Food & Drink

A classic cocktail deserves a classy, classic setting. The Brown Palace's Churchill Bar is like an exclusive club, complete with comfy leather chairs and obsequious service — but the only membership requirement here is that you cover the cost of your drink. And what a drink: The Churchill features an extensive roster of premium spirits, including an impressive array of Scotch, and creates each cocktail with painstaking care, using heavy silver shakers and expensive crystal. Get really decadent and puff on a cigar while you sip your drink: This is one of the few spots in town with a cigar-bar exemption, and it sells more than sixty stogies on site. In a town full of great saloons, the Churchill is a true classic.

Rise and Shine Biscuit Kitchen and Cafe, a pioneering little enterprise that shares the same Crestmoor quarters as Basil Doc's Pizza, buzzes with a heavy trade of moms toting toddlers in state-of-the-art strollers, java guzzlers and bread heads who show up bright and early for the flaky, fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits — pudgy, warm in the center and delicious on their own or slathered with butter, jam or honey. Naked, they're just $1.25; add jam or honey for another two bits. Owner and master biscuit-maker Seth Rubin always offers a biscuit of the day — bacon cheddar, Nutella, smoked Gouda and rosemary olive oil have all been recent offerings — and on Fridays, he bakes batches of beer biscuits with brews from Great Divide Brewing Company.

The champagne just keeps flowing at the Dom Perignon Sunday Brunch, offered from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. every week in Ellyngton's, the elegant corner dining room at the Brown Palace. And the brunch buffet spread is just as sumptuous as the surroundings: There are stations that make waffles and omelets to order; stations that carve up huge haunches of meat and dish up fresh fish; salad and sushi stations; pastry stations overflowing with incredible confections. The buffet alone will run you $46.95, but since this is food fit for a king, you might as well treat yourself royally and fork over the $186.95 that will let you brunch with Dom.

Rosa Linda's Mexican Cafe marked its 25th anniversary this year — 25 years of serving up some of the city's best Mexican food in a northwest Denver neighborhood that was beyond sketchy when Rosa Linda's first opened and is now the hottest restaurant neighborhood in the city. To celebrate this big birthday, the Aguirre family decided to give the entire city a present: weekly specials that roll prices back to 1985. In honor of the restaurant's very first Best of Denver win, through April 7 the special is the Best of Denver Combo: one shredded beef or chicken burrito, one chile relleno, both smothered in green with a side of rice and beans, for just $5.95. But even ordering off Rosa Linda's regular menu, you can get a big dinner for under ten bucks — and the incredible hospitality from this friendly family is all free.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it: If you like your coffee strong and the atmosphere in which you drink it just as pungent, head for Gypsy House Cafe. The specialty here is Turkish coffee, which is a leap for the Starbucks connoisseur, but it's well worth the plunge. The food is good, the wi-fi is free — and they'll hook you up with just the right tobacco for your hookah.

Happy has made a number of adjustments since it opened in early 2009 as Happy Noodle House, most of them very smart (and earning this Big Red F venture a nod from Forbes in its "America's Best New Restaurants" lists). But none of the developments have been as happy as the evolution of the Bitter Bar, Happy's "late-night alter ego," where mixologist and partner James Lee (named one of the country's top ten mixologists by Playboy Magazine) has turned the handcrafted cocktail into a contemporary art form. At the Bitter Bar, what's old is brand-spanking-new again, as the staff gives an original twist to traditional cocktails, using local, organic, fresh ingredients — and very fresh thinking. Lee shares that thinking at regular cocktail classes that have become one of the hottest tickets in town.

Twenty bucks might seem like a steep admission fee, but you won't leave one of Great Divide Brewing Co. Tap Room's events sorry — or sober. The brewery's garage-like warehouse is big enough for snaking beer lines, and its fenced-in outdoor space is a great place to throw a summer bash. Plus, Great Divide never forgets the food — which is delicious, and included in the price. Check Great Divide's website for information on upcoming $20 events, or stay informed by signing up for its "Brewsletter." You won't be sober. Or sorry.

Fearlessly spiced with garlic, ginger, chile, onion, cumin and curry leaves, the food of south India is some of the best in the world. And Masalaa, a divey storefront surrounded by international markets in a dilapidated strip mall in Aurora, is the sole Indian restaurant in the metro area that really delivers the goods via uttapams, spongy idlis, savory vada and superb dosas — shatteringly thin crepes, tinged golden, that conceal hidden gifts of seduction. Masalaa hustles nearly a dozen different dosas on its menu, but the masala dosa, rolled around nothing more than a heap of curried mashed spuds powerfully scented with intoxicating spices and served with a trio of chutneys and sambar, should be on everyone's must-eat-now list.

Like a Midwesterner clutching his cheese mac, the true Francophile embraces the delectable stews and soups of provincial (or is that Provençal?) tradition, the unsnooty side of French cuisine. Felix is a welcome westside refuge for those who like their comfort food exquisitely prepared, reasonably priced and served in a leisurely fashion. From la soupe a l'oignon to the bouillabaise, there's a lot of hearty lip-smacking available here, but the coq au vin is a particular knockout: chicken impeccably roasted, fragrant with red wine sauce, bedded with pearl onions, mushrooms, baby carrots and wedges of red potato. Unpretentious, oui, and so damn good.

Sure, the chili's good — but the presentation is unbeatable. The chili comes in a silver measuring cup, with the toppings — shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream and green onions — arrayed in the half-cup, third-cup and quarter-cup that complete the set. Wash it down with a shot of Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey, which is distilled right next door to the new Rackhouse Pub, an addition to the local saloon scene well worth toasting.

Although El Paraiso offers more than 400 dishes, this restaurant's regulars never seem to crack open a menu. They'll spend five minutes agonizing over whether they should spring for a margarita, agua fresca or cerveza, but they never have any trouble deciding what to order for their meal. That's because they know to go with the sizzling molcajetes, lava-hot mortars overflowing with fresh corn tortillas, garlic, meats, onions and chiles. All the versions are fantastic, but the champion is the molcajete a la Mexicana, a heap of housemade chorizo, smoky carne asada, grilled cactus petals, tender chicken, grilled spring onions and ropes of Oaxacan cheese melting into the stewy mix of chiles and tomatoes.

Den Deli pimps bobas and hijikki, a lovely miso soup and a Japanese French dip, sushi and spicy shrimp and udon, soba and, above all, ramen. It arrives in a smoldering bowl of chicken broth, lightly seasoned, and you slurp the noodles with deliberate abandon, making as much noise as possible as they slip through your lips. The noodles drift with bean sprouts, slivers of green onions, wilted bok choy and the Deli's version of tamago, usually a sweet omelet with soy that, in this case, is a soft-boiled egg with a bright yolk that weeps streams of wet gold into the lush broth. And there, lurking below the mound of vegetables and garnishes, are slices of pork belly, our favorite food in the culinary solar system.

What you should eat at Vesta Dipping Grill: the cheese plate, simply one of the best in the city. Also anything the kitchen does with duck, or beef, or pig, or venison or lamb — especially lamb. Definitely Matty's Wacky Apple, dipped in caramel and swathed in crunch. And the samosas, which fly under the radar but are vastly better than any samosa that's ever passed your lips at a curry house. An Indian food habit as common as mustard on a hot dog, samosas are standard at just about every Indian joint, and they all taste (and look) more or less the same. But at Vesta, the pocket-sized street snacks are softer, shapelier and sexier than their counterparts, with soft, subtle hints of curry scenting the smash of mashed potatoes and peas tucked within their shell. They come in a basket with a pair of dipping sauces just short of ambrosial.

Troy Guard's TAG, which he launched last May in Larimer Square, swaggers one of Denver's brashest border-crossing kitchens — a kitchen that slants toward the other F-word. So what? Guard is a master of multiculturalism, and his menu, which is full of playfully modern dishes that usually erupt into something wondrous, is smart, hip and approachable. He sets off his flash-seared hiramama with pricks of jalapeños and Pop Rocks in a basin of white soy and yuzu; creates his own interpretation of French onion soup, which results in irresistible "soup" dumplings that explode with juice; and plates his duo of meaty lamb chops, studded and glazed with all things Asian, in a pool of no fewer than four sauces. In the hands of a less confident chef, all this might spell disaster — but in Guard's grasp, fusion turns out food that's nothing short of miraculous.

Starting at 6 a.m., squadrons of disciples elbow their way through the doors of Pico de Gallo, a comradely strip-mall Mexican joint that pushes a freaking awesome breakfast burrito, among other South-of-the-border beauties. Stuffed like a sumo wrestler before his next throwdown, and more or less the length of a telephone pole and weight of the Titanic, the griddled tortilla is tightly bundled with soft scrambled eggs, crumbles of housemade chorizo that drip with just the right amount of hot grease, and face-slapping roasted jalapeños. And because that's not enough bulk, the kitchen further amps it up with cheese, soft cubed potatoes and a liberal ladleful of spicy green chile, which is also poured on top. It's everything you require from a breakfast burrito. And more.

There's nothing funny about the Gospel Brunch offered at Comedy Works South. This is a serious brunch, and, appropriately enough for this second outpost of the famed comedy club, the spread is all Southern food, a groan-inducing board of carb-heavy and flavor-rich fare that's stunning on its own, but absolutely heavenly when set off by a serving of R&B gospel music. This could be our regular place to worship — but sadly, the Gospel Brunch isn't offered every week. Check with the club for scheduling.

There are so many reasons to heart Steuben's: the classic cocktail list that never feels old, even though most of the drinks were in vogue around the same time as shag carpet; the righteous soundtrack that begs for a dance floor (or at least a small corner dedicated to disco); tatted servers whose ink inspires you to get your own; nifty T-shirts that pimp pork; and a groovy menu that doesn't see darkness until the clock strikes eleven during the week and midnight on the weekends. And we're not talking about a bar menu or an abbreviated menu, but a full board of favorite American foodstuffs to satisfy the already well-lubricated, as well as those just getting started. Among the standouts: spaghetti and meatballs, deviled eggs, fried chicken, and an incredible green chile cheeseburger.

The owners of the Cup Espresso Cafe are dead serious about their coffee; they get it from Boulder's Conscious Coffees, a roasting company that specializes in organic, fair-trade coffee and works directly with the small farming cooperatives that grow their product. On the Cup website, you'll find detailed descriptions not just of how to brew a perfect cup, but also of the regions where the coffee comes from and the conditions under which growers work. All of which means you can feel thoroughly virtuous while enjoying the warm, bright atmosphere, pulling apart a flaky croissant and sipping your delicious, artfully drawn brew.

Yes, it's the brewpub that helped define the LoDo neighborhood, but the Wynkoop Brewing Company is also the brewpub that continues to sustain that neighborhood. Well into its third decade and long past the days when co-founder John Hickenlooper would regularly hold forth at the bar, the Wynkoop found new relevance over the past year, expanding its beer list and adding events like the Parade of Darks and Kegs & Curds to such perennial favorites as the Denver Gorilla Run and the Beerdrinker of the Year contest. The brewpub also began canning its signature Railyard Ale last summer, but balanced out that newfangled development with a promise to start delivering beer to downtown customers the old-fashioned way, via horse and carriage. The Wynkoop just keeps pouring it on — and out.

If you're looking for that so-drunk-you-have-to-hold-onto-the-curb-to-keep-from-falling-off-the-earth experience, Jackson's has the right mix for you. From 9 p.m. to midnight on Thursday and Friday nights, this bar across from Coors Field offers all-you-can-drink beers (Coors, Coors Light, Killian's, Molson) and house wells — all for $10. There's just one catch: Your designated driver will still have to pay the cover. So in that case, be prepared to drink for two — because there's no expensive tab stopping you.

We won't avoid the obvious: India's Pearl isn't strictly vegetarian, what with venison, peasant, beef, quail and duck all making appearances on the voluminous menu, but considering that upwards of forty dishes are meat- and fish-free — more than what you'll find at most full-on herbivore huts — it's as vegetarian-sympathetic as any restaurant you'll find in a city that flocks to flesh like Tiger Woods tends toward other women's tits. The vegetarian choices are smart, delicious and varied, too, so that while you'll encounter the usual suspects — pakora, saag paneer and vegetable korma — you can also order curried mushrooms with cashews, spiced okra and tandoori-baked eggplant, all of which are worth their weight in earth.

From his 1,400-square-foot eponymous pizzeria just west of Belmar, Virgilio Urbano churns out wonderfully satisfying, thin-crusted chewy pies. You can watch him at work in the exposed kitchen, whose brick-lined oven doubles as a stage for more magic, including addictive spinach pinwheels, olive-oil-brushed garlic knots, calzones, strombolis and oven-hot subs. The straight-up, old-fashioned pizzas slippery with a judiciously herby and sweet tomato sauce and topped with housemade mozzarella are simple pleasures that don't rely on flashy gimmicks or clever Californication approaches to hold your attention. You won't stumble upon chicory or lusty pork belly, fingerling potatoes or porcini dust on the list of pizza toppings. Instead, you'll find those classic, impeccably sourced ingredients that pizza purists hold sacred.

The clean-kitchen-obsessed women with permanent frowns on their faces who bust their asses at El Taco de México? They understand a lot more English than you might think, and if you're stupid enough to malign their green chile — which we've heard a hell of a lot of bullying gringos do — then you deserve whatever bad karma creeps into your tortilla. El Taco's green chile is in a class by itself, an incredible food high that's full of invigorating spices, deposits of pork and a slew of hot chiles for maximum twang. It embodies everything that you expect from a killer green chile, and a whole lot more.

The pupusas at Tambien started out as a simple staff snack, a way for prep cook Sonia Hernandez, who hails from El Salvador, to swell the bellies of the hungry kitchen line with the national street grub of her homeland. But because pupusas — those flattened orbs of masa, water and salt rolled into a dough, griddled on the flat top and oozing with molten Jack cheese — make your head go dizzy with yearning, Sean Yontz, Tambien's executive chef, made the very wise decision to roll them out for public consumption. Stuffed with everything from refried beans and fresh jalapeños to calabacitas (a mix of zucchini, corn, garlic and onions), they're served with a fiery cabbage slaw and a mild, delicious puréed salsa of tomatoes, green peppers, onions and jalapeños. These pupasas are deserving of superstar status.

We've eaten at our share of pho houses, skulking along Federal Boulevard for our fix every chance we get. And still, we haven't found a better bowl of pho than the one served at Pho 95. The enormous bowls of noodles, floating in brilliantly flavored broths stockpiled with raw and cooked meats, arrive with heaps of Asian greens, rings of jalapeño and lime wedges. The pho will bowl you over, as will the genuine congeniality of owner Aaron Le, who never forgets to profess his thanks for your patronage.

Phoenician Kabob is where you come for kabobs, tabbouleh and kibbeh, garlic dip and grape leaves, beef shawarma and lamb shanks, where you enjoy your Mideast feast in a dining room spackled the colors of sumac, cumin and turmeric. It's also where you station yourself on a Saturday night, when the restaurant becomes a sultry den in which to get your shimmy on while checking out the sexy belly dancer. At those times, when the dancer wiggles her hips and jiggles her assets, it's not exactly easy to concentrate on the menu — unless you get into the spirit of excess and order the Sultan Combo. This is a mounded platter of the best of everything the Middle East has to offer — flat-out fantastic foodstuffs (lemony hummus dusted with sumac, earthy baba ghanouj tasting of deep smoke, sour grape leaves, chewy falafel orbs brightened with the vivid green of herbs and gyro) that might very well kill you, but at least you'll keel over knowing that you ate royally well.

You've worshiped at the shrine to Farrah Fawcett that merits its own shelf above the bar; hoofed your way through the pig platter; contemplated holding chef Max Mackissock hostage because he refuses to part with his chicken-liver mousse recipe; and shimmied while unapologetically inhaling the shake-n-bake sweetbreads. But it's Mackissock's beef cheeks that are the silent sleeper on Squeaky Bean's bang-up board of seasonally inspired dishes: The meat, long-braised, cloaked in a deep and rich veal stock and crowned with fennel and chiffonade of spinach, collapses at the swipe of a fork; right beside is a roasted potato, hollowed out and puddled with a creamy fonduta bolstered by bacon and chives, which elevates the proletarian tuber to rock-spud status. All this goodness comes from a stubbornly diminutive kitchen that's roughly the size of a pig's snout. Just imagine what Mackissock could do with more room! But then, we could never imagine the restaurant leaving this wonderful corner of Highland, where it fits so seamlessly into the fabric of the neighborhood that it's almost a shock to remember that the Bean first squeaked just last May.

The breakfast burrito could be Colorado's official food. Just about every breakfast joint in Denver offers one, even if the only authentically Mexican thing about the place is the dishwasher. Vendors peddle breakfast burritos door-to-door at office buildings in the morning and sell them in LoDo at let-out. And you can find a good breakfast burrito on just about every block in the city — especially the 2500 block of Federal Boulevard. In this corner, at 2505 Federal, an outpost of Santiago's, the homegrown chain that's found many fans for its hot green chile and tidy, foil-wrapped breakfast burritos that go for $2 with cheese, $1.75 without (720-855-8109). Across the street, at 2524 Federal, Jack-n-Grill, Jack Martinez's shrine to New Mexican food, offers a very respectable Colorado breakfast burrito to-go for $2 (303-964-9544). And around the corner, at 2900 East 26th Avenue, Araujo (303-455-3866) wins the price game, burrito-filled hands down: Its breakfast burrito is just 99 cents. (Come back during the day for four tacos for $5.)

Here's a deal that's right up our alley. Lucky Strike Lanes in the Denver Pavilions is known as a hip nighttime hangout, but it also rewards those who get up early with Brunch and Bowl. From 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. every Sunday, Lucky Strike puts out an impressive brunch buffet spread for $12.95 (wash down your meal with $2 mimosas) — and if you fork over another five bucks, you can work off that meal with two hours of bowling. Strike!

Yes, the '50s shtick can seem a little glaring at 4 a.m., when all you need is a big burger or a plate of steak and eggs to start — or end — your day. But even though Great Scotts hasn't been around since the '50s, it's been around long enough to serve a generation of fans authentically good roadside fare. While the second location, in Broomfield, isn't open 24/7, you can count on the original just off the highway to have the welcome sign out day or night.

Perhaps you've heard about the years-long political struggle to get the City of Boulder to accept the Dushanbe Teahouse after it had already been sent there in boxes — eight years during which the mayor of Dushanbe died without seeing his dream of an exchange fulfilled. Perhaps you know that over the years, the food at Dushanbe has been variable — sometimes terrific, sometimes so-so. But you absolutely can't argue with the amazing list of teas it serves, teas with names like White Jasmine Moon and Paradise Green, good-for-you teas like Tender Tummy and Feel Better Brew, concoctions that your waitperson will serve with such warmhearted concern that you know she deeply and personally cares about your well-being. Sit on the patio, listen to the snowmelt-swollen creek rush by, sip and meditate on international understanding.

The Oskar Blues Brewery makes some of the best beers in the state, selling six of them in cans and another handful on tap. But this Longmont-based brewer doesn't keep all the glory for itself. At Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids & Solids, the company's second restaurant in Boulder County, you'll find thirty or so more beers on tap, many of them big, rare, challenging or highly sought-after concoctions from other Colorado outfits, and a few from brewers across the country. Such offerings as Great Divide's Yeti Imperial Stout, Russian River's Pliny the Elder and Port Brewing's Wipeout IPA all add up to a beer geek's dream.

If happy hour has taught us well-lubricated lushes anything, it's that drinking on an empty stomach is a recipe for stupidity, especially if you drink like we do. So if you're smart, you'll spend your next happy hour (and those after it) at Panzano, where, from 2:30 to 6 p.m. daily in the convivial lounge, attentive tenders pour $3 draft beers, including Guinness and Moretti; $4 wines by the glass; and profoundly trippy but delicious cocktails. But as irresistible as we find the liquor, it's chef Elise Wiggins's $3 and $4 happy-hour, happy-food deals that really knock us out. Her culinary prowess shows up all over the dishes: in the Hazel Dell mushroom-stuffed crepes with fonduta sauce, in the duck-liver mousse with Parmesan doughnuts, in the speck-and-pear pizza capped with Gorgonzola and drizzled with rosemary honey and a light baptizing of truffle oil. May all your hours be as happy as those you spend here.

What do otherwise dedicated carnivores eat when they think no one's watching? Seaweed salad at Izakaya Den, a tide of flashy green algae, weeds and leaves, pink grapefruit wedges, pencil-thin rods of asparagus and sliced apples tossed in a stark white, square bowl, sprinkled with sesame seeds and dressed with a citrus-y spray. The salad is included on the vast menu among many other temptations — sushi, sashimi, udon and unagi bowls, tempura, Kobe beef sliders and miso black cod — and while the kitchen at Izakaya Den does all of those things very, very well, the bright, acidic flavors of this salad make it a standout.

Pizzaiolo Kelly Whitaker learned how to make pizza in Italy, then brought that knowledge to Boulder, where he recently opened Pizzeria Basta. Boulder already has some of the best restaurants in the state, Frasca and L'Atelier among them; can an artisan pizza joint share in their stardom? There's no question that Whitaker has every intention of trying. He makes his dough using a fifty-year-old starter kit from Naples; he sources as many ingredients as he can from local suppliers, farmers and vendors; he pickles his own vegetables, crafts his own mozzarella and ricotta, cures his own pancetta and makes his own sausage, all of which are noble endeavors. But Whitaker really displays his skills when he puts everything together: The slightly misshapen crusts, properly salted and scorched in all the right spots, are surfaced with a remarkably fresh tomato sauce and mouthfuls of inspired meats and vegetables.

Who would have thought, in a town flush with cantinas, taquerías, carnicerías and Mexican markets, that Denver's best red chile would come from the kitchen of a full-blooded steakhouse? While the Cherry Creek Elway's is best known for its slabs of steer, chef Tyler Wiard's New Mexican-style red chile, which he drapes over his steak enchiladas, is worthy of worship. We can't get enough of this smooth, slightly bitter purée, which is sharply punctuated with the savory, spicy and earthy nuances of ground chiles.

When Chili Verde opened last summer with a skeleton staff, sporadic hours and no liquor license, owners and brothers Eder and Hanzel Yañez-Mota seduced the city with their crazy-good Pueblan food, a showcase of complexly spiced moles, remarkably good ceviche and pudgy rellenos uniquely packaged with peaches, plantains and nuts. And then they pulled out all the stops with a delicious plate of delicate crepes, rolled with shredded chicken and draped with a faintly spicy cream sauce sweetened with corn and laced with ropes of onions and charred poblanos scented with smoke.

"You back! Long time to see!" shouts the woman. It's been a while since we last picked the pushcarts clean at Star Kitchen, and the tiny owner with the one-inch waist won't let us forget it. "It's been long time," she repeats, shoving metal-rimmed steamers full of siu mai dumplings under our noses. "You love these!" she enthuses. She's right, of course. We do love the siu mai dumplings. We love the thin-skinned scallop dumplings, too, as well as the shrimp dumplings and lobster dumplings. It's easy to spend the day in this boxy dining room, swelling our gullets with spongy turnip cakes, soy-soaked jiggly rice crepes stuffed with minced pork, steamed barbecue buns plump with sweet roasted pork, head-on shrimp crusted with salt and pepper. How much do we love the dim sum at Star Kitchen? So much that if today were our birthday, this is where we'd celebrate.

Denver is home to an estimated 10,000 people of Ethiopian descent — and nearly as many Ethiopian restaurants, or so it seems when you're driving east on Colfax through Aurora. Choosing one that reflects the diversity and nuances of Ethiopian cuisine can be a challenge for those unfamiliar with the smells and spices of East Africa. But the native, the initiated and the adventurous can all be found at Africana Cafe, where the city's Abasha community meets to eat. Africana offers the usual array of traditional Ethiopian food: spongy injera bread, platters of vegetables and meats accented with the earthy berbere chili spice, as well as really traditional dishes such as kitfo — raw or rare ground beef served with lots of fire. But Africana stands out for its perfect rendering of a few simple but beloved staples, including shiro wot, a stew of chickpeas puréed with garlic. This is comfort food for those yearning for Addis Ababa — and anyone who just loves simple, tasty and good.

Ask a dozen Denver food fans to name the best 'hood for grubbing, grazing and guzzling, and you'll get a dozen answers — plus a few extras from people who can't stop at just one — which just confirms what we already know: There are pockets of fiendishly great eating all over the city. But right now the lower edge of the Highland neighborhood — a neighborhood we will not stoop to calling LoHi — is a red-hot incubator of notable restaurants. You'll find a dazzling charcuterie plate and cassoulet at Z Cuisine and Z Cuisine À Côté, complemented by an esoteric wine list; flamboyant cocktails at Root Down; rustically citified dishes, always with a local bent, at Duo; some of the best cooking in the city at Squeaky Bean, where Max Mackissock does breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner from an impossibly tiny kitchen; schooners of craft beers and plates with good steaks and even better fries at LoHi SteakBar; and sensational views of the city (not to mention perfect margaritas and Bloody Marys) at Lola. Dining in Denver never looked so good.

Benny Armas got his start more than three decades ago, cooking in other people's kitchens. But from the moment he opened Benny's, his own place in central Denver, it's been a Denver institution, growing bigger (gaining a new patio last year) and better, catering to generations of families, friends — and drunks. Because Benny's regulars know that as welcoming as this spot can be for lunch and dinner, there's simply no better restorative than a breakfast burrito or a big plate of Benny's huevos rancheros, smothered in that distinctive, slightly sweet green chile. This will definitely cure what ails you — which very well could be that pitcher of Benny's margs you drank the night before.

You can slum it with a slice and a drink for $5 at just about every pizza joint in town, but when you want to slum it in style, either location of the Walnut Room feels your vibe. Throw down a fiver at the original, up on Walnut, or the new store, at the heart of Broadway, and a fresh-faced server, usually of the hipster sort, will trot out an eight-inch, thin-crusted pizza topped with whatever single ingredient tickles your fancy, a cup of soup or a house salad scattered with mozzarella, and a soft drink. If you're not a proponent of pizza, not a problem: You can order a half a sandwich instead, including the "Fat Bastard," heaped with provolone, five meats and a few scant vegetables to soften the guilt (or impending coronary). The $5 lunch deal runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday.

By old-fashioned, we're not talking turn of the last century. We're talking the '70s, which were short on decor but long on flavor. Liks Ice Cream hasn't changed much in decades, and this Capitol Hill mainstay continues to attract both children and meandering urban couples, in warm weather and in cold, who appreciate the shop's dedication to craft that produces damn good ice cream (yogurt and sherbet, too). Each batch is made in lots of twelve gallons or less, for the sake of the ingredients, and stored at a specific temperature, for the sake of texture. Perhaps the coolest part of the Liks experience: If you call ahead, Liks will personally craft a favorite flavor from your childhood — or your imagination. Chill.

At their worst, wine lists are pompous, stratospherically overpriced, ridiculously long, awkwardly categorized and full of overexposed, yawn-inducing labels. But at Caveau Wine Bar, the 75-bottle list (55 are available by the glass) is an easy-to-navigate document of new discoveries, small producers and familiar but not overrated labels. The polished yet easygoing staff is well-versed in wine education and just as enthusiastic about pushing a $30 bottle of vino as a three-digit one, which is a welcome change to the rigorous sport of upselling. Those prowling for deals know to show up at 4 p.m. for the daily happy hour, when pours priced at $12 and over are knocked down to five bucks and glasses over $13 are sold for half off.

Microbrews aren't cheap, whether on tap or on the shelves. But Vine Street Pub, part of the Boulder-based Mountain Sun string of brewpubs, makes things a little easier on the wallet by charging only $4.20 (yeah, it had the marijuana thing going long before your local dispensary) for a pint as opposed to the usual $4.50 or $5 (an eight-ounce goes for $2.60), a deal that's made even sweeter by the high quality of the beers. And during happy hour (Monday to Friday, 4 to 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. to close; Sunday, 4 to 6 p.m.), you can get a pint for just half that, making Vine Street Pub a beery investment you can't afford to miss.

When Tony's decided to open a new market, complete with a small restaurant, close to downtown Denver last year, it made a critical move: It applied for a liquor license that covered not just the bistro, but the entire building. As a result, Tony's now offers one of the greatest grocery-shopping amenities imaginable: You can buy a glass of wine or a beer and sip it as you do your shopping, sampling whatever free snacks the market has put out. And Tony's also has a more formal happy hour in the bistro, from 3 to 6 p.m., with drink and food specials — including a terrific meatball slider for just $2 that's a meal in itself. Special bonus: On most Friday evenings, Tony's also offers live music.

Ah, Park Burger, how the Platt Park neighborhood loves thee. How else to explain the restless bodies spilling onto the sidewalk, the thirty-minute waits for a table, the sparring over who gets the last slurp of milkshake, the brawls over the fries? It took you a while to get those tubers right, but once you did, we could hear the collective sighs of rapture from here to Idaho. Hand-cut, thin-stemmed, licked with salt, hued the color of polished gold and piled higher than last year's pink slips, these spuds are enough to fry you to the moon.

Those people you see hanging out by the door, their feet shifting impatiently, their jaws moving up and down, mimicking the eating motion? Those people have been to Encore before, have already tried the fig 'n' pig flatbread pizza, and can't wait to get at it again. A properly charred oval smeared with a fig spread that's dotted with crumbles of Gorgonzola, sheeted with tarps of salty prosciutto and forested with bright arugula leaves, this is a non-traditional pizza that promptly transports you to hog heaven.

The winner and still the chomp: Sibling restaurants Racines and Dixons are known as go-to spots where you can start your day with a power breakfast and end it with a powerful cocktail. But our favorite item on the vast (and differing) menus at both is the nachos: a mountain of food that's more than a meal, particularly if you add chicken or steak. They're carefully constructed of beans (refried or black), lots of cheese, quality chips and good toppings (including plenty of pickled jalapeños), layered so that the gooey nacho goodness runs all the way through the platter, and heated just the right amount until everything's warmed through and the chips on the edge have a delectable crispness. Amazingly, the last bite is always as good as the first. And making the best even better: During its seven-day-a-week happy hour, which runs from 3 to 6 p.m., Dixons offers a smaller version of the nachos for just $3.

Commerce City is hardly a restaurant utopia, and Gala Gardens isn't exactly the first joint that floats into your head when you're lusting after a brick of beef. But it should be, because the steaks — of which there are several, including a hefty 25-ounce porterhouse, a 22-ounce T-bone, a couple of New York strips and a club steak — are juicy, full of flavor and dirt cheap. Especially since they're served with a throwback relish tray, a cup of made-from-scratch soup, salad, and either rice pilaf, potatoes — mashed, baked or fried — or steamed vegetables. The porterhouse is the most expensive steak on the board, ringing in at just under $24, but the hospitality, which is ample, is free. And the beers — you don't drink wine at a place like this — are practically free.

Glide a near-translucent slip of beef through a deep vessel of gurgling broth, and the sound you'll hear is shabu shabu, a swooshing hiss that's heard often at J'Shabu, a superb Japanese restaurant. Shabu shabu is a do-it-yourself proposition, a little like fondue. A server equips you with a burner, a pot of broth — water with kale, miso, sweet soy or fish stock — plus meats, seafood, noodles and a beautiful drift of vegetables. Drop the vegetables in first to flavor the broth, then quickly sweep the beef through the liquid, holding tight with your chopsticks all the while. Shabu shabu: It's the secret Japanese word for happiness.

The service is peculiar, and the droning music even weirder at Mecca Grill, a mini-mall storefront with a saffron-stained dining room that smells unmistakably of mothballs. But the food — herby falafel, hummus, gyros, lemony fattoush, shawarma, kabobs and grape leaves — is undeniably good. The best dish: the bold-flavored lamb shank, an extravagantly huge hunk of meat that arrives propped against a mound of fluffy rice scented with Mideast spices and submerged in a pungent soak of lamb-y juices, garlic, spices and tomatoes sweetened with carrots. This is an animalistic abundance that you'll wake up dreaming about — and craving — at 2 a.m.

In the great gastropub movement that's marching through Denver, Argyll is doing its part to ensure that its contributions to the crusade don't go unnoticed. There's an awful lot to appreciate about this joint: the cask-conditioned ales, wickedly strong and poured only on the weekends; the bartenders and servers, who are quick with a smile and a good story; and the music, which always seems to pulsate with danceable one-hit wonders from the '80s. The wine list has come full circle, too, since owner Robert Thompson unlocked the doors last spring, and the patio? It's killer. But the real reason to grab a stool at Argyle's tartan-topped bar has everything to do with chef Sergio Romero's menu, which trumpets all sorts of triumphs, including the best corned beef hash in the galaxy; plump mussels steamed in an Indian-laced curry fragrant with lemongrass and cilantro; creamy, dreamy macaroni and cheese; well-crafted charcuterie plates; house-cured pork belly; house-brined pickles and the most amazing potato chips in the free world. So far, so awesome.

You know the frozen waffles that come 24 to a box, 72 if you shop the chaotic aisles of Costco? The waffles that you'll eat at Waffle Brothers are not those waffles. No, these waffles – yeasty, caramelized, misshapen, chewy, simultaneously savory and sweet, toasty and tinged the color of a tiger's eye — are made-to-order morning glories conceived by two friends (not brothers) who've fine-tuned the essential Belgian waffle. The waffle irons are imported from Belgium, as is the pearl sugar that sweetens them. You can get yours crowned with everything from lemon curd and fresh kiwi to marshmallow fluff and cranberry stuff, but, like ripped abs, they're best minimally dressed — in this case, with nothing more than a sprinkle of cinnamon and powdered sugar. And now you can even sit down to enjoy them, since Waffle Brothers, which used to simply have a mall cart, now has a permanent home.

You'll wait for twenty minutes, maybe thirty, sometimes even forty before it's finally your turn to step up and order from She Who Won't Be Rushed, the conversational but don't-push-me Thai woman who single-handedly commands the sensational Thai Food Cart on the 16th Street Mall. And once you've made it to the front of the queue, decisions await: Do you want the heat level with your pad Thai "baby spice," "nice spicy," "medium high" or "fire?" And that last option you should take very, very seriously, because She Who Won't Be Rushed is also She Who Isn't Afraid to Kill You With Fire. Get the pad Thai — large or extra large — as well as a bag of seriously awesome crab wontons, drunken noodles and banana wraps, and then, when you're ready to go back for more, give one of the mall rats a few bucks to stand in line so that you don't have to.

Who'd have thought that the hottest spot on SoBo would serve ice cream? When Samantha Kopicko and Chia Basinger opened their storefront spot last year, they just wanted to serve up the very best homemade ice cream they could, using milk and cream from Diamond D Natural Dairy and spices from Savory Spice Shop to create dozens of truly cool new flavors — including the incredible Stranahan's Whiskey Brickle, featuring Colorado's own whiskey. But in the process, they've become a must-stop for all the hipsters heading out for a night on the town.

According to the infinite monkey theorem, a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. But could a monkey squeezing grapes for even an infinite amount of time ever come up with wines as wonderful as those created by Ben Parsons at his Infinite Monkey Theorem? That's the urban winery he opened last year in a very unlikely area just off Santa Fe Drive. Parsons has quickly become part of the community, though, working with artists on special pairings and offering tours of his place, where you can buy the nine wines — four whites and five reds (so far). It may not be the city's biggest selection of vino, but it's very, very choice. And fortunately, given the limited public hours at the winery, it's now available at 125 local bars and restaurants.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you're going to haul out the ego and deem your restaurant — or, in this case, deli — a "masterpiece," you'd better live up to the superlative. There's a reason that this Highland sandwich shop commands lines out the door, making it nearly impossible to snatch up one of the few tables or counter stools: The sandwiches really are that good. Exhibit A, the Italian, featuring thin, nearly translucent Parma prosciutto; smoky salami; the rich fattiness of mortadella, pepperoni and capicolla; sheets of provolone and peppery arugula, lettuce and slivered red onions. It all comes stacked on crusty ciabatta slicked with vinegar and oil and smeared with a black-pepper-spiked aioli — and is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Thank Sean Kelly, exec chef of LoHi SteakBar, for the best chocolate pudding in town. There are other sugar finales on his menu — slices of pie from Living the Sweet Life Bakery, sorbet and ice cream from neighboring Little Man and a fantastic banana split — but it's the housemade double chocolate pudding, a luxuriously thick, excessively rich, astonishingly good confection of semi-sweet Callebaut chocolate, milk, sugar and cocoa crested with whipped cream and chocolate shavings, that we wish we could freebase. If you plunge into Kelly's pudding and still insist that you don't have a fever for chocolate, you really are sick.

Sociable, inviting and foreplay-heavy with the murmurs and hums of flirtatious couples, the Village Cork earns a coveted spot in our amply lubed livers for its whimsy, its far-reaching list of wines by the bottle and glass, and its chalkboard menu of sumptuous sharable plates, including beef short ribs, roasted chicken and a trifecta of thrilling vegetarian dishes from new chef Samir Mohammad. Notable deals — 25 percent off "by the bottle" selections every Tuesday and Wednesday, and $5 pours by the glass on open bottles after 9 p.m. during the week and 10 p.m. on weekends — give us reason after reason to return again and again.

The Bull & Bush is one of a handful of brewpubs in town that sell growlers — 64-ounce glass containers — that you can fill up and take with you. At this 39-year-old brewpub, you spend $12 for your first growler and then bring it back for $8 refills (of anything on tap aside from special releases). But on Tuesdays, Bull & Bush knocks a buck off both those prices. And if you get a growler punch card, your tenth refill is on the house.

Mark DeNittis, Adam DeSacco and Gennaro DeSantis are Denver's salumi sultans, and they've gifted us with Il Mondo Vecchio, the state's first (and only) USDA-inspected salumeria. During the tasting tours, which must be arranged in advance, DeNittis will seduce you with the best pepperoni you've ever tasted; make you kneel in gratitude just from the scent of the longanzia spiced with garlic, paprika and hints of citrus; and induce sighs of rapture as you sample the duck breast prosciutto, veal pancetta, guancie baciate, vino e pepe and whatever else the man is excited about — which is usually everything. There's no retail space and no cafe (though there's talk of doing both in the future), but you can order the meats directly from the website.

Last year, when owner/chef Nelson Perkins revealed plans to open Colt & Gray, he swore up and down that, if nothing else, his kitchen would put forth Denver's best burger. In a city that lives and dies by its beef, those were fighting words. And when that city is suddenly enjoying a windfall of burger joints — with more in the pipeline — that kind of declaration holds as much water as a leaky thimble. But you know what? Perkins was the wrong guy to doubt, because his burger — a stocky, juice-drooling hand-formed patty of loosely packed, house-ground dry-aged chuck, paved, if you want, with a swatch of really good Gruyère and shoved between the lightly grilled cheeks of a brioche bun — is indeed the best burger in town.

Lechuga's is one of the great pasta-and-pizza joint holdouts that testify to northwest Denver's great Italian tradition. The generous calzones are nothing to sneeze at, but what sends patron's tastebuds spinning is the infamous Little Devil: spicy sausage, wrapped in spicy jalapeño, locked down in a chewy, fresh-baked roll. Dip it (or just smother it) in sweet marinara sauce and enjoy. Then have another. And another. Perfect for lunch, dinner, a sizable snack — or whenever you need that special reward for having been entirely too angelic — the Little Devil proves it's better to dine in hell than diet in heaven.

Why is Federal Boulevard Denver's best stretch of asphalt for pumping up your spare tire? Because of joints like El Taco Veloz, where a meager $1.75 gets you a steaming corn tortilla abundantly mounted with whatever animal flesh rocks your world, plus onions and cilantro and access to the bar of Mexican condiments, a startling reservoir of grilled or pickled jalapenos and incendiary salsas (including an absolutely amazing avocado and tomatillo version), trays of pickled onions, carrots and chiles, and tubs of everything from cucumbers and radishes to slivered red onions and fat wedges of lime. Our favorite style of taco is the al pastor, spit-carved and topped with pineapple, and so popular that this particular meat has its own spindle in a special corner of the rollicking taqueria.

Our ship came in the day Oceanaire landed in Denver. The restaurant itself has the feel of a vintage ocean liner, with a comfortable, clubby bar; the service is formal but friendly. But what really floats our boat at Oceanaire is the seafood: fresh fish brought in six days a week from around the globe, then handled with care by a kitchen that knows how to handle these creatures, even in landlocked Denver. And chef Matt Mine keeps his menu as fresh as the fish that's its mainstay, changing up plates, offering specials and making sure that the side dishes and meat-and-potatoes fare on offer are just as good as the seafood. Which is the best in Denver.

Jammed into the corner of the Far East Center, Viet's is the unsung emperor of Vietnamese restaurants, the handsome prince among the plebes of Federal Boulevard, the kind of discovery that every gastronaut dreams of making. And there's no discovery here more dazzling than the House Special, which includes an array of different dishes — soft-shell crab, grilled ropes of pork, pudgy shrimp, golden Vietnamese egg rolls, shrimp paste and shrimp cupcakes — heaped on a platter and served with rice noodles, a glistening mound of lettuces, cilantro, mint, basil and julienned turnips and carrots, and spring roll wrappers in which to clumsily roll your vegetables, slippery noodles and meats, then dunk into bowls of nuoc cham whipped with chile flakes. It's a stunning blizzard of textures and flavors that everyone should eat at least once in their lifetime. But why stop there? To make the best even better, Viet's pours sake and wine.

"Puro Peru," promises the website of Los Cabos II, and this downtown restaurant delivers. Peruvian food is some of the strangest, most delicious stuff in the world — a mishmash of centuries of cultural influences thrown together on one plate. Spanish conquistadors, Arabs and Moors, explorers bringing spices from India, Italian cartographers, historic Creoles, African slaves and Asian immigrants — they've all added to the rich history of Peruvian cookery. And at Los Cabos, you can taste all of that (or most of it, anyway) every time you walk through the door. Your best bet: the $15 international buffet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, which adds a world tour to the already generous weekday buffet lunch.

There are people who come to Melita's to bulk up on Greek feta; others stock up on sumac, a lemony powder that the Greeks use on, well, just about everything. Still others pop in for the aptly named "Hercules" burger, five or six inches of heft favored by those whose only afternoon requirement is a really long nap. But it's hard to imagine that they wouldn't be just as happy with the Greek pizza, a sphere of chewy pita bread brushed with Greek olive oil and piled with salty feta, grilled onions, tomatoes and peppers, kalamata olives, shavings of well-seasoned gyro meat and, if you ask nicely, a dusting of sumac. This isn't your corner pizza, or your grandmother's pizza, or like any other pizza you've stuffed into your pie hole, and that's the whole point.

There are now branches of Lucile's in Fort Collins, Longmont and Denver, but the only true Lucile's is the one situated in a charming Victorian house on a side street just off the Pearl Street Mall, a spot this restaurant has occupied for almost thirty years. Lucile's served good coffee long before everyone started talking shade-grown, organic, single origin or fair trade, along with big, sloppy, delicious breakfast plates of eggs, cheese, potatoes, spinach and/or salmon, and lunch offerings that include homemade andouille sausage, red beans and rice, and huge, gorgeous buttermilk biscuits, full of cracks and crevices for butter to slide into before they're topped with homemade rhubarb-strawberry jam. Enjoy them in a Mardi Gras atmosphere, complete with a poster of Haiti's Aristide on one wall, colorful frayed bits of cloth that serve as napkins and a photo on the menu of owner Fletcher Richards as an infant in his mother's arms. And save room for the sugar-dusted beignets.

There's nothing cheap about Sushi Sasa, the elegant — and expanding — sushi restaurant at the edge of downtown. Not the toned and tony clientele, the kind of customers who never bobble their chopsticks, stab their toro or dip their rice into the dish of soy sauce. And not the raw fish, not the Chilean sea bass steamed in a salty black bean sauce, not the seared tuna tataki on a jungle of greens, not the freshly grated wasabi, and certainly not the scene-stealing omakase, a $40 tasting menu of lovely compositions from chef/owner Wayne Conwell. If that sounds too rich for your thinning wallet, find someone who owes you a favor. Or money.

You would think that D Bar Desserts, the dessert bar that Food Network star Keegan Gerhard and his wife, Lisa Bailey, brought to Denver almost two years ago, offers enough of a sugar rush just with the incredible desserts and other goodies on offer; the crowds that pack this little joint certainly come away satisfied. But late on weekend nights, if you time things right, you might find a very special special: Brown Sugar Shenanigans, when Jay Brown comes out of the kitchen and offers a dirty (though clothed) dance for a customer celebrating a birthday or other noteworthy event. Although this dish isn't officially on the menu, call ahead to see if you can order it.

How do we love Lola? Let us count the ways. We love the history of the building it resides in, an old mortuary that served as the almost-final resting place of Buffalo Bill (he couldn't be buried on Lookout Mountain until after the ground thawed). We love looking out over the city from its deck, heated so that you can enjoy the view year-round. We love the brunch, with the inventive specials that change every weekend. We love the happy-hour deals, when you can grab a great taco for $3. We love the music on Sunday afternoons, and the special-occasion dinners, and the accidental dinners, when you come for a quick snack and wind up swimming in a whole fish. And above all, we love the margaritas. Lola stocks more than 150 tequilas, and mixologist Jimmy Zanon is always using them in new ways — but our favorite remains the house marg, perfectly mixed, very strong, and pure love in a glass.

You go to the Edgewater Inn for the pizza and the atmosphere — "Howdy, paisano!" — but you won't be able to leave without ordering a schooner. Perhaps the most festively shaped drinking vessel known to man, schooners are like giant, rounded margarita glasses perfectly suited to toasting. And you'll have reason to toast, because during happy hour, the Edgewater fills its schooners with domestic drafts for just $3 (they're $3.75 at other times). It's eighteen ounces of liquid joy.

Not only is John Broening, Olivea's incredibly talented chef/co-owner, crafting authentic charcuterie in the small confines of his culinary workroom, but he's also making his own headcheese, the tour de force of all offal. There's just something so maniacally pleasurable about seeing all the scraps from the meatiest parts of the pig's head — Broening uses the tongue, too — turned into a gorgeous terrine of fine swine, fat and spices. If you're in the house and Broening is offering it as an off-menu special, you'd be crazy not to order it. And that's the offal truth.

Nothing more profoundly scents a room than the char of smoke-impregnated animal flesh — especially when that flesh has been smoked low and slow over hickory, which is the wood of choice at Boney's Smokehouse, Lamont and Trina Lynch's downtown, down-home temple of barbecue. From long before noon to long into the afternoon, pit worshipers pile in to stuff themselves with deliciously fatty, black-crusted brisket that pulls apart easily; potently spicy sausage links; beautifully seasoned ribs that are quickly stripped clean; and pulled pork, usually slapped between a soft bun and served Carolina style. And such side dishes as the baked beans and the creamy potato salad are solid sidekicks.

Do bagels turn you on? Do you get just as hot and bothered over thick, sesame-seed-encrusted buns as you do over the meat between them? Carb lover, let us introduce you to your next meal: Sexy Pizza's Baked Ziti Pie. Picture it: ziti on top of cheese on top of sauce on top of bread. Eating a slice is like going to a church-basement spaghetti dinner and an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet at the same time. In other words, it's like going to heaven – and then realizing that in heaven, all the carbs you can eat cost just $13.99 for a twelve-inch pie.

There are very few dishes on the menu of El Camaron Loco that don't include shrimp. But if you look around the dining room of this Mexican seafood shack on Federal (our favorite of the three metro locations), almost everyone is tucking into a huge goblet of shrimp cocktail. Swamped with a land mine of shellfish bobbing in a soupy tomato broth livened with cilantro leaves and onions, it comes to your table crowned with half-crescents of avocado and additional accoutrements like lime wedges, ketchup and more than a half-dozen bottled hot sauces that you can dribble in to amplify the flavor. The server also delivers a bag of saltines and tostada chips, which you can use as rafts to float the little suckers.

Denver, we're often reminded by those who can't help themselves, is a landlocked city — which, according to those same clever people who think they know everything, undercuts our ability to serve anything that swims in the ocean. But those people don't know their Starkist from their salmon collar. At the very least, they obviously haven't ever been to Sushi Den, the city's shrine to raw glory. Even after 25 years, Sushi Den remains immaculately fresh, flying in fish daily from Japanese markets and serving it up immaculately, with elegant style. The sushi at the Den is beyond reproach. And as an added benefit, this restaurant offers some of the best beautiful-people watching in town. Get in the swim.

With all due respect to the rest of the Chinese restaurants in town, China Jade whups your sorry wooden chopsticks. This joint is that glorious rarity whose food makes you moan and groan and sigh and hoot and holler, sometimes all at once. It's the type of place that stops you dead in your stilettos, if only to remind you that you're only as good as your next Chinese meal — which, in this case, will be something from the laminated "secret" Chinese menu. The other menu is inked on yellow paper, and unless you're completely gutless, ignore it. Focus solely on the Chinese menu and take the advice of the servers who will likely steer you toward the cuminum cyminum beef or maybe the twice-cooked pork. Ultimately, it won't matter what you order, because whatever ends up under your nose will be so disarmingly delicious that you'll choke up with gratitude.

For those who can't decide between a T-bone and a twice-baked potato, chicken and waffles, lobster pot pie or a green-chile-smothered pork chop partnered with scalloped potatoes, we have good news for you: All of those dishes grace the menu of Second Home, the restaurant at the JW Marriott. The wide-ranging menu reads like a love letter extolling your mom's home cooking, and it's so full of rib-sticking, retro nostalgia that it's only a matter of time before the TV in the bar starts airing Mickey Mouse Club reruns.

Sure, plenty of places serve fashionable, frou-frou martinis, featuring chocolate or pineapple or organic juniper berries. And the affable bartenders at the Avenue Grill are willing to make a martini just about any way a customer asks for it. Over the years, this go-to spot has made other changes, too, including recently adding a Saturday brunch. But when we're ordering a martini, we like to cling to tradition, and our favorite remains the classic that they've been pouring for more than two decades: big, icy and guaranteed to leave you shaken, if not stirred.

At brunch at Colt & Gray, the lovely restaurant that made its long-awaited debut on Platte Street last August, the French-press coffee is woody and rich and strong. It has to be, in order to prepare you for the duck confit hash, served with the most beautifully poached eggs you've ever seen, the streams of yolk brighter than a yellow cab. Or for the heavenly, egg-crowned croque madame coupled with an unexpectedly vibrant tomato soup; if you're a heathen, you dunk the former into the latter and thank the kitchen for robbing you of any gram of refinement. That same kitchen also slyly seduces you with luscious potatoes, sliced the thinness of a silver dollar, edged crisp and rendered in foie gras and duck fat. When you've popped the last one through your lips and let out a long groan, your server nods in empathy. Few dishes in the galaxy are as wicked good as those potatoes. After brunch at Colt & Gray, you'll be ready for a long nap — but you'll wake up eager to return for dinner.

Everything about Rioja radiates perfection, from the flavors and flourishes on the plate to the wine list and waitstaff — which is precisely the kind of faultless experience you should expect when you're celebrating an anniversary, bar mitzvah, time off for good behavior or an extra five hours of furlough. If you're part of the precious few still flush with a no-holds-barred expense account, you may as well uncork a Billecart-Salmon Brut Rose Champagne for $185 before moving on to a 2006 Numanthia Termes Termanthia Toro for a mere $525. To complement your impeccable taste in grapes, chef Jennifer Jasinski turns out a similarly flawless menu, beginning with oysters Rockefeller, tuna prepared two ways, or a "picnic" of artisan meats and cheeses. Follow the bliss with Jasinski's paella gnocchi or her braised Wagyu boneless beef short ribs. And for dessert, beignets plumped with black mission figs and goat cheese and a glass of 2007 Mission Hill Reserve Riesling Icewine. When the bill comes, kiss the feet of your host and hope that he invites you back for a repeat visit.

The candies created by Seth Ellis Chocolatier are wildly expensive, but each small piece yields a sensational level of flavor. These candies are developed by Rick Levine, who's devoted to the natural and organic and would rather boil down a field of mint leaves to create the decorative green squiggle on a chocolate than resort to artificial flavor. As a result, the pieces are elegant and inventive — an unusual marriage of lemon peel and dark chocolate, for example, or Levine's nut-free take on the peanut-butter cup, which uses sunflower-seed butter. You can find Seth Ellis chocolates at Whole Foods or order them online.

FBI agents make the best drinking companions because they never steal the limelight. They couldn't if they tried: After a rigorous background check, each is hand-selected by Uncle Sam specifically for his or her lack of blackmailable individuality. Then the agents are all meticulously trained to keep their yappers shut and to listen long and hard. There's no need to conduct an investigation to find these ideal drinking companions: You can always find one on a bar stool at the Stockyard Saloon. That's the legendary bar and restaurant adjacent to the historic Livestock Exchange Building in the National Western Complex, which happens to be home to the FBI's penthouse offices for violent crime, Indian country crime, violent fugitive, major theft, transportation crime and violent gang units. You'll know these agents when you see them: They're the ones who cling to your every word.

In Season is a tiny green shop with big ideas. Its motto — "If it's not from here, it's not in here" — means that the market only stocks products produced within a 250-mile radius of its location in Highland. So while you'll still have to swing by King Soopers for Tide and toilet paper, In Season's shelves are stocked with all manner of yummy and surprising foodstuffs, including bread from the Denver Bread Company, cheese from the Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy in Longmont, and pork chops from Socolofsky Farms in Larkspur. Eating pint after pint of Red Trolley ice cream might expand your waistline, but it will shrink your carbon footprint.

Tom's Home Cookin' is a stick-to-your-ribs dispatch for soul-food seekers and Southerners, blue-collar workers and chefs, chatterers, chewers and chicken chasers — the latter a devoted force of purists who know the difference between a great cluck and a forgettable one. There's nothing at Tom's we wouldn't kill for, but the fried chicken, profoundly moist with skin crusted the color of copper, flies right every single time. It's a sign of more goodness to come: peach cobbler, banana pudding, macaroni and cheese (it's the Velveeta, people), cornbread stuffing, candied yams and whatever else owners Steve Jankousky and Tom Unterwagner have on the day's chalkboard. But that chicken? That chicken would make even a hardened vegan fly the coop.

By this point, we all pretty much know that just about everything coming out of Frank Bonanno's four kitchens — Osteria Marco, Mizuna, Bones and Luca D'Italia — makes our heads whirl like a spinning top. But just when you think Bonanno and his enormously talented kitchen crew couldn't possibly have any more culinary stunts up their sleeves, they add suckling pig — which is nothing like any suckling pig you've ever had — to Luca D'Italia's menu, which was already an extraordinary document that causes big, burly men to weep. The pig, stuffed with squishy, beautifully spiced, rich forcemeat and crowned with a salad of arugula and sliced apples sprayed with a sherry vinaigrette, straddles a puddle of deep-flavored pork stock and a superb chestnut polenta. Right now, at this moment, there may be no better dish in Denver. There's certainly no better Italian restaurant.

Tarasco's awesome posole, the traditional Mexican stew that even gringos slurp for breakfast after a night of corruption and immorality, is ladled into a big white bowl with tender pork and pork bones and hominy. It's accompanied, as it should be, by steaming corn tortillas, plenty of quartered lime wedges, a heap of diced white onions and shredded raw cabbage. If you want to dust the posole with Mexican oregano or give it fire with diced jalapeños, the server will bring those, too, although the fiery tableside salsa — it's more like a chile paste — is more addictive than heroin. Once you've doctored it with all your garnishes, it's like eating Christmas in a bowl.

Steamed suckling pig and pork belly buns, roasted bone marrow, escargot pot stickers, tempura-fried cod, dumplings, shishito peppers, soba noodles and soft-serve ice cream: These all play starring roles on the board at Bones, Frank Bonanno's Capitol Hill noodle bar and the fourth soldier in his army of restaurants. Celebrated since Bonanno opened the doors at the end of 2008, Bones has amassed serious worshipers, a conglomerate of cultists who gather at the counter, where the heat and steam from the burners has them breaking out in beads of sweat — a badge of honor. But that's a small price to pay for getting to watch Bonanno's crew as they perfectly poach the yolk-y egg that wiggles and jiggles in a fantastically porky broth floating with faultless udon, ribbons of scallions and shards of roasted pig. It's a justifiably lauded vessel of fine swine that makes us squeal with joy.

When Krishan Kappor relocated India's, his terrific curry house, from its longtime home on the perimeter of Tamarac Square to Tiffany Plaza, he definitely traded up in space. And the food is better than ever. The Punjabi-tempered menu may feature many of the same dishes that litter the boards of just about every other Indian restaurant in town, but Kappor and his kitchen crew continue to do these dishes right, serving up sizzling cast-iron platters of tandoori meats and seafood, turning out scintillating curries shocked with beautifully balanced spices that perfume the new, cavernous dining room.

The year was 2007; the space the tiny former home of Sean Kelly's Somethin' Else. In this unlikely spot, partners Alex Seidel and Paul Attardi — chef and maître d', respectively — created Fruition, a restaurant that's become a culinary deity. From the start, Seidel has used the seasons as a canvas for his menu, a near-perfect board of flawlessly sourced (particularly since he now has his own farm in Larkspur), beautifully choreographed and infallibly flavored dishes crafted with confidence, intelligence and principles. But while he tweaks the menu with frequency, there are a few mainstays — including the pasta carbonara, which defies everything you think you know about that dish and would incite a violent revolt if Seidel ever yanked it from the board. For this version, the kitchen takes a generous slab of house-cured pork belly and crowns it with a jiggly egg that oozes yolk into a pool of Parmesan broth bobbing with fresh peas and handmade cavatelli. Talk about food that feeds the soul.