Mark Tarbell, owner of the Oven, has won many awards at his various restaurants. And now he's earned another with the thin-crust pie made at the Oven, his very winning restaurant in Belmar. These pizzas aren't traditional, New York-style thin crusts, but rather very rustic, very scratch-built natural pies that just happen to have thin crusts. The kitchen here makes its own everything, from dough to sauce to cheese (including mozzarella and a fantastic smoked ricotta), and infuses it all with a true love and dedication to craft that's sadly lacking in a lot of neighborhood pizza joints these days. And even though Belmar is a very upscale neighborhood, the Oven suits its needs -- and ours -- nicely, packing the place with friends and neighbors every day.

The pizzas aren't just thick-crust at Beniamino's, they're deep-dish. And they're not just deep-dish, but stuffed pizza, the sort made famous by any number of restaurants on Chicago's South Side. Owner Ben Guest knows the difference, because he came straight from the Windy City to Denver, bringing his skills and the proper pans with him. While it may be a little weird that he gets his knowledge from a certain Italian fraternal organization and the man is missing a couple fingers, who are we to argue with genius? One slice -- a meal in itself -- is enough to settle any debate.

If you're looking for a raucous, crowded, family-friendly, suburban Italian restaurant with New York city transit maps, 9/11 memorials and a lot of crazy crap on the walls, Big Bill's is your place. But this is also the best spot in town to get a slice of a serious, New York-style thin-crust pizza -- a gooey, greasy, foldable wedge that doesn't just taste, but also looks and smells, exactly like the kind Brooklyn made famous. The sauce is mild and sweet, the pepperoni thin-cut, the cheese stretchy 'til forever, and the grease -- that most magical of elixirs -- as orange as a traffic cone.

John and Patrick Pool came up with a quirky way to take pizza global at Pizzeria Mundo: They simply name pies after cities (or areas) around the world, then cover them with ostensibly appropriate toppings. The New York, for example, is a fairly straightforward version of the classic Bronx 'za, with cheese, pepperoni, sausage and then a spicy red sauce, one thing that New York pies actually made in New York never have. But then a quick ride on the virtual D-train gets you to Coney Island (home of The Warriors, the Wonder Wheel and the Coney Island hot dog) for a pie covered in chili, chopped onions, sliced all-beef hot dogs, cheddar and mozzarella. The Kennebunkport is done like a lobster bake, with white corn, roasted potatoes, sausage, bechamel and chunks of lobster; the Death Valley version features habanero pepper sauce, rabbit and rattlesnake sausage and nopalito. Go global with a sweet-potato-smeared Jamaican jerk pie or the Kathmandu, with tikka masala sauce, tandoori chicken and roasted onions. All in all, these international pies are out of this world.

Technically, Patsy's isn't in a strip mall -- but it's tucked into a strip of co-op galleries in northwest Denver and embodies all that's great about the strip-mall-Italian experience. First and foremost, it's a neighborhood joint and knows how to take care of its regulars. And some of those regulars have been coming a long time. Patsy's has been making history -- and wonderful homemade pasta -- since 1921, when Chubby Aiello opened the place, named it after one of his daughters and ran it like a clubhouse for his friends and neighbors from across the city. The family dining tradition is so strong here that it survived a change of ownership ten years ago, when Patsy's was sold to Bill Taylor and Cindy Knippel. The new owners wisely kept their meddling to a minimum, making a few changes to the menu and giving the joint a little polish. But today Patsy's looks and feels much as it did in the '20s: The service is friendly, the vibe comfortable, and the meatballs gigantic.

Since the moment it opened two years ago, Luca d'Italia has turned out Denver's best high-end Italian food, no contest. Since its very first day of service, since the first plate hit the rail, Luca has been doing the most overdone cuisine in the food world better, smoother, sharper and with more obsessive precision than anywhere else in town. Even the least of the plates on chef/owner Frank Bonanno's discursive menu -- the pappardelle or the bricked chicken, say -- beats out the competition. And Bonanno's best? Well, Luca's "Rabbit, Three Ways" is a wonder of excess, its mozzarella tasting plate the definition of three-note simplicity, and we're just waiting for him to get his call to appear on Iron Chef so we can watch him school Mario Batali and then do a victory dance around Kitchen Stadium, waving Batali's clogs over his head like a trophy.

Want to take your date out for an Italian meal? That's amore. Really. Ristorante Amore, Greg Goldfogel's intimate outpost in Cherry Creek, is a wonderful little spot that turns out carefully prepared and beautifully executed Italian fare. From the pumpkin-and-butternut-squash ravioli and gnocchi with prosciutto to a simple fondue of roasted garlic, fontina and sundried tomatoes, chef John Smilanic-Beneventi understands that Italian cuisine should never underwhelm. And Goldfogel instinctively appreciates how service should never smother. At Amore, both the food and the floor are in such intimate balance that by the time the plates hit the table, half the work of charming your significant other is already done. All you have to worry about is the conversation and the bill.

Is it possible that a steakhouse could be better than Capital Grille? Cheaper, maybe. Less crowded and clubby, absolutely. But every night, Capital Grille justifies big tabs with little details: the padded tabletops, the great knives, the newspapers on the bar, the sherry in the lobster bisque, the egg in the bearnaise. It does the big things right, too. The steaks are wonderful, always cooked to temp, always presented nakedly and arrogantly in the middle of the plate. The servers are the Delta Force of the food-service world -- better trained and better prepared than anyone else out there, always on the spot wherever there's trouble. The seamless ballet of food and service leaves all the other steakhouses in this steakhouse-heavy city in the dust.

"Cheap" is a relative term when it comes to steakhouses. A one-man meal at Steakhouse 10 could easily run forty bucks, but the Kallas family piles on the value. Here there's no worrying about customizing plates, or adding pricey sides, because the steaks all come with potato and vegetables included. The Greek influence is an added bonus that shows through in some dishes, like the ubiquitous flaming saganaki, but it never overwhelms the core steakhouse vibe. The service is friendly, the dining room comfortable without being intimidating, and the prices are right on, with entrees topping out at around thirty bucks -- the point at which many other steakhouses start.

Bastien's sugar steak takes the prize -- it's an American classic. But so is Bastien's itself, a steakhouse that's been in constant operation since 1937 and left pretty much untouched since its heyday in the late '60s, making it the ultimate in anti-retro swank and earned cool. If Dino and the boys were ever to roll through town, Bastien's is where they'd hang their hats, knocking back martinis and sidecars in the bar, whooping it up under the cupola and digging into a round of sugar steaks. This steak is exactly what it sounds like -- tender beef glazed in sugar, caramelized against any possible exsanguination when on the grill -- and comes with salad and potato for just $18. Throw in a couple of cold ones, and make a night of it for less than thirty bucks.