Best Cheap Breakfast 2007 | The Bagel Store | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Cheap Breakfast

The Bagel Store

Cassandra Kotnik
The Bagel Store sits in a quiet strip mall in the heart of Little Russia, but it's staffed by young guys who really know their Jewish doughnut. You can smell the place doing it right, and if you show up early (the shop closes at 2 p.m. on the dot), you can even look through the doors to the huge bakery in the back, where guys work the dough as bagels steam in vats of water. While the Bagel Store does a passable version of an East Coast egg bagel, the fantastic salt bagel is the real deal -- and you can pick up a half-dozen for less than four bucks.

Best Breakfast in Bed

Les Delices de Paris

There's no better way to start the day than with breakfast in bed, and there's no better place to stock up than Les Delices de Paris. Walking into the warm, bright, well-scrubbed interior of the little pastry shop -- which is decorated almost exclusively with the diplmes and certificats de travail earned by owners Alexandre and Christelle Donat -- is like walking into another world: one of pure sensation, of cream and sugar, fine flour, yeast and butter and salt. The menu (such as it is) reads like poetry, like love: brioche and charlotte, tuiles, meringuette, merveilleux and fruits tartellet. Make it easy on yourself and order one of everything. Better yet, order two -- because then there's a chance you'll have something left over for breakfast in bed tomorrow.

Best International Breakfast

British Bulldog

It might be seven in the morning, but across the pond in Merry Olde England, the lads are already tying on their spikes and getting ready to have a bit of a kick-around. If you're one of that growing number of Americans with a taste for English Premier League soccer and are willing to get up and out of the house early in the morning in order to watch a game, shouldn't there be a place that caters to you? Well, now there is. Saturday and Sunday mornings at the British Bulldog are meant for two things: watching the clubs play, and gigantic English breakfasts of two eggs runny, rashers of bacon, bangers, a fat slice of fried tomato, baked beans and black (meaning blood) pudding. Make that three things, since two free drafts come with your meal.

Best Really International Breakfast

Pho 79

Some people are willing to take a chance on unfamiliar cuisines at dinner, some will risk it at midday. But for Denver's true gastronauts, breakfast is when you earn your stripes. And there's no better (or more delicious) international wake-up call than Pho 79. At any time of the day, the only thing on the menu is pho -- but there are three sizes (the small is huge, the large big enough for a family) and countless DIY options (from simple meatballs and flank steak to the stronger and tastier tripe and tendon), and the tangled jungle of basil, lime, chiles and sprouts that comes with every order is all you need to construct the perfect breakfast. Throw in a tall glass of iced Vietnamese coffee that's like the second cousin of nitromethane, and you'll never look at a plate of eggs and bacon the same way again.

Best Breakfast Burrito

Santiago's

Although burritos are the breakfast of champions in Denver, there are two camps on what constitutes a proper breakfast burrito. One side likes theirs on a plate, served huge and messy, slopped up with chile and requiring a fork. Then there are those who like them thin, manageable and ready to go. We fall solidly into this camp, but we also like surprises. And that's where Santiago's, a homegrown chain that seems to be taking over the world, comes in. Not only does Santiago's serve breakfast burritos every day, but it serves a different breakfast burrito every day: bacon one day, chorizo the next. No matter what's inside, the burritos are cheap, tidy and wrapped in foil, which means there's no reason not to order several and eat them on the run.

Best Breakfast Burrito at 2 A.M.

Viva Burrito Company

It's late, you're hungry and you've got a car full of dumb-ass buddies who are already too fucked up to drive and far too irresponsible to be trusted with choosing an appropriate spot for a late-night burrito fix. It's at moments like these that you should be thankful for Viva Burrito Company. The Leetsdale location has zero decor and zero ambience, but the food coming out of this little red box is just what's needed, whether you're looking to sober up, come down or just make it through another night. And after you're done with your breakfast burrito, come back through for some deep-fried tacos: This drive-thru's open 24/7.

Best Taste of the D.F.

Los Carboncitos

Courtesy Los Carboncitos Highlands Facebook
Free chips and salsa, a night-and-day crush of crowds that would send any demographer running home in tears, and huaraches -- the greatest food ever named after a shoe. These are just some of the attributes that make Los Carboncitos a true taste of the Distrito Federal. This is the Mexican equivalent of an American diner -- an all-comers oasis where a real Mexican Coke, a couple of tacos and a giant slab of grill-seared cornmeal dough topped with beans and cheese and shrimp and pork and steak and whatever else you can think of is better and more honest than the food you'll find at any dozen Nuevo Latino/Meximerican restaurants specializing in candlelight and white tablecloths.

Best Burrito Vendor

Milagro Burrito

Let's face it: Any burrito vendor is going to look pretty good when you're leaving a club at 2 a.m. -- or when you arrive at the office at 8 a.m. (after having left the club at 2 a.m.) with a hangover, jonesing for the fix that only green chile can provide. And as long as we're being honest, we must note that many of the burrito vendors peddling their wares around town might also be operating without benefit of all the necessary permits. Not only is Milagro Burrito on the up-and-up, but after one bite of its shredded beef, potato and chile burrito, you'll find that things are looking up for you, too. The home kitchen makes hundreds of burritos every day in more than a dozen combinations, then sends them out in coolers carried by vendors whose regular routes make them the most popular people in town.

Best Taste of Hong Kong

Mee Yee Lin

This year, the longtime dim sum favorite Mee Yee Lin left West Alameda for Aurora -- but it might as well be Hong Kong, if you're ordering the Hong Kong shrimp dumpling soup. The powerful, salty clear broth is filled with whole-leaf greens and about a dozen wispy, shrimp-packed dumplings that drift like sea anemones around the bottom for a true taste of strange climes and foreign latitudes. Order it with some shumai, another Mee Yee Lin specialty, and you're immediately transported to the mysterious East.

Best Dim Sum

Super Star Asian

Cassandra Kotnik
When it opened early in 2006, Super Star Asian didn't just raise the bar on Chinese cuisine. It took the bar, broke it over its knee, threw the pieces away and then made an entirely new bar that's held so high you can't even see it from the kitchens of most of the Chinese joints in this town. The daily dim sum is amazing -- an ever-changing, never-ending panoply of delicious things to shove in your mouth, the best you're going to find anywhere outside of Chinatown in San Francisco or New York. And even the regular menu (served during the dinner shift, when dim sum is also available) holds its own among Denver's best.

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