone Bordeaux, 1995, and a ’98 Cheval Blanc. Need we go on? Okay, how about a bottle of 1990 Petrus? An ’89 LaTour? Bottles of Lafite-Rothschild from (almost) every important year dating back to 1978, a cellar full of Mouton-Rothschild. Then there’s the Haut-Brion Bordeaux, the ’28 Château Margaux? Save your pennies, oenophiles, and make your reservations. The Palace Arms is justly legendary, and its wine list full of classic vintages is one reason why.

The Colorado Rockies may have bombed in the World Series last fall, but a block away from Coors Field, Falling Rock Tap House continues to boast a world-class beer list that’s simply unbeatable. This casual, comfortable bar has more than sixty beers on tap and many, many more kinds in bottles, from cities across the country and countries around the globe. Take a swing, and you’re sure to hit something great.

The dollars-to-grub ratio at Rosie’s is always skewed hugely in favor of the archetypal Big Hungry Boy, but it’s during breakfast that this diner really shines. Bacon and eggs for five bucks? That may not sound like a bargain, but consider that this meal consists of two eggs, four strips of bacon, a mountain of hashbrowns and a full stack of pancakes, and it starts looking like a real deal. And you can add to this a side of corned beef hash or a chicken-fried steak, a bottomless cuppa joe and a couple of tunes on the tableside jukebox and still walk out the door for less than ten bucks. Also, the food here is far from what you’d find at a run-of-the-mill greasy spoon, and quality plus value equals a winner in our book any day.

The Bull & Bush, which is modeled after an old London pub with its low ceilings, dark wood and brass rails, didn’t start out as a brewpub. But then, back when the Peterson brothers founded the B&B in 1971, there weren’t any brewpubs in Colorado. Instead, it racked up another first when it hooked up to satellite dishes for sports programming, arguably becoming the country’s original sports bar. That worked when Glendale was the swinging-singles center of Denver, but as the neighborhood changed, so did the Bull & Bush. The next generation of Petersons put the emphasis back on pub, adding a microbrew operation that turns out a small but impressive lineup of beers. Today the Bull & Bush remains small, friendly and very Cheers-like, a place where everyone may know your name, but they won’t spill if you want to keep a low profile. And when the Petersons aren’t brewing the stuff, they’re likely to be behind the bar, pouring you your next beer.

Great Divide’s tap room was the last space finished in the brewery’s remodel, but it was worth the wait. The old tap room — the starting and ending point of tours at Great Divide — had a chilly, concrete decor, and it’s difficult to enjoy even free beer samples when you’re shivering. Its reincarnation is much warmer and features two large windows into the production area that let you see where the beer you’re enjoying was made. The tap room is open from 3 to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 2 to 7 p.m. on Saturday; the brewery occasionally offers special Tap Room-only releases available nowhere else in the country. Bottoms up!

Some people like cops, some go for doctors, others are only interested in bikers, punks or nerds. And there’s also a distinct subset of the singles scene interested in food-service employees — specifically cooks and chefs. For those whose tastes run a bit higher in the brigade than the Jäger-drunk commis or sullen, strung-out grillardin, Izakaya Den is a must-stop late on a Friday night. Izakaya regularly hosts a wide swath of Denver’s exec-level talent — loud fellows with wrecked hands and balletic grace who crowd up close to the bar or settle into the corner booths for sake, cold beers and late-night snacks from Izakaya’s incomparable kitchen.

Another thing Denver doesn’t have enough of? Dedicated food-service bars — places where the line dogs can go after their shift, knock back a few cocktails, have a snack and behave badly among their own kind. There are a few such charmed and charming joints in town, but the best is Dixons. With its central downtown location, liberal pours, long hours and staff accustomed to giving guys in checked pants a certain broad latitude regarding proper bar etiquette, Dixons is just the spot to see Denver’s best at their arguable worst.

Denver remains a tough place to find a great meal late at night. Enter Steuben’s. With a kitchen that serves until midnight on the weekends and eleven on school nights, Steuben’s is your best bet for a real late-night dinner, whether you’re looking for good, alcohol-absorbing grub, beating back a savage attack of the munchies or simply want a solid meal. And while Steuben’s has an extensive menu, the night creatures here come for the American regional classics, hearty fare such as gravy fries, macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs and green-chile cheeseburgers.

What? You actually got a second date? Well, good for you. Now the trick is to make the new love of your life think that you’re a person of sophistication and taste — the sort who knows not to comb his hair with the salad fork or challenge the hostess to a drinking contest in the middle of the dining room. And where better to prove (or pretend) that you know your stuff than at Fruition — Denver’s ultimate melding of casual and upscale sensibilities, of comfort food and classical technique. Chefs Alex Seidel and Drew Inman and partner/FOH man Paul Attardi have used their years of experience to a create a restaurant that serves the kind of food your mom might’ve made if your mom was Betty Crocker, Julia Child and Alain Ducasse all rolled into one, in an atmosphere that’s charming, accessible — and intimate.

So, there’s this girl or guy you really like. You’ve been pursuing (read: stalking) him or her for months now — courting in the most old-fashioned way. You’ve bought flowers, burned your name on his or her lawn, taken a page from Tom McGuane and nailed your hand to his or her front door, even successfully fought off three restraining orders. And now, against all odds, the object of your affection has consented to have dinner with you. So where do you go? The 9th Door. With its sexy-as-all-get-out bar vibe, slinky lounge music, red-wine-and-Orange-Fanta Tinto de Verano and comfy couches, this place is a culinary come-on, the gastronomic equivalent of showing up at your intended’s apartment with no pants on. And the grub is all tapas, which means it comes fast — and you’ll be able to eat plenty before the marshals come crashing through the door to drag you away.

You finally did it: You beat all the competition and nailed down that contract for the National Widget Manufacturing Summit. You’re feeling good, your staff is feeling good, and you want to take everyone out to celebrate. But not at a steakhouse — the NWMS was a nice payday, but not that nice. Still, you don’t want to go too cheap, either. You want to show your guys a guaranteed good time — and the Wazee Supper Club is just the place. It’s got a great bar, a cool staff, a passable jukebox and — most important in your case — an excellent menu filled with pizzas, stromboli, burgers, salads and sandwiches that are all priced to move. Plus, the Wazee is prepared to handle large parties at nearly all hours with a second-floor dining area and a kitchen that serves on most nights until one in the morning.

Begin with the massive plateau de fruits de mer — that’ll run you $79, shaved ice included. Then there’s whatever fish is fresh that night, prepared in a way that could be plain, could be fancy, but is guaranteed to be stunning: real Dover sole wrapped around a stuffing of crab meat and sauced with a simple, elegant lemon beurre blanc; line-caught Colorado striped bass, fried and sauced with Asian flair; the exotic skate. You won’t want to miss the sides, either, including corn on the cob and great spuds. And what’s better to wash it all down than a couple of vintage martinis? Dinner at Oceanaire isn’t cheap — but this is an amazing, gorgeous, decadently good restaurant. So find someone else to pay for your dinner, and then proceed to enjoy the cruise.

Yes, Smashburger is a small chain — but we don’t expect that to be the case for long, not with such a genius concept and excellent execution. At Smashburger, the Denver-born idea of “fast-casual” dining is applied to the Denver-born idea of the cheeseburger, and the result is a culinary mash-up of a Chipotle-style business model, a sleek, modern diner and a burgers-at-the-bar vibe that makes Smashburger an ideal spot for a fast lunch, an easy dinner or even a moderately late-night snack. (All locations are open until 10 p.m.) As long as all its outlets keep turning out great burgers, this chain should be a smash hit.

Cowbobas is a combination cowboy steakhouse and Vietnamese boba tea shop that serves coffee and corn dogs. You can get a cheeseburger and a crystal jelly fruit tea, a ten-dollar steak that tastes exactly like the steaks Dad charred on the backyard grill when you were a kid, a grilled cheese sandwich and a jackfruit smoothie so syrupy sweet you’ll think you’re having a heart attack. Cowbobas is a fiercely neighborhood spot in a neighborhood where it’s easier to find a great taco or a cow’s stomach than it is a fifty-dollar porterhouse or a fatted goose’s liver, but this socio-culinary melting pot translates into delicious meals.

Is Club 404 a dive? Absolutely. But we mean that in only the sweetest, most endearing way. If you’re looking for wasabi mashed potatoes and tenderloins with mango chutney, this is not the place for you. But if your idea of atmosphere is cheap beers at 10 a.m., 365-days-a-year Christmas lights and a seasoned waitress who could tell you firsthand what Methuselah was like in the sack, Club 404 is where it’s at. There isn’t a single item on the wide-ranging, greasy spoon/steakhouse menu that’ll run you north of fifteen bucks, and if you plan your meals around the specials, you can easily enjoy a big dinner for less than a ten-spot. No charge for the ambience.

Dinners at the Capital Grille can be murderously expensive. That dry-aged and hand-sculpted 24-ounce porterhouse, with sides, will run as high as your monthly car payment, and some of the bottles on the “Captain’s List” could bankrupt a small Third World nation. But if you need to pick up a tab at a place that makes an impression, take our advice: Hit the Capital Grille for lunch. You’ll get the same stellar service you get at dinner, see the same bluebloods and captains of industry who’ll be back that evening — but you’ll wind up holding a much smaller tab than you would at dinner. And if you order right, you’ll have leftovers that you can enjoy at home that night, sitting on your couch in your underwear.

As annoying as the phrase “Let’s do lunch” has become, we love hearing it when the destination of choice is Elway’s, a Cherry Creek mainstay that defines the power lunch — as well as the power brunch, the power dinner, the power nightcap, the power getting-smashed-at-the-bar-and-hitting-on-the-cocktail-waitresses. But this nexus of new money and old-fashioned indulgence also happens to be a really good restaurant, where Tyler Wiard’s kitchen, with its lamb lollipops, lobster cocktails and Asian-inflected grace notes, has been given license to operate well beyond the bounds of the traditional steakhouse. Even at lunch, though, Elway’s is pricey, so we suggest you make the boss pick up the tab. As often as you can possibly manage it.

Yes, we understand that few people are going to run out and drop twenty bucks on a sandwich. But the lobster-salad sandwich at the Ship Tavern is well worth the price. Essentially a lobster roll, it loads what must be half a Maine lobster, perfectly cooked, onto a homemade brioche roll, and binds everything together with a thin mayonnaise that tastes handmade. Take your time savoring your sandwich in one of the corner booths at the Ship Tavern, a venerable, if somewhat unseaworthy of late, institution in the Brown Palace. You’ve paid for the privilege.

They could be the new breakfast burrito, or maybe the new office sandwich, or even the new family dinner. Kolaches have the potential to be all these things — and more. A novel food idea brought to us by those not-so-waistline-conscious Eastern Europeans, kolaches are slightly sweet, freshly baked meals that stuff a bun with everything from eggs and bacon to ham and cheese to barbecued beef. The Kolache Factory, a Houston company with more than thirty franchises in five states but only one in Colorado (so far), offers versions with biscuits and gravy, mushroom and pepperoni, and even turkey and stuffing (in November). It’s time to make your first kolache run; we guarantee it won’t be your last.

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.

Toast is a real eye-opener. Not only does it serve great breakfasts — including the town’s best pancakes — but it offers a terrific lineup of sandwiches. From the simplest apple-and-brie sandwich (made with tart Fujis and a smear of cranberry pecan aioli) to a smartly fusion-y peppered chicken wrap with queso añejo, smoked chile cream and fresh salsa to a stunning curried chicken salad with chèvre, they’re all masterful. Now, if only Toast would stay open for dinner…

Ba Le Sandwich, a small, brightly lit sandwich shop smack in the middle of Denver’s best Vietnamese-restaurant neighborhood, is a destination both for Vietnamese immigrants looking for an honest taste of home and adventurous gastronauts looking for a taste of foreign climes on the cheap. Both appreciate the banh mi, the classical collision of French and Vietnamese culinary tradition that resulted in a wonderful spread of sandwiches — most of them some variety of pork — on short baguettes. At Ba Le, you’ll find sliced pork and spicy pork, pork pâté and pork cutlets, with topping options of sliced cucumbers, sprouts — whatever you like. No matter what you choose, you’ll get out the door for under five bucks, with a lunch that beats any fast-food offering.

Since Rob and Karin Lawler took over the Truffle last year, we’ve been impressed by both their stock and their skill in getting the word out about said stock. And for Denver’s sandwich fanatics, there’s no better place to while away an hour or an afternoon, tasting a little of this and buying a whole lot of that. The Truffle offers some killer Salumeria Biellese pork products, excellent cheeses, prepared anchovies and more varieties of salt than anyone could possibly need. Not only that, but everyone at the Truffle is eager to pass on whatever knowledge they have to the legions of super-artisan ingredient freaks who wander in and out all day long.

As you wait to fly out of Denver, load up on liquid memories of your time here. High above the A Concourse you’ll find Mesa Verde, an eatery named for one of this state’s most historic sites — and a spot where you could make some history of your own. Mesa Verde promises that here you can “drink up, eat up, light up,” and not only does it feature one of Denver International Airport’s rare smoking lounges (you can avoid the cigarettes by sitting on the deck overlooking the concourse), but it also stocks two dozen made-in-Colorado beers — six on tap and many more in bottles, ranging from Avalanche Amber Ale (Breckenridge Brewery) to Third Eye Pale Ale (Steamworks Brewing Company). Praise the Lord! (And you might get to if you have the server we did over the holidays, listed as “Christ” on our receipt.)

For almost twenty years, Michael and Marcy Schreiber have overseen this large kosher oasis that stocks everything from candies and snacks to Hanukkah candles and kosher ramen. There’s a bakery, a very busy deli counter (complete with an old-fashioned plastic-number dispenser to keep an orderly flow), a fish department (specializing in lox, natch) and, all the way in the back, a small, add-on restaurant that serves up deli sandwiches, blintzes, knishes from the bakery, herring salad and chopped liver, as well as short ribs (beef, of course), fish tacos, fish and chips, Louisiana gumbo, North African lamb stew and such “Oriental specialties” as sweet-and-sour chicken and beef stir-fry. True, most people seem to stick to the basics: scrambled eggs with salami, matzo ball soup and bagels with lox. But nowhere else in Denver will you find taquitos, tongue sandwiches and blackened ahi with wasabi sharing space on the same menu.

Paul and Lola Weiner opened their first Bagel Deli in 1969 and ultimately consolidated operations on East Hampden Avenue, where for decades this deli has been the go-to spot for a thick egg-salad sandwich, salt bagels, matzo brei or chicken liver. Today the Weiners’ daughter, Rhoda, and her husband, Joe Kaplan, run the Bagel Deli. It’s a distinctive spot, full of character and characters, with ancient, dusty dry-stock shelves piled with boxes of matzo, bags of bagel chips and sixers of Dr. Brown’s soda. It’s not a pretty place, never a quiet place — but it’s definitely the best deli in the city.

Best corned beef sandwich, best international ham-and-cheese, best Cuban, best one-shelf market in Denver — we could easily heap kudos on this tiny Bonnie Brae deli and market. But they all add up to one thing: Fisher Clark is the best lunchtime deli destination in the city. All of the bread is brought in fresh from Bluepoint Bakery, and everything else — from the pastries and desserts that fill the bakery cases to the heat-and-serve entrees on the wildly diverse catering menu — is made in-house by a talented and versatile crew that moves effortlessly from the rigors of lunch-rush sandwich-making to the somewhat more esoteric skills of dry-curing, sauce-making and beef-corning. While you’re waiting for your Serrano ham-and-Manchego sandwich with pear-onion jam, you can also stock up on all manner of high-end and luxurious dry goods — from truffle oil and saffron to canned Italian tomatoes and dry specialty pastas.

Go for the homemade corned beef hash and eggs, stay for the lox ‘n latkes. Zaidy’s serves the kind of breakfast that makes you want to move in right across the street from this deli so that you can visit every day — or possibly kidnap one of its cooks and make him live in your closet, cooking potato pancakes for you whenever you demand. As you might expect for a place that attracts such a loyal following, the Zaidy’s in Cherry Creek (which we prefer over the downtown spot, for its years of history) has big crowds and service that can sometimes be brusque. But no matter. Whether you’re a Member of the Tribe or just a fan of the Tribe’s breakfast prowess, Zaidy’s has you covered.

A $2.89 blue-plate special at lunch? You can’t beat that — not even if you go through a McDonald’s drive-thru for a Happy Meal. And while a Mickey D’s lunch will do nothing but make you feel bad for eating such junk, at Johnny’s you’re not only getting real lunch from an honest-to-Jesus local business, but you’re getting a little kick of history with your meal. Both the style and concept of this place — a counter-service, plastic-tray car-cult joint with a freaky kick of Golden Age Americana oozing from every inch — pre-date our country’s obsession with fast food, making Johnny’s a window back onto a simpler time. A time when the phrase “Nothin’ could be finer than dinner [or lunch] at the diner” really meant something. At Johnny’s, it means good food for a very good price.

SAME Cafe owners Brad and Libby Birky have done the impossible. Not only did they open a restaurant with no prices on the menu and no cash register on the premises (just a box into which customers are asked to put a “donation,” paying whatever they can or whatever they choose to), but they’ve managed to keep it open for more than a year. That’s an amazing feat, but what’s even more amazing about SAME (which stands for So All May Eat) is the food served here: an ever-changing lineup of hot, fresh and mostly organic dishes good enough to grace any downtown cafe, including apple-and-brie pizza, red beans and rice, chickpea salads, fresh fruit tarts and potato-and-bacon soup. Given the philosophy of the place, your karma can decide whether SAME Cafe offers the best free lunch in Denver, or simply the best bang for however many bucks you choose to give.

Man could live by bread alone, if it were made at Bluepoint Bakery. This is a huge production bakery with an enormous book for everything from breads to desserts to pastries, but the breads are the real star: at least a dozen kinds of French bread, twice the number of dinner and sandwich rolls, eight pan breads and a half-dozen deli loaves — including the best marbled rye this side of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. And while a mere mortal can’t just drop by for a nice loaf (unless, of course, said mortal wants to buy a whole lot of loaves), Bluepoint’s product isn’t hard to find: The bakery supplies breads, pastries and desserts for clients from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins, doing the baking grunt work for hotels, coffee shops, airport concessionaires and, most important, owner Mary Clark’s new restaurant, Fisher Clark Urban Delicatessen.

The croissant at Les Delices are excellent — buttery, flaky, crisp and puffed just right so they collapse against the teeth almost before you bite into them. The brioche are delicious, the tartellet like tiny fruit jewel boxes. And owners Gerard and Christelle Donat certainly know their way around the big-ticket items — the cakes and display pieces. But for our money, the best way to celebrate the dawning of a new day is with one of the bakery’s sugar-glazed, impossibly bittersweet citron tarts and a cream Napoleon, a completely impractical construct of flaky mille-feuille, pastry cream and sugar that’s so good you’ll be inspired to get up early just so you can get to Les Delices before they’re all gone.

When hunger strikes on the 16th Street Mall, the mighty Waffle Brothers, John Power and Rod Dupen, are at your service. Starting with a warm, Liège-style Belgian waffle — caramelized around the edges thanks to the inclusion of imported nib sugar in the batter — as a base, the bros then pile on the toppings you request, everything from the basic cinnamon or powdered sugar and whipped cream to fresh fruit, cranberry compote and creamy marshmallow cream cheese. Don’t waffle! It’s what to eat when you’re on the street.

Bananas Foster pancakes. Strawberry-banana cheesecake pancakes crusted with crushed graham crackers and topped with a strawberry cream-cheese sauce. Lemon-blueberry pancakes spiked with gingersnap and lemon curd, and Oreo cookie pancakes with marshmallow fluff and hot fudge. You’ll flip for the flapjacks at Toast, a charming breakfast spot that’s reason to rise and shine.

Those tourist shops at Denver International Airport and on the 16th Street Mall get their Colorado-branded souvenir knickknacks from somewhere — but it sure ain’t Colorado. That Estes Park shot glass your father-in-law bought last year was more likely crafted on the shores of the Yangtze than the Cache La Poudre. Still, there’s a great spot to find true Colorado mementos, a Colorado classic in its own right: Karl’s Farm Dairy, sixty acres of rural anachronism surrounded by Northglenn sprawl. Here, visitors can memorialize their trip with honest-to-God Centennial State salsas, peanut brittle, jams, hot sauces, hot chocolate mix and — for the plane ride home — several varieties of jerky. The Colorado barbecue sauces would go great with the cuts of all-natural Colorado beef and elk, too. Who needs another shot glass, anyway?

Tin Star does only two things — barbecue and doughnuts — which means it comes very close to any sane person’s idea of how heaven might smell. When he took over the longtime doughnut joint four years ago, owner Andrew Schutt — a trained chef and veteran of several of Denver’s biggest-name kitchens — tried adding a deli to the doughnuts, then sandwiches. Two years ago, he hit on the magical combination of doughnuts and barbecue, and he hit the jackpot. Where else can a man get a pound of smoked pork, some ribs and a killer apple fritter as big as a cat? What else could he possibly need?

Unlimited prosecco: eight bucks. Getting smashed before noon on a Sunday morning: priceless. But while the drink-until-you’re-done deal during brunch at Kevin Taylor’s Prima Ristorante may be enough recommendation for fans of daylight misbehavior, this lovely little restaurant also puts out a killer brunch spread for those who actually want some food with their weekend pick-me-up. From shaved melon and prosciutto salads with mission fig and seafood agnolotti in lobster stock to poached eggs and prosciutto or Tuaca-spiked French toast, Prima’s brunch lineup satisfies not just the cheapskate drinker, but the daylight gastronome as well.

Izakaya Den is a beautiful restaurant — dimly lit, with a lovely, blonde-wood sushi bar and huge beams made from imported cedar, set and carved by Japanese craftsmen — but that’s not why it’s the year’s best new restaurant. The menu, designed by Toshi Kizaki and executed by one of the most talented crews in town, is ridiculous, a Japanese-Mediterranean fusion (with hints of northern Spain and France and America shot through it like rogue strands of culinary DNA) that’s amazing, awe-inspiring and should never work in a million years but somehow does — but that’s not why. Izakaya has wonderful service, a great vibe and a rich crowd of regulars — but none of those are why, either. Instead, Izakaya takes the crown for being an exemplary example of that finest restaurateur impulse, which is to do what you love without compromise and hope that the people come to love it, too. And they do love Izakaya Den, for so many reasons. Denver is lucky to have a restaurant, a kitchen, a crew and a menu as audacious and weird as you find as Izakaya, and we can only hope that its success inspires others to follow the same brave path.

Not only do Hoss Orwat and his crew make some wicked barbecue, but they’ve made that wicked barbecue the focus of a great neighborhood restaurant — the kind of place that, in a perfect world, would exist within walking distance of every person’s home. This joint draws a crowd from every imaginable demographic — from families out for a meal together to drunken hat boys to weird old guys yelling at the televisions to couples on dates to blissed-out restaurant critics with barbecue sauce under their fingernails. The atmosphere is all convivial weirdness and charm, and the kitchen keeps that good feeling going by turning out great grub in large portions. And above it all is Hoss himself — walking the floor, chewing the fat, buying drinks and generally acting the part of benevolent dictator in this small, delicious and ideal kingdom on Tennyson Street.

For those of us who just know we’re not going to be able to drag ourselves out of bed for Sunday brunch, the Wynkoop Brewing Company is a required last stop on Saturday nights. Because this brewpub not only sells its excellent brews by the glass, but also by the jug, to go. So if you know you’re going to be in for a rough morning that will require some hair of the dog, remember to drop by the Wynkoop before last call for a growler of Quinn’s Scottish, Railyard or (if you ask really nicely) Patty’s Chile Beer — a guaranteed cure for whatever ails you. And if alcoholic suds aren’t quite your style, the Wynkoop also makes Tiger, its own artisan root beer, with Colorado honey and plenty of bite.

This has been Frank Bonanno’s year. While cutting his losses on a couple of ventures, he continued to ensure that the French/Mediterranean-inspired Mizuna and the solidly Italian Luca remained two of the city’s most consistently excellent restaurants. And then last December, he opened Osteria Marco in Larimer Square, a neighborhood already full to bursting with great restaurants — and it immediately rose to the top of the heap, putting all of Denver’s charcuterie freaks in seventh heaven, while also serving wood-fired pizzas, panini sandwiches and a weekly pig roast. Never mind his great recipes, superb technique, solid work ethic and Today show appearances: Bonanno’s comeback-kid routine alone secures his place as this year’s best chef manning three of the town’s best restaurants.

Ian Kleinman’s molecular-gastronomy tasting menus at O’s Steak & Seafood at the Westin Westminster are absolutely amazing. His dedication to pushing the boundaries of cuisine to strange and unusual places — mixing his years as a classically trained chef with an essential, up-from-nothing, hey-let’s-see-what-this-tastes-like spirit — is admirable, as is his rigid, almost doctrinaire insistence that the results still be food (not art, not performance, not all sizzle with no steak). But what truly makes Kleinman’s ever-changing, molecular-gastronomy tasting menu so special is that its end — usually a half-dozen dishes — is really just the beginning. Because scattered throughout the regular menu at O’s are countless examples of molecular gastronomy at work, executing a stealth attack on the expectations of staid hotel diners and introducing them to an entirely new concept of food.

Chef Radek Cerny has never been an easy guy to pin down. In his earliest days in Colorado, he was just another French-trained classical chef who had a few weird tricks with potatoes and a string of gigs that pointed up those talents. But lately he’s been venturing down some pretty strange culinary avenues and coming back with absolutely brilliant dishes, including lobster in potato foam and duck rillettes with potato Napoleon. He can do the classics (lobster meunière), the modern (smoked Scottish salmon with liquid horseradish), the bizarre (chicken and moonshine) and the simple (a sashimi board). But the best thing he does may be a killer Monday “staff meal” prix fixe, which offers some of the best tastes of the back of the house for just $25.

Miso soup? Check. Homemade Satsuma-age and nikumaki with burdock root? Check. For about thirty seconds, Izakaya Den seems like nothing more than a late-night version of Sushi Den, its sibling across the street. But then you see the panzanella salad on the menu, the roasted red and yellow beets with green tea-smoked mozzarella, the curried Maine lobster with apricot-shallot veloute, and you begin to wonder just what kind of restaurant you’ve wandered into. At Izakaya Den, the seemingly impossible fusion of Japanese and Mediterranean cuisine (with a touch of Indian flavor, a hint of French technique) comes together beautifully and with such precision that, at the close of the meal, you’re left wondering not why someone would attempt such a weird amalgam, but why nobody thought of it sooner.

Today Fruition is getting play all over the country as one of the best restaurants in the United States, with stories in glossy mags and big awards. But you know what? We loved Fruition before it was cool, when it was a great neighborhood restaurant and the entire town its neighborhood. Fruition wasn’t even two months old when we named it Best New Restaurant last year, and since then, it’s only gotten better. Still, someday the national attention hoopla will disappear, and we’ll still be here — sitting in Fruition’s too-small dining room, eating chicken soup and pork belly, appreciating just how good New American cooking can be. Fruition is the sort of place where you want to make sure you get a table on Friday night — and then never leave.

Salt-brined and grilled pork chops in cider-blue cheese sauce with mashed potatoes, a steak topped with bacon, roasted quail with a pecan grit cake and cranberries. Such dishes translate into one thing: a quintessentially American restaurant. At Duo, chef John Broening and his crew have been quietly redefining the standards of American cuisine, incorporating local and regional elements into classic presentations, touching always on those things that American cooks do better than anyone else: simple meats, comforting sides, rough but artistic plating. And in the process, Broening is blazing a trail for other American chefs, showing how American food can be at its absolute best.

A crepe, when done correctly, is simple — just a wrapper that holds all the good stuff in one place. But while it’s simple, it can also be delicious. And no place in town makes more correct, simply delicious crepes than Crepes ‘n Crepes. That’s because Crepes ‘n Crepes is uncompromisingly, unabashedly and unstintingly French. The cooks are French. Owners Kathy Knight and Alain Veratti have imported all their iron crepe griddles from France. The ingredients and preparations — the camembert and Chambord, ratatouille and sauce aux champignons — are French. And even the space itself — the ramshackle, patched, plastered dining rooms, the cramped back bar — gives off the honest vibe of café-along-the-Seine frugality and charming disorder.

Most haute cuisine is too heavy to eat every day. But Le Central practically cries out for you to return each afternoon for a bowl of Denver’s best French onion soup, a plate of snails and a glass of wine (or three). The menu here is huge and very traditional, full of French comfort foods and specials. The moules et frites choices alone can keep us amused for weeks at a time, and when we’re feeling a little more extravagant? Well, there’s always the loup de mer, the entrecôte or the new “Feasting” menus meant for groups to share. The board at Le Central changes daily, but you always know that there will be good reason to return tomorrow.

Everything about French 250 — from its jewel-box subterranean space to its long and luxurious menu of hard-core French classics to the uncompromising work being done by the brigade that makes everything from scratch, in the proper French style — speaks directly to our love of classicism and the old, the storied and the traditional in the French canon. Here, the gigot of lamb is so old-school it might as well have Escoffier’s fingerprints on it, the cuisses de grenouille superb, and the cheese board the stuff of foodies’ dreams. While Denver has other great French restaurants, none are as adamantly French. Which, even in Denver, Colorado, is what a French restaurant should be.

El Tejado doesn’t just serve some of the town’s best, and most varied, Mexican food — fried snapper that you might find in Puerto Vallarta, street-style tacos and a thick, gravy-like green chile that could only be made in Colorado. During Sunday brunch, it serves that food with a side of mariachi music. The good-humored musicians play all the standards and take requests. Fair warning: When the Broncos are playing in town, the band often takes a break.

Yucca chips, potato salads, causa potato cakes and a spread of ceviches are only the start at Limón, chef Alex Gurevich’s love letter to the modern cuisine of Peru, known as “Novoandino.” Here the classic dishes of this ancient food culture are reimagined for the modern world, yet made with traditional, imported ingredients and a deep understanding of where the disparate flavors come from. The room where they’re served is sleek, the plating undeniably modern, and yet the flavors speak loudly of preparations and combinations that have survived not only the test of time, but also of taste.

Over the past couple of years, Central and South American food has become a hot style as young chefs looked even farther south of the border for inspiration. But Denver has had its own inspirational Peruvian restaurant for years. Behind an unassuming downtown storefront is Los Cabos II, a combination restaurant/cultural center that’s decorated with native art (and a giant stuffed llama) and serves authentic Peruvian peasant food to all comers. These days the crowd is just as likely to consist of adventurous office workers looking for a hit of bistek a la pobre, papas a la huancaina and a pisco sour as it is of displaced Peruvians hungry for a taste of home. Fortunately, the sudden attention placed on Peruvian cuisine has only made Los Cabos better, with a recent overhaul of both the space and the menu.

Chef Scott Durrah opened this small cafe in the Highland neighborhood just so he could share the Jamaican and Caribbean flavors he loves with Denver. But in the process, he showed us just how refined and just how casual these tastes can be — offering a rough and rustic menu of Caribbean comfort food done with a careful and restrained hand. The place is small, with room for only a few tables and a small patio, but the flavors are big. The smell of his jerk seasoning alone can stretch a block in all directions, luring the curious and the hungry from far and wide.

The Arada Gebeya, one of the great spice markets of Africa, is located in central Addis Ababa. And now its namesake restaurant, Arada, has brought the true flavors of Ethiopian cuisine to the center of Denver, introducing a flock of customers to its deliciously authentic fare. Although this city has a surprisingly large number of Ethiopian restaurants, Arada is the best of the bunch. In its relatively new digs on Santa Fe, the dining room is small but lovely. But once the food arrives, all of your attention will be on the large platters of white tibs and sambusa, incredible raw-beef kitffo and doro wat in a fiery red-chile sauce. Everything comes family style, complete with injera and exotic sides.

Ya Hala isn’t much to look at from the outside — just a squat cement bunker hunkered down on Colorado Boulevard. As a matter of fact, it isn’t much to look at from the inside, either. The lobby/bakery is a bit run-down, the dining room looks roughly used. But the food coming out of this place more than makes up for the unsightly digs. The hummus alone is so good that we’d gladly eat it while sitting on an old crate in an alley, if that were our only option. And yet the hummus is just the beginning. Everything Ya Hala makes is superb, from the simple grilled kebabs and chicken to the shawarma, balilla and sambusk. And its baklava is not just the best in Denver, but possibly the best baklava ever made — an unbelievably addictive, honey-sweet and perfectly crispy dessert.

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.

India’s shows its love for the culture and cuisine of India on the walls. Every flat surface, every spare inch of space, is covered with statuettes and serving bowls, with tapestries and flags, with seemingly every tchotchke, keepsake and souvenir ever produced by busy hands on the Indian subcontinent. In India, this place would probably be made fun of like an Outback Steakhouse in Sydney, but here the cluttered shelf space only adds to the feeling of other-ness that has always been one of India’s big draws — along with the consistently fine food served off a fairly standard menu.

For more years than we can remember, Royal Peacock has been serving not just the best Indian food in the area, but some of the best Indian food anywhere — the kind you can eat once and dream about for years after, or eat every day and still crave at midnight. There’s no gimmickry here, no flash, no bizarre international fusions or misguided attempts at modernization. Instead, the menu is full of brilliant and full-flavored versions of somasa, murgh chaat, boti kebab, Goan masala and more, a humble offering of honest, delicious dishes passed down through generations of a restaurant family who have long been the best at what they do.

Randy Schoch, owner of the Ling & Louie’s chain, is making a real effort at gastronomic decency, redefining an already redefined culinary gestalt (quote/unquote Asian cuisine) and taking it through the stages from Asian to Asian-American to family-friendly yuppie-Asian. And somehow he manages to raise the bar by aiming lower than the competition. His best ideas? Offering children’s bento boxes and Chinese party food, American takeoffs on Asian street dishes carefully calibrated for the mid-range palate. While that food may not rise much above solidly decent, what sets Ling & Louie’s apart is how it treats kids as people, not just as unfortunate by-products of family dining attached inseparably to their parents’ wallets.

On Sunday morning, we worship at the church of Lola, which doubles as a coastal Mexican restaurant the rest of the week. Sliding into our pew (make that booth), we give thanks for the basket of homemade breads (occasionally even pseudo-Pop-Tarts!) with which you can start the meal, for a menu that includes not just pancake and egg offerings, but a truly miraculous chicken-fried steak and specials that would tempt even the most religious weight-watchers to stray. And then we wash away a week’s worth of sins with offerings from the bar, including mimosas and excellent margs. Lola offers the same brunch fare on Saturdays, but on Sunday there’s live music to accompany the afternoon service. Let us pray…and eat.

For thirty years, Szechuan Chinese Restaurant has been doing business in one of the worst imaginable locations in all of restaurantdom — but somehow it’s managed to build, and keep, a dedicated crowd of regulars. They flock here for the friendly, accommodating service, the huge menu with well over a hundred options, and the low prices and large portions. But really, Szechuan would need to offer just one thing, and we’d keep coming back. This kitchen makes the best dumplings we’ve found in Colorado. And that alone is reason to hope that Szechuan manages to stick around for another thirty years.

Chopsticks is a strange restaurant: It’s one of the city’s most authentic Chinese spots, yet it also serves some completely inauthentic dishes. At Chopsticks, you can eat Chinese pocket sandwiches full of delicious, saucy, shredded meat or completely non-threatening chicken lo mein — and then, halfway through your meal, decide that what you really want is a little cold jellyfish salad or a plate of flaming pig intestines, and then get that, too, without having to change restaurants or neighborhoods or do anything more than ask. Here the competing impulses toward satisfying the local populace and satisfying those far from home are brought into perfect balance on a huge menu filled with dumplings, porridge, hot pots and barbecue, a document that sees no contradiction in offering both beef in garlic sauce and haggis-like shredded lamb stomach.

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.

We’ve only eaten in Thai Pepper II’s dining room once. That’s because we can’t sit still when we start thinking about this Thai food. So when we have a craving, we call in an order to Thai Pepper, which quickly bags up a brilliant take-away order of curry, rice, rice-paper shrimp and noodles. The menu is just long enough to feel comprehensive, with great versions of authentic Thai specialties — all of which seem to taste even better when eaten at home, on the couch or just standing in front of the refrigerator at two in the morning.

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.

In Vietnam, pho is breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight snack, both a morning pick-me-up and a comfort at the end of a long day. And at Pho 79’s Aurora branch (there are two other locations), regulars have gotten the message that soup is good food. Here, the beef noodle soup — likely the single-most defining flavor of Vietnamese cuisine — gets the full attention of the kitchen, and as a result, it gets the full attention of the customers who flock here morning, noon and night for a fix of the best pho in Denver.

Parallel 17 isn’t all nouvelle; in fact, most of the menu is a very traditional and almost historic presentation of small plates that date back to the imperial cuisine of Hue. But it’s the modernist touches that set Parallel 17 apart from the vast panoply of authentic Vietnamese restaurants in this city. It’s the updated sauces, the modern plating and lounge-y vibe that truly define this place, and give the spark of contemporary buzz.

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.

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.

Founded in Denver by Mareo Torito, Kokoro has specialized in speed, low prices, freshness and healthy ingredients — with a Japanese accent — for twenty years. The South Colorado Boulevard Kokoro is the best of the three still operating (the others are in Arvada and at 555 Broadway). It looks like an old Woolworth’s lunch counter taken over by a mob of Japanese line cooks who turn out exactly what you’d expect to find at a Tokyo noodle shop. There are rice bowls and noodle bowls, sushi that isn’t really sushi (five choices, all cooked), gyoza and edamame and salads, all made and delivered incredibly quickly (three minutes, order to plate). When you have a tight schedule and budget but still hanker for a taste of Japan, Kokoro delivers.

Blueberry, peach, apple and cherry — with a revolving menu of pies made fresh daily, Sam’s No. 3 is great spot to grab a slice after a night at the nearby Denver Performing Arts Complex. The only thing flakier than the delicious crust might be the crowd surrounding you — an eclectic bunch that’s apt to include hipsters, workers getting off their late shift and opera lovers. And if your snack leaves you hungering for more, you can take home an entire Sam’s pie for $7.75.

Oshima Ramen doesn’t just serve the best ramen in Denver, it serves the best ramen in America — because this is where Keiji Oshima’s ramen invasion of the United States both began and ended. So we’re the lucky inheritors of both Oshima’s vision and his unparalleled Super Original Oshima Ramen, which is about as far from those 29-cent packets of grocery-store noodles and dust as you can get while still talking about basically the same food. The ingredients here are sourced from Japan (where Oshima has operated many ramen restaurants), and the broths and noodles are made fresh daily and by hand. The result is a ramen soup that could be the best not just in Denver, not in America — but anywhere.

Year after year, Domo never fails to impress with its rigid adherence to the traditional cuisine of Northern Japan, its unwavering commitment to authenticity in ingredients and preparation, and the fact that we somehow can sit, stuffing our faces, for two hours on what is essentially an old tree stump and still get up at the end of dinner without feeling crippled by the experience. From the serenity of the Japanese garden in the back to the usually raucous (but occasionally weirdly quiet) dining room, Domo is a half-meditative, half-sensual place — and a meal here can either calm the spirit or excite the senses, depending on what you order and what you’re in the mood for. Although the service varies between charmingly informal and coldly standoffish, the food is never less than excellent, never anything but true to the tastes and flavors of the culture it celebrates.

Less formal and intimidating than other sushi joints, Japon is a great place to go if you’re just starting to get into sushi. Here the stakes are a little lower and the pace a little slower, a benefit of Japon’s Old South Gaylord neighborhood setting. But the fish is undeniably excellent and the crew behind the bar approachable and helpful. At Japon, you get the sense that eating sushi doesn’t have to be serious; it can simply be fun.

There are people who have been going to Mori for decades, since long before Coors Field and LoDo existed, people who somehow happened on this sushi bar in the back of an old VFW hall and got hooked. Although Mori has gone more upscale in recent years — even adding a sake bar — it’s still a comfortable spot, with booths patched with duct tape and an extensive, inexpensive roster of sushi.

Osaka Sushi isn’t easy to find, but it’s worth the search. Regulars love this place with a fervor bordering on obsession and even have their own personal sake boxes, stacked like a child’s blocks behind the bar. The menu focuses on sushi, but also features other Japanese convenience foods — gyoza and donburi, yaki soba and bowls of multi-colored fish eggs for those who just can’t get enough tobiko and ikura. While on the surface, Osaka might seem no different from the dozens of neighborhood sushi bars in this town, its excellence reveals itself in small ways.

Sushi is simplicity personified in a culinary tradition that already values the most basic, the most unadorned, the most spare presentation of ingredients imaginable. Yet any meal at Sushi Den is complicated by the fact that owner Toshi Kizaki has worked for the past twenty years to institute a system whereby the sushi we get in Denver is almost as fresh and pure (and occasionally, expensive) as what’s being eaten at the same moment thousands of miles away. With a buyer in Japan, an account with FedEx, a team of expert sushi chefs and a commitment to freshness that broaches the bounds of common sense, Sushi Den serves the very best sushi in Denver — a fact that becomes plainly obvious from the first bite of meltingly soft uni, gleaming o-toro or any one of the house’s daily specials.

Sushi Sasa seemed perfect the minute it opened. Odd, then, that it seems to only get better. Or maybe not, because chef/owner Wayne Conwell is the sort of person who strives to best even himself. From the gorgeous white-on-white dining room (which is usually packed) to the sushi bar at the back and the product of the cooks working behind it, nothing here is less than coolly and confidently excellent. Though not entirely traditional, the menu is firmly grounded in the years of classical training that Conwell went through before striking out on his own. To experience Denver’s best sushi restaurant at its best, surrender to the chef, the kitchen and the season, order the omakase tasting menu, then sit back and let the night unfold as it will.

Is the line to eat at Cherry Crest too long? Check this out: The market part of the restaurant offers a takeout-only, New England-style steamer special of two one-and-a-half pound lobsters, the catch of the day, clams, mussels, corn on the cob and potatoes, laid down with seaweed in a steamer bucket and ready to go for just $70. That’s a real deal for a seafood fanatic, displaced East Coaster or anyone who wants to re-create one of those high-summer J. Crew photo spreads in their own back yard.

Cherry Crest Seafood Market not only serves the best lobster in Denver, but it also has the best lobster deal in Denver. In season, you can get a full lobster dinner for around twenty bucks — easily half the price of the competition. And Cherry Crest is steaming and cracking Maine lobsters — the best — while some of the other guys are making do with coldwater Aussies, or worse. One word of caution: Come very early and be prepared to wait. Fortunately, the lobster’s well worth it.

Although Oceanaire is beloved for the chicken-fried oysters and delightful bacon steaks with which it’s slowly murdering a certain restaurant critic, this restaurant is really a classic fish house that looks like a gilt ocean liner from the early twentieth century. Each day, the menu lists the fish that have been delivered fresh from distributors around the world: Loup de mer, mako shark, Arctic char and blowfish have all had their moment on this menu alongside the traditional cods and salmon, and chef Matt Mine’s kitchen knows how to handle every single one of them. Whether you order the simplest grilled salmon or sole meunière or the stuffed sole with brie or whole Arctic char glazed in soy, a meal at Oceanaire is sure to go swimmingly.

In London, the butchers from Smithfield Market celebrate the finish of a long day with a couple pints of Guinness, some beans and a plate of black pudding. In the swing-shift industrial towns of Northern China, men put away bowls of congee rice porridge and yu za kuei (fried crullers) before trudging off to the factories. Here in Denver? We’ve got the Corner Office, where, no matter how long or how weird your day has been, you can finish it (or, depending on your proclivities, start it) in true American style: with a shot of whiskey and a bowl of Crunch Berries. Cereal not your thing? The kitchen also does waffles, including blueberry cheesecake with graham cracker-maple syrup and a killer Black Forest variety with cherries and chocolate.

Masalaa is a great vegetarian restaurant because it’s really not a vegetarian restaurant. Rather, it’s a restaurant that just happens to not have meat on the menu — a fact that can easily go overlooked while you’re gorging yourself on idly, aloo paratha, kofta curry with vegetable fritters, the most delicious aloo mutter anywhere, channa saag with chickpeas and a dozen kinds of dosa stuffed with anything from fried onions and potatoes to butter, fried vegetables or masala sauce. There’s a big difference between working within a canon made up entirely of grains and vegetables and trying to work within a cuisine where all the meat has simply been removed — and that difference is delicious at Masalaa.

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.

At Los Carboncitos, salsa is an elemental part of the meal, and every table is supplied with a caddy full of different varieties. No chips, though: That chips-and-salsa thing is an American invention, and Los Carboncitos is about as far as you can get from an American restaurant without updating your passport. This bright spot operates like a cool, urban Mexico City diner, offering comfort foods, tacos, huaraches and messy breakfast plates — all begging to be slathered with any one of the house’s four custom salsas, ranging in heat and flavor from smoothly savory to napalm death.

We know that pappadum isn’t exactly a tortilla chip, and that spicy greenish-red stuff that’s served alongside it at Tibet’s isn’t exactly salsa. But we don’t care, because we also know that this stuff is addictive and free.

Reiver’s, which got its start with the sniffles-and-Steely Dan crowd, became an entirely new restaurant last year with a top-to-toes remodel of everything from the menu to the interior by owner Dan Shipp. It’s still a neighborhood hangout, but now it’s a comfortable place where anyone would want to hang out. And you could hang out for a long time over an order of the best chips and salsa in town. The chips are thick, multi-colored and delicious, the salsa a savory, chunky and wet mess that ideally balances sweetness, spice and a razor blade of late-hitting heat. It’s the perfect accompaniment for a couple of cold beers at the bar, or a good appetite-whetter before your chicken-fried steak arrives.

There are a lot of places around where you can pick up roasted green chiles; hell, some Wal-Marts roast ’em right in front of the store. But we like to get our bags full of Hatch chiles at Nick’s. For one thing, Nick’s is a garden center, which means the roasters are set up among the trees, vegetable stands and bedding plants — a setting much closer to nature than, say, a truck-stop sidewalk or highway off-ramp. For another, the smell of the chiles mingling with the smell of the fresh flowers and peaty potting soil is one of our favorite smells on earth. And finally, Nick’s roasts a lot of chiles, which means that, on a good day, you can smell the place working from a mile away and just follow your nose.

Until everyone gets it through their heads that real green chile means roasted, chopped green chiles, a little liquid and nothing else, Jack-n-Grill is going to keep winning this award, because it remains the only place in Denver where you can get authentic New Mexican-style green chile — along with killer vaquero tacos, giant breakfast burritos and cups full of roasted, cheesy corn. What’s more, during chile season, owner Jack Martinez (who began his career as a green-chile importer) and members of his family are standing right out there in the parking lot, tending to the jet-fuel tumblers, roasting bushel after bushel of the good stuff for anyone wise enough to stop by and pick up a bag.

Tambien is all about the timing. When Jesse Morreale and Sean Yontz realized that Sketch just wasn’t going to make it, they closed it up, fast, and turned the basement space into a darker, more sophisticated version of Mezcal. Today, Tambien is a great spot for after-dark boozing and carrying-on, with an uncomplicated menu full of Mexican comfort foods, a kitchen that works late and a big bar stocked with some of the best south-of-the-border intoxicants ever devised by man.

There was a time when our favorite Korean restaurant was in a huge, ex-McDonald’s space. There’s a Chinese restaurant we really like that grew in a space vacated by a Taco Bell. And our favorite outpost for Colorado-style Mexican grub is a joint that opened forty years ago in a former Safeway: La Fiesta. Here, the fine and traditional cuisine of Mexico gets a norteamericano makeover that puts Colorado’s Mexican food in a class by itself. The burritos come smothered under a green chile that’s a medium-thick, medium-hot mess of roasted chiles, pork and thickening agents that sticks like napalm to anything it touches. The rellenos are done egg-roll style — wrapped in wonton skins and stuffed with bright-yellow cheese product. But hands down, the best thing on the menu is the Thursday special (La Fiesta is only open for weekday lunches) of chile caribe — a stone-simple conglomeration of pork, potatoes, red chile and nothing else.

The bar might be Phil’s, but his mother, Junie Garcia, is in charge in the kitchen. Six days a week, she cooks up a roster of far-from-standard Mexican standards: breakfast burritos, steak tacos, cheese enchiladas and a hot, hot green chile she made famous at the Bamboo Hut. But Junie’s best creation may be her tamales, which stuff spicy shredded pork inside light, flavorful masa. The tamales aren’t normally on the menu, so when Junie decides to make a batch, run — don’t walk — to Phil’s Place.

Naturally, when we’re hungry for a great tamal, we head to a restaurant owned by a couple of Brits, with a kitchen commanded by an ex-Floridian just back from France, set in the middle of a privileged suburban enclave. We head for Agave Grill, which is run by the Master family, and where chef Chad Clevenger oversees the creation of a stunning tamal. Achiote-braised pork is wrapped inside a delicately steamed fold of creamy, light, sweet masa, then touched with a New Mexican-style green-chile sauce. Taken all together, it adds up to Denver’s least likely best tamal.

At Mezcal, the talents of partners Jesse Morreale and Sean Yontz combine to create a great bar, a great neighborhood hangout, a great place to go when you’re feeling like behaving badly. From the Mexican-soap-opera-and-lucha-libre theme in the dining room to the wondrous collection of tequilas and mezcals behind the bar, there are many reasons to love the place. Our favorite reason? Dollar tacos from 10 p.m. until close — the perfect way to get up for, come down from or suffer through anything that Friday night brings you. And the buck-fifty PBRs don’t hurt, either.

With $2 happy-hour beers — including imports — and a happy hour that actually stretches for three hours, until 7 p.m., this Southwestern joint is already a winner. But the purchase of two happy-hour beers or two of Kiva’s signature blue KivaRitas (also $2 each) also buys you free rein at the taco bar. The plates and shells are small, but there’s plenty of meat, cheese, veggies, chips and salsa, so if you don’t mind making a few trips, it’s not hard to make an entire meal out of happy hour here. And there’s always a surprise appetizer — like deep-fried tacos — thrown in for good measure.

Denver is a taco-lover’s paradise. Between all the taquerías and taco trucks, pretty much anywhere you go, you can find a taco within fifty feet. But finding a good one is something else entirely. And that’s why when we’re craving tacos, we head for Tacos y Salsas on South Federal (which, unlike the original outlet in Aurora, serves alcohol). Not only does this joint whip up a mean barbacoa taco or plate of carne asada, but it does so with style. The meat is fresh (in some cases, carved straight off the enormous meat stick towering over the hot line), the tortillas pressed by hand, the kitchen crew one of the fastest and best in town, and the final product endlessly customizable from the salsa bar at the front of the restaurant.

Tacos D.F. began its life as a taco truck — a great taco truck that worked the fertile territory along South Parker Road. Although it now has a roof, walls and a real address, it isn’t anything more than a great taco truck with a roof, walls and a real address. In keeping with a neighborhood lonchera, all orders are taken through a literal hole in the wall — a window crudely hacked through the back wall that divides the dining floor from the small kitchen. Through this hole, you ask for your tacos, you pay your money and you pick up your order.

Okay, so maybe not the last place you’d expect to find a great Italian restaurant. That would probably be Antarctica, on the moon or in the men’s room of the Greyhound station in Provo, Utah. But still, finding a great Italian restaurant in Larimer Square — once home to the awful Josephina’s — and in a basement space at that, is pretty surprising. With Osteria Marco, chef/owner Frank Bonanno has created a cozy little hole in the ground with handcrafted pizzas, tons of little snacks and an unparalleled board of artisanal meats and cheeses that Denver foodies would’ve murdered for five years ago. Start with a glass of anything from the short, tight wine list of Italian wines, chase it with a plate of prosciutto, coppa and fresh-made burrata, move on to a small, hand-thrown pizza, and finish with a bite of something sweet from the simple dessert menu.

Beyond the homemade pasta and authentic decor, Patsy’s has something special going for it: consistency. For decades, Patsy’s has soldiered on — always dependably good, always serving exactly what you want when you’re craving a big plate of spaghetti dotted with clams and a glass of something cheap, red and fruity. Patsy’s may not be breaking any culinary ground, and it certainly won’t be getting a center spread in Food Arts any time soon, but that’s okay with us. As long as it keeps charging us reasonably, treating us decently and sending us home full, we’re happy.

Carpaccio di bue dressed in lemon and oil, grilled salmon with roasted potatoes, garretto d’agnello — spring lamb braised in red wine, served with grilled eggplant and potato purée. Those are just a few of the dishes that chef/owner Craig D’Alessandro has in regular rotation on his menu at San Lorenzo. Amazingly, this restaurant isn’t some highfalutin’ downtown joint, but a simple and unassuming strip-mall suite — the kind of place you’d probably walk right by if someone didn’t point it out to you. So we are, because D’Alessandro and his crew at San Lorenzo are worth a stop. They’ve got the moves of a fine-dining crew and the menu of a Michelin hot spot, but they’re executing it in a space that could just as easily have been a hair salon or muffler shop.

As far as Italian food goes in Denver, it doesn’t get any better than Venice. As a matter of fact, as far as Italian food goes just about anywhere outside of Italy (and possibly parts of New York and Philadelphia), it doesn’t get any better than Venice, the restaurant that Alessandro Carollo opened in the massive space vacated by Adega. The menus here are like dreams of Italian menus for landlocked gourmands who’ve never had the good fortune to travel to Italy themselves, featuring beautiful, artful and, ultimately, simple Italian cooking. From fresh mozzarella dimpled by grains of salt to ravioli parmigiana stuffed with almost liquid mozzarella, puréed tomato and parmesan to the silkily decadent lobster ravioli and Roman gnocchi, every dish is superb and served with style.

Everyone knows the classic French breakfast is half a pack of Gauloises chased with two café au laits and the dregs of last night’s wine. The second-best French breakfast? That would have to be a brioche, a little butter, a little bacon…and the dregs of last night’s wine. While Radda is technically an Italian restaurant, it lets you dine in fine French fashion in the early hours. Radda features a brunch menu every day, with à la carte offerings fit for any young foodie: brioche, eggs, bacon (only it’s pancetta here). And while we’re sure someone behind the bar would be willing to pour a glass of last night’s wine, you might as well go for the house bellini, made with very Italian prosecco and white peach juice.

Three years ago, Frasca won Best New Restaurant honors — and since then, it’s continued to rack up kudos on both a local and a national level. This year, it takes our prize for Best Taste of Colorado because Frasca, more than any other restaurant in the area, has become both the standard of excellence for local operations and the embodiment of what makes the Colorado restaurant scene — and Colorado in general — great. This is a state where people come to start over, to start fresh, to start something. Frasca’s owners, Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson and Bobby Stuckey — both ex of the French Laundry, one of the best restaurants in the country, if not the world — did just that. They came to Colorado to do what they loved, and to do it on their terms. With Frasca, they not only created a restaurant that could easily rate among the best in any city, but confounded all expectations of what’s meant by a “Colorado restaurant” — raising the bar for everyone in the process.