Best Chinese 2013 | East Asia Garden | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Chinese

East Asia Garden

Cassandra Stiltner

Some of the best cooking in Denver comes from restaurants that are completely off the grid — those with generic names, facades as forgettable as last night's one-night stand and featureless dining rooms with clashing color schemes. East Asia Garden is that kind of restaurant. You've whizzed by it on Broadway a dozen times, never giving it even a cursory glance. And that's a mistake, because it turns out the most amazing home-style, traditional Chinese food in the city. Here, among the usual suspects, are dishes like tofu with black eggs, pig's ears and cucumbers, cross bridge rice noodles (good luck finding those anywhere else in Denver) and Chongqing chicken, which is very much the food equivalent of a firecracker: a shovel of blistered, volatile fried chiles tangled with equal amounts of Sichuan peppercorns and cubes of fried chicken, hot enough to make your mouth numb for days. But the unadventurous have an out: Along with fried pig's liver, the menu includes benign dumplings.

Best Contemporary Cocktail Bar

Squeaky Bean

A bar — a really good bar — should function like a kitchen. And bartenders — really, really good ones — should put signature stamps on their cocktails the same way that a really good chef handprints his food. A chef like Max MacKissock at Squeaky Bean, for example. So it's no surprise that the Bean's innovative bar program, commanded by Sean Kenyon and a squad of other serious spirit geeks, takes the modern cocktail movement to the next level. The roster, divided into 1970s and '80s movie headings — The Longest Yard (tall drinks); Rocky III (all drinks served on block ice); Up the Academy (drinks that are served up) — is compact and focused, but also crafty and ambitious. Particularly intriguing are the Weird Science offerings, a catalogue of smoked cocktails that, like the rest of the list, change on a whim. For all the drinks, the ingredients are market-fresh; the ice is hand-carved and tailored to whatever you're sipping; the spices, sourced from the Savory Spice Shop, are aromatized and ground in-house; and there's even a PolyScience smoking gun that infuses billows of vapor into the cocktails. It's an exceptionally innovative program that doesn't miss a drop.

Best Dim Sum

Super Star Asian

Cassandra Kotnik

Super Star Asian nearly doubled in size last year, but securing a table here — especially on the weekends, when hunger-pained customers line up like dominoes to get their dim sum fix — is never easy. An eclectic mix of Asian families, American groups, couples and intrepid stalwarts with massive hangovers scramble for tables in the chaotic crowd of faces, most of which are buried in bamboo steamers filled with everything from divine shrimp-and-chive dumplings to pudgy lotus-leaf wraps. The dim sum dishes are all wheeled around on darting carts, pushed by solicitous servers who aren't shy about encouraging you to take one of everything. And so you should: Even the chicken feet fly right. Just make sure to hold on to your seat, because the unending stream of cranky customers who want it aren't afraid to stand at your feet and stare you down.

Best Diner

20th Street Cafe

Denver has many restaurants that pimp class and sass, but sometimes nothing soothes the soul like cheap breakfasts with buttery hash browns slapped on the flattop, sandwiches stacked the height of Gary Coleman, pancakes that span the plate and unlimited jolts of java. For all of that and more, there's nowhere better than 20th Street Cafe, an iconic pit stop that opens at daylight and continues plying patrons with throwback eats through the bustling lunch hour. It's a salt-of-the-earth greasy spoon, as every true diner should be, holding down this particular spot of downtown for decades before LoDo even came into being.

Best Dinner Under $10

New Saigon Bakery & Deli

Linnea Covington
Combination banh mi from New Saigon Bakery & Deli.

The Vietnamese bakery and deli that New Saigon opened last year locks its doors at 4 p.m., so you'll need to plan ahead. But you can order two banh mi sandwiches and get change back from a ten — so holding onto them until dinner is mostly a matter of self-control. Then, when the moment strikes, that crusty baguette — the freshest in town — filled with crunchy vegetables, pungent cilantro and your choice of marinated, grilled or cured meats will disappear like a guinea pig confronted by a python. The second sandwich is clearly too much food, but saving it for later just means thinking about nothing but banh mi until then. Besides, order two and you'll be able to try more of the meat fillings, which include sweet, fatty pork belly; barbecued beef; grilled chicken; even sardines. You'll only break between bites to quench the fire from the raw slices of jalapeño. And at this price, getting a boba smoothie to do that job won't break the bank.

Best Dive Bar

Bar Bar (Carioca Cafe)

Molly Martin

Dive bars are drying up in Denver, swept away by tides of development. We've lost many of this city's old saloons over the last few years, which makes the survival of Carioca Cafe — better known as Bar Bar — something to celebrate. Perhaps with a drink or ten. It's fascinating to watch how the clientele at this spot at the edge of downtown changes over the course of a day (and three happy hours). Get there at noon and you can grab a cup of coffee and reading material — or just study some of Denver's finest barflies, a few of whom might have been there since the doors opened at 7 a.m. As the hour gets later, an assortment of hipsters, punks and rockers mixes in with those barflies, the live music starts, and the next thing you know, it's last call. Dive, he said.

Best Draft Beer List

Falling Rock Tap House

It's good to be king, and Falling Rock Tap House has ruled this city's craft beer scene since owner Chris Black opened the place sixteen years ago, serving rare beers from sought-after breweries all over Colorado, across the country and even overseas. If Falling Rock doesn't have the beer you're looking for, it's probably not possible to get it in Colorado. You might have a hard time making a decision when you're staring at eighty taps, so you'll want to take a peek at the frequently updated beer menu before you hit up the bartender for advice. Still, half the fun is trying something you've never heard of. Go ahead, take a sip.

Best Eggs Benedict

Devil's Food Bakery & Cookery

Cassandra Kotnik

Nothing says breakfast (or brunch) better than a plate of eggs Benedict, and no one does them better than Devil's Food, a diabolical morning powerhouse in Washington Park, where the kitchen cooks up a trio of these morning glories: one with ham, another crowned with fresh spinach and ripe tomatoes, and a third slapped with smoked salmon and arugula. Each version boasts two wiggly, jiggly poached eggs plopped atop fresh challah and draped with a lemon-smooched Hollandaise that raises the dead like the morning sun.

Best Ethiopian Restaurant

Nile Ethiopian Restaurant

Maureen Witten

You'll know you're in the right place when you see the red, green and yellow stripes of the Ethiopian flag lining the windows of this nondescript storefront. Nile Ethiopian's dining room may be run down, and service can be slow, but decor and service aren't the things that families and friends, many speaking African languages, look for here. They come for chicken wot, a thick stew of red peppers, onions and nutmeg with a drumstick and hard-boiled egg; zilzil tibs, chewy strips of sautéed beef; and a vegetarian combo with carrots, potatoes, lentils and the popular berbere-spiced chickpea dish known as shiro wat. Food is served on platter-sized rounds of sour, spongy injera bread, edges folded up like a galette, with more injera on the side so there's plenty to scoop up the often searing food.

Best Expense-Account Dinner

Restaurant Kevin Taylor

At restaurants across town, it's not hard to rack up a big bill: Those small plates add up, and one steakhouse slab can carve out a day's pay. But if the sky — or at least your card's credit — is the limit, you're looking not just for fabulous food, but impeccable service and an upscale ambience to match. And for that, you're not going to do any better than Restaurant Kevin Taylor, the restaurant tucked into a corner of Hotel Teatro, and overseen by Kevin Taylor. The space is intimate and elegant but not overbearing, the service attentive but not obsequious, the wine list comprehensive and the food absolutely stunning. Your bill will be, too.

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