Best Pastry Case 2012 | Wooden Spoon Cafe & Bakery | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Pastry Case

Wooden Spoon Cafe & Bakery

Mark Manger

It's easy to go crazy at the pastry case at Wooden Spoon, a tiny bakery tucked into a row of Highland storefronts. Every time we stop in, we want to order one of almost everything. We can't pass up the macarons; the egg white-and-almond-based cookies, filled with buttercream, melt away into nothing on the tongue. Nor can we turn down a lemon meringue mini-pie, the individual-sized flaky crust packed with smooth, tangy lemon filling and topped with ethereally light peaks of meringue. The cinnamon rolls, troweled with tart cream-cheese icing, are not to be missed; the turtle is a rich, sticky mix of chocolate, caramel and pecans. And while you may only be able to take about three bites of the chocolate dome, they'll be three glorious spoonfuls of dense chocolate ganache encrusted with chocolate fondant on a thin chocolate cookie.

Best Patio for Brunch

Gaia Bistro

Gaia Bistro is one of the homiest restaurants around, not least because it's actually located in an old home. The inside is cozy and comfortable — especially in the winter, when the warren of rooms creates a warm, welcoming haven — but Gaia shines brightest outside. You can eat on the planter-lined patio or at one of the tables scattered across the expansive lawn; when summer settles over the Mile High City, these outdoor areas are always packed on weekends. But on cool weekend mornings, the deck is empty — and when you have a French press full of coffee, one of Gaia's housemade pastries and a newspaper before you, this can feel like the most perfect place in the world.

Best Patio for Living the High Life

Quixote's True Blue

Come spring and summer, the back patio of Quixote's True Blue fills with the odors of hippie food on the stove, a few cigs and stogies, and often the sweet, skunky smell of other burning materials — not that anyone is condoning anything here. Snag a seat at the picnic table, where you can enjoy a post-Rockies beer or boogie your butt off in front of the outdoor stage featuring a Grateful Dead bluegrass cover band. Either way, we guarantee you'll get high...on life.

Best Pho

Pho Duy

Mark Antonation

The Denver area has dozens and dozens of pho shops, most of which serve up decent bowls of noodle soup. But only a few really stand out, and the one that rises to the top is Pho Duy. The menu is as spare as the decor at this strip-mall spot; save for a few specialties and spring rolls, there's not much offered beyond pho. But the kitchen doesn't need to make anything else to pull in crowds. Its intensely layered broth, which tastes like it comes from a very well-seasoned pot, supports nests of springy noodles, thin slices of beef, brisket or offal, and all the fresh herbs you can stand. Ribbon it with sriracha or ask for a little of the restaurant's homemade hot sauce for a punch of heat.

Best Pig Parts

Euclid Hall

Euclid Hall has given Denver foodniks more than they could possibly ask for: poutines, fried cheddar curds, bone marrow, the Tim T-boning Manhattan shot, housemade blood-blotted boudin noir and a fulfilling armory of other fantastic sausages, foie gras and...pig's ears. No matter how often we go, the pig's ears, expressively Thai in preparation, are our dream date: Salty, sweet, penetratingly spicy and tart with citrus, the curls of flesh and cartilage, slicked with a tamarind sauce sharp with chiles and textured with peanuts, are crisp and crunchy. Chef Jorel Pierce crowns the ears with mung-bean sprouts, mint and cilantro, creating one of the most marvelous mouthfuls of food in the galaxy.

Best Pizza

Pizzeria Locale

Molly Martin

"There's no other style of pizza in the world that's as geeky as the Napolitano style," chef Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson proclaimed when he opened Pizzeria Locale. "And we're trying to do it exactly right." Doing it right included MacKinnon-Patterson and partner Bobby Stuckey bringing oven-makers from Italy to build a custom wood-burning stove in their new space near the flagship Frasca. The hard work paid off, though: Pizzeria Locale turns out mind-blowing pies that begin with a rich and chewy crust, thin and soft in the center and fluffier around the edges. The menu offers about fifteen different combos, from a traditional Margherita — with sweet and savory milled San Marzano tomatoes, stretchy and decadent mozzarella di bufala and a few leaves of fresh basil — to the Mais, a combination of sweet corn, silky slices of prosciutto cotto, tart crème fraîche and more mozzarella. And, as in Naples, these pizzas don't come sliced — so be prepared to eat yours with a knife and fork.

Readers' Choice: Sexy Pizza

Best Place to Pair Beer and Food

Euclid Hall

Euclid Hall was one of the first upscale restaurants in Denver to tailor its menu — full of rich, hand-cranked sausage, poutine and cheeses — to beer rather than wine, and Denver hasn't stopped loving the combination. Over the past few months, however, Euclid Hall has upped its game, hosting a variety of events and evenings featuring beers on tap that are just as brilliant as the menu items — and matching together in a way that makes you realize that in Denver, beer really is the new wine.

Best Red Chile

Twisters Burgers & Burritos

This New Mexico-based chain, which has four locations in the metro area, doesn't serve fast food — as evidenced by its lengthy menu of made-to-order burritos and enchiladas, all of which come draped with either green or red chile. The red chile is a revelation: bright, pungent, sassy and even a little fruity. Made with New Mexican chile powder, chile pequin and garlic, it's the hue of sun-baked rust and, unlike the green chile, which is prepared with chicken stock, is truly vegetarian. But we won't hold that against Twisters.

Readers' Choice: Little Anita's

Best Restaurant for a Last Meal

Euclid Hall

If you're going to go out, you may as well go out with a hedonistic, gluttonous, cardiac-arrest-inducing bang, and the best place to find that in this city is Euclid Hall, a restaurant just off Larimer Square that's devoted to suds and swine. Here you can stuff yourself on some of the richest foods the world has to offer: fat-laced sausages, platters of gravy-laden poutine, crispy pig's ear pad Thai, fried cheese curds, brûléed bone marrow and maple-syrup-drizzled fried quail and waffles. You can polish your feast off with foie gras ordered by the ounce — and wash it down with some of the rarest beers around. Euclid Hall pays playful respect to decadence and indulgence, and it pulls dinner off flawlessly every single time — so if you have to die, you'll die fat, drunk and happy.

Readers' Choice: Linger

Best Restaurant Neighborhood

Pearl Street Mall, Boulder

Pearl Street Mall, the pedestrian promenade that features everything from dreadlocked stoners to dramatic tightrope walkers, also happens to pimp some of the best restaurants in the state — and we're not just talking about Frasca Food and Wine. Frasca's next-door sibling, Pizzeria Locale, is just one of the many reasons why this quirky hub of grub houses continues to awe our palates. There are restaurants for every taste — and several other new kids on the block, including the sultry Pearl Street Steak Room; Riffs Urban Fare, where chef John Platt struts his mad culinary skills; and the Kitchen [Next Door], a jovial community pub that's the third notch in the belt of the Kitchen and the Kitchen [Upstairs] clan. Last fall, Snooze opened on Pearl Street, too, giving breakfast geeks its sigh-inducing pineapple upside-down pancakes, and Oak at Fourteenth recently rose from the ashes, better than ever. And so is the dining landscape on the Pearl Street Mall.

Readers' Choice: Highland

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