Best Starter -- Cold 2004 | Brasserie Rouge | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Starter -- Cold

Brasserie Rouge

Chef John Broening loves charcuterie. He left his last executive-chef gig because that menu was too dainty, too precious. And now he's at Brasserie Rouge, LoDo's hot new French bistro, where he turns out big, lusty flavors night after night. The biggest can be found on the assiettes de charcuterie platter, the town's

best way to start off a meal without firing up the oven. Each platter includes fragrant, cold lamb sausage spiced with fennel on rounds of baguette spread with spicy Dijon mustard; duck-liver pâté beaten into a smooth, airy mousse just waiting to be smeared onto chunks of French bread torn from loaves made by the restaurant's in-house bakery; chilled slabs of gamey rabbit pâté buried under a fall of baby greens and touched with a compote of sweet apples, delicate herbs and sharp autumnal spice. All of it is lovely, all of it is delicious, and paired with a smooth glass of anything from the Brasserie bar, it's a meal in itself.

Best Use of Soy on a Dessert Menu

Sunflower

Sunflower's kitchen can cook, there's no doubt about that. Almost everything this crew touches turns to pure culinary gold. So who would suspect a pastry to be the dish that truly shines? Sunflower does a dessert -- a fresh berry shortcake swimming in sweetened tofu cream, of all things -- that's so good it takes our breath away. The berries are fresh, the shortcake sweet and spongy -- and the tofu cream? A true treasure, even if tofu itself is a joke, made from curdled soy milk and therefore a food to be laughed at. It certainly has no business being turned into something this decadently delicious. But when we order the berry shortcake, we're so busy eating that we don't let a snicker escape our lips.

Best Finisher -- Warm

Vega

You've just eaten one of the great meals of your life at Vega. You've been charmed by the beautiful surroundings, coddled by the staff, well fed from the kitchen's upscale but approachable nuevo-Latino menu, and left with a tiny plate of amuse geules -- sweet bites like handmade chocolate-truffle and fruit gelées brought out gratis. But you've still got a little room left between larynx and trachea that hasn't yet been stuffed full of good eats. So it's a good thing that in defiance of all the pomp and swank of the dinner menu and dining room, Vega offers a guilty-pleasure dessert: hand-spun cotton candy made in-house and served like smoke rising from the charred, crackly top of a true crme brlée. Go ahead and order it -- you know you want to. And don't worry about what that table full of stuffed shirts behind you will think when they see you licking spun sugar off your fingers. Because soon enough, they'll be doing it, too.

Best Starter -- Hot

Kabul Kabob

On the outside, fresh, hot flatbread, crisp and golden and rich with clarified butter. On the inside, sweet caramelized onions and mashed potatoes, smooth and gently flavored like a warm breeze over the spice market. Sitting at a table at Kabul Kabob with a plain, white plate of bulanee kachalu before you, you can't help but think that this is not just the best starter in town, but the best starter ever. And you can't help but order more. The dish is so basic, so plain, so expertly handled and so delicious that you occasionally wonder if man could live on Afghan turnovers alone.

Best Finisher -- Chilled

Mel's Restaurant and Bar

There's only one way to improve on dessert, and that's to find a way to sneak some alcohol into it. Sure, this tactic has left us with a world full of rum balls, rum cakes and rum tarts, but don't blame Mel's. Here, pâtissire Robert McCarthy has come up with the coolest, most boozerific dessert we've found: the Cosmopolitan. Served in a sugared martini glass, this beauty combines apricot sorbet, dried lime and tiny, clear cubes of vodka gelée. Put a spoonful in your mouth, and the melting sorbet immediately alters the liquid balance of the gelée, causing it to melt across your tongue like a high-end Jell-O shot. Cool.

Best Starter -- Cold

Brasserie Rouge

Chef John Broening loves charcuterie. He left his last executive-chef gig because that menu was too dainty, too precious. And now he's at Brasserie Rouge, LoDo's hot new French bistro, where he turns out big, lusty flavors night after night. The biggest can be found on the assiettes de charcuterie platter, the town's

best way to start off a meal without firing up the oven. Each platter includes fragrant, cold lamb sausage spiced with fennel on rounds of baguette spread with spicy Dijon mustard; duck-liver pté beaten into a smooth, airy mousse just waiting to be smeared onto chunks of French bread torn from loaves made by the restaurant's in-house bakery; chilled slabs of gamey rabbit pté buried under a fall of baby greens and touched with a compote of sweet apples, delicate herbs and sharp autumnal spice. All of it is lovely, all of it is delicious, and paired with a smooth glass of anything from the Brasserie bar, it's a meal in itself.

Best Dive

Tom's Diner

Denver has an abundance of dives -- some murky, some dark, some that smell funny, some that are just plain dangerous. There are joints, holes-in-the-wall and hellholes of every description in this town, but Tom's takes the prize, because depending on what day of the week and what hour of the day you arrive, Tom's can be any (or all) of these things. Squatting colorfully on one of the worst corners in the city, crime-wise, by day Tom's is a great place for watching the world go by while eating some decent diner grub. At night the menu compresses, and most of those street creatures come inside for coffee and a place to rest their legs, so the people-watching gets up-close and personal. There are holes in the windows that may (or may not) be from stray bullets, locks on the bathroom doors, great servers, better corned beef hash, bottomless cups of coffee, and more entertainment packed into one place than you could find in a twelve-hour marathon of Cops.

Best Finisher -- Warm

Vega

You've just eaten one of the great meals of your life at Vega. You've been charmed by the beautiful surroundings, coddled by the staff, well fed from the kitchen's upscale but approachable nuevo-Latino menu, and left with a tiny plate of amuse geules -- sweet bites like handmade chocolate-truffle and fruit gelées brought out gratis. But you've still got a little room left between larynx and trachea that hasn't yet been stuffed full of good eats. So it's a good thing that in defiance of all the pomp and swank of the dinner menu and dining room, Vega offers a guilty-pleasure dessert: hand-spun cotton candy made in-house and served like smoke rising from the charred, crackly top of a true crme brlée. Go ahead and order it -- you know you want to. And don't worry about what that table full of stuffed shirts behind you will think when they see you licking spun sugar off your fingers. Because soon enough, they'll be doing it, too.

Best Diner

Breakfast King

People-watching is an important part of the diner experience. Second to coffee-drinking, it might be the most important part. And if people-watching were a sport, Breakfast King is where future Olympic hopefuls would come to train. The King attracts all sorts, from old farts to young fellas, from truckers to slummers to parents dragging their squalling toddlers behind. Everyone is ably tended to by waitresses (not servers, not waitrons, but old-fashioned waitresses who are good at their jobs and happy doing them) working off a menu that was already old when the King was new -- a time-capsule version of American cuisine, circa 1970, that's full of cheeseburgers and fries, Coney Island hot dogs, chiliette, biscuits and gravy, and ham with pineapple rings. The coffee is strong, the company easy, and no matter what hour you wander in, one thing is certain: It's good to be the King.

Best Finisher -- Chilled

Mel's Restaurant and Bar

There's only one way to improve on dessert, and that's to find a way to sneak some alcohol into it. Sure, this tactic has left us with a world full of rum balls, rum cakes and rum tarts, but don't blame Mel's. Here, ptissire Robert McCarthy has come up with the coolest, most boozerific dessert we've found: the Cosmopolitan. Served in a sugared martini glass, this beauty combines apricot sorbet, dried lime and tiny, clear cubes of vodka gelée. Put a spoonful in your mouth, and the melting sorbet immediately alters the liquid balance of the gelée, causing it to melt across your tongue like a high-end Jell-O shot. Cool.

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