Best Breakfast 2005 | Original Pancake House | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Breakfast

Original Pancake House

Breakfast is a very subjective thing. There are those who like to speed through the day's first meal, wolfing down something from the drive-thru on their way to the office, others who prefer to linger over well-brewed tea and fine pastries. Cold pizza makes a good breakfast, as do a pound of hash browns, six eggs and a steak served up by some greasy-spoon hash-slinger. And for some people, there's nothing finer than that rock-and-roll breakfast of champions: black coffee and cigarettes. But no one can quibble over breakfast at the Original Pancake House, which specializes in breakfast and nothing but. And what breakfasts! The kitchen uses sugar-cured, hickory-smoked ham steaks, 93-score high-fat sauté butter and real whipping cream. It turns out five-egg omelettes, huge mounds of homemade corned beef hash, and a dozen varieties of pancakes (including one studded with bacon). For those with a truly gargantuan appetite, there's the famous Dutch Baby; for those of more frail constitutions, wonderful Kijafa crepes sauced with bitter Montmorency cherries. No matter what you order, breakfast at the Original Pancake House is a great way to start the day.

Best Breakfast Bar

20th Street Cafe

To qualify as a breakfast bar, a place must do one thing -- serve breakfast -- and do it within a limited time span. In the case of the 20th Street Cafe, that span runs from 6 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. weekdays (7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturdays), and never a minute longer. But if the owners want to knock off just as the late rush is coming to an end, who are we to complain? At 20th Street has been dishing out working-class food for working-class people since 1946. The breakfasts are generous, the coffee always hot, and the chicken-fried steaks a real treat, but what sets this joint apart from all of the other early-morning contenders is the effect of history on this space. Over the years, everything about 20th Street has been worn in and streamlined toward a beautiful conservation of movement. It's small, so the kitchen is never more than a dozen steps away. The waitresses hang dishrags from the coat tree for ease of access. And there's nothing in the canon of American diner cuisine that this kitchen isn't ready to do -- and do better -- than anyone else in town.

Best Breakfast Bar

20th Street Cafe

To qualify as a breakfast bar, a place must do one thing -- serve breakfast -- and do it within a limited time span. In the case of the 20th Street Cafe, that span runs from 6 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. weekdays (7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturdays), and never a minute longer. But if the owners want to knock off just as the late rush is coming to an end, who are we to complain? At 20th Street has been dishing out working-class food for working-class people since 1946. The breakfasts are generous, the coffee always hot, and the chicken-fried steaks a real treat, but what sets this joint apart from all of the other early-morning contenders is the effect of history on this space. Over the years, everything about 20th Street has been worn in and streamlined toward a beautiful conservation of movement. It's small, so the kitchen is never more than a dozen steps away. The waitresses hang dishrags from the coat tree for ease of access. And there's nothing in the canon of American diner cuisine that this kitchen isn't ready to do -- and do better -- than anyone else in town.

Best Breakfast Measured by Weight

Johnson's Corner

Samantha Baker
We brake for Johnson's Corner. After fifty years, this truck stop got a remodel that made it a shiny examplar of chrome-plate efficiency. But while its look has been updated, this landmark continues to serve the kind of breakfasts that have kept truckers going, and going, for the past fifty years. Nothing the kitchen does is small. It turns out gigantic cinnamon rolls, huge portions of hash-brown potatoes, massive omelettes, enormous plates of corned beef hash and slabs of chicken-fried steak that weigh as much as a brick -- meals that have made its diner food rightly famous around the world.

Best Breakfast Measured by Weight

Johnson's Corner

We brake for Johnson's Corner. After fifty years, this truck stop got a remodel that made it a shiny examplar of chrome-plate efficiency. But while its look has been updated, this landmark continues to serve the kind of breakfasts that have kept truckers going, and going, for the past fifty years. Nothing the kitchen does is small. It turns out gigantic cinnamon rolls, huge portions of hash-brown potatoes, massive omelettes, enormous plates of corned beef hash and slabs of chicken-fried steak that weigh as much as a brick -- meals that have made its diner food rightly famous around the world.

Best Croissants

A La Tomate

At A La Tomate -- owner Phil Collier's loving homage to the cuisine of Provence and Toulon -- everything is good, but the croissants are the best. Made fresh every day, they are impossibly buttery, with crackly shells and insides like clouds. Each one is a cholesterol hand grenade just waiting to go off -- doubly dangerous, since they're so light, it's easy to eat two or three. We eat them plain. We eat them with the horns dipped in chocolate. We eat them drizzled with honey or, for the ultimate culinary extreme-sport thrill, split open and smeared with even more butter. And every time we sit down in front of another, it's as though we're spitting in the Grim Reaper's eye. Sure, we know that nothing that tastes this good could possibly be good for you, and there are probably teams of freelance cardiologists cruising up and down 17th Avenue just waiting for regulars to drop dead from pleasure ten steps from the door. But at least when we go out, it will be with smiles on our faces and crumbs on our lapels -- evidence of our final meal at A La Tomate.

Best Croissants

A La Tomate

At A La Tomate -- owner Phil Collier's loving homage to the cuisine of Provence and Toulon -- everything is good, but the croissants are the best. Made fresh every day, they are impossibly buttery, with crackly shells and insides like clouds. Each one is a cholesterol hand grenade just waiting to go off -- doubly dangerous, since they're so light, it's easy to eat two or three. We eat them plain. We eat them with the horns dipped in chocolate. We eat them drizzled with honey or, for the ultimate culinary extreme-sport thrill, split open and smeared with even more butter. And every time we sit down in front of another, it's as though we're spitting in the Grim Reaper's eye. Sure, we know that nothing that tastes this good could possibly be good for you, and there are probably teams of freelance cardiologists cruising up and down 17th Avenue just waiting for regulars to drop dead from pleasure ten steps from the door. But at least when we go out, it will be with smiles on our faces and crumbs on our lapels -- evidence of our final meal at A La Tomate.

Best Breakfast Pastries

Bistro Vendome

Joni Schrantz
When Bistro Vendome first opened, it tried to do three meals a day, every day. This ambitious plan was soon replaced by a dinner-only schedule that took a lot of pressure off the kitchen and chef Eric Roeder. Still, in a space like this -- tucked behind the main street, with a patio that opens onto the only quiet, secluded bit of real estate in Larimer Square -- it would have been a sin for Bistro Vendome not to do something while the sun was up. So Friday, Saturday and Sunday brunches were added, and that's when things really took off. The in-house bakery staff started knocking out excellent pain perdu topped with citrus honey and panier baskets of excellent croissants, buttery brioche and thick-sliced breakfast breads. Coupled with big, French-press pots of black coffee, those pastries remain a great reason to rise and shine.

Best Breakfast Pastries

Bistro Vendome

When Bistro Vendome first opened, it tried to do three meals a day, every day. This ambitious plan was soon replaced by a dinner-only schedule that took a lot of pressure off the kitchen and chef Eric Roeder. Still, in a space like this -- tucked behind the main street, with a patio that opens onto the only quiet, secluded bit of real estate in Larimer Square -- it would have been a sin for Bistro Vendome not to do something while the sun was up. So Friday, Saturday and Sunday brunches were added, and that's when things really took off. The in-house bakery staff started knocking out excellent pain perdu topped with citrus honey and panier baskets of excellent croissants, buttery brioche and thick-sliced breakfast breads. Coupled with big, French-press pots of black coffee, those pastries remain a great reason to rise and shine.

Best Breakfast Soup

Pho 79

Pho -- that beef-broth-and-rice-noodle soup that's the most ubiquitous offering in Vietnamese cuisine -- is always eaten for breakfast. It's always eaten for lunch, too, and dinner on the streets of Da Nang, and as a midnight snack by drunken scooter kids in Saigon trying to sober up for the long ride home. But as a breakfast dish, pho is unsurpassed, and no one in town does it better than Pho 79. With one broth and a million different combinations of meats, herbs, spices and noodles, breakfast at Pho 79 can be a never-ending journey through the flavors of the Far East. But by nine in the morning, the Aurora outlet, at least, can be so packed full of hungry neighbors coming from the Japanese-Korean-Viet-Thai neighborhoods surrounding Havana Street that there's no space left for the casual culinary tourists.

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