Best Chinese Takeout 2007 | East China | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Chinese Takeout

East China

There are few pleasures in life more satisfying than laying out a huge spread of Chinese takeout on the coffee table and settling in for a late-night Barney Miller marathon on cable. Maybe it's the notion of eating straight from those waxy cardboard cartons. Maybe it's the freedom of gorging yourself on cheap, greasy sweet-and-sour chicken and eating dumplings with your fingers. Maybe it's Abe Vigoda. But no matter what makes Chinese takeout such a joy (or compulsion, depending on your personality), it's important to have a good place on speed dial for those nights when the urge becomes overpowering. And for us, that place is East China, which has a big menu, low prices and understanding hours.

Best Korean Restaurant

Han Kang

At many Korean restaurants, the food seems like an endless repetition of grilled beef, rice, onions and the occasional egg. But at Han Kang, that's just where the food begins. The best dishes on this menu are those that are nearly unpronounceable -- deeply flavored soups, spicy seafoods, mounds of bright vegetables and proteins tossed together in endless combinations. And then there's the procession of sides that comes with every meal, the most recognizable of which is kimchee (identifiable by smell at ten paces when done correctly). But at Han Kang, every side is delicious and functional as salad, garnish, flavor enhancer and appetizer all at once. This kitchen will give you a new appreciation for Korean food.

Best Thai Restaurant

US Thai

Mark Antonation
US Thai is so delicious, so friendly, so addictive that we had to make a half-dozen visits over the course of a couple of weeks just to make absolutely sure that the restaurant was as good as we thought it was. And it was, every single time. This is authentic Thai food done in a simple, street-food style that forgoes all tricks and complications in favor of straightforward presentations of the hallmark curries and rice dishes that define Thai cuisine. The Penang and masaman curries are so habit-forming that they ought to be listed as narcotic; the dumplings, spring rolls and egg rolls are brilliant; and even something as simple as the Thai iced coffee has us dreaming about the next time we'll be able to get out to Edgewater for another fix.

Best Indian Restaurant

Royal Peacock

For decades, Royal Peacock's Shanti Awatramani has been serving some of the best Indian food in the United States. Before that, he worked in some of the best Indian restaurants, hotels and resorts in Bombay. He grew up in the hotel-and-restaurant business (as did his niece, Laxmi Lalchandani, who often runs the floor at the Peacock these days), and everything he learned he brought with him to Boulder, where he opened the Royal Peacock. The menu has been largely unchanged from the first day -- basic biryani, murgh chaat, samosa and rogan josh -- but there's no reason to change it, because everything is fabulous. There's no gimmickry here, no flash, no bizarre fusions served in sleek dining rooms. Royal Peacock simply offers the most honest, delicious dishes passed down through generations of a restaurant family known halfway around the world for being the best at what they do.

Best Indian Buffet

Little India

Westword
At this point, Indian buffets are almost ubiquitous. Which is handy, because that means you never have to go very far in Denver for an inexpensive hit of saag paneer or tandoori chicken. But with the profusion of options, it's also more and more difficult to tell the good from the bad. There's an easy solution for that: Just head for the best midday feast in town, the buffet at the original Little India. Don't let the full parking lot worry you. Or the line at the door. Or the line at the buffet. No matter how long you have to wait, once you've loaded your plate with rich, deeply flavored saag, biryani, chickpea salad and chicken tandoori from the frequently refilled chafing dishes, you'll know you've come to the right place.

Best Taste of History

Jewel of India

Courtesy Jewel of India Facebook
Anyone can invent some freaky, prawn-and-jackfruit Asian fusion plate with chrysanthemum flowers and pierogi. Some people might even think it inspired. But for us, true talent lies in the ability to cook the favorite plate of your great-great-great-grandfather and make it just the way he liked it more than a century ago. If that ancestor liked Mughlai cuisine -- the food of raiders and interlopers, siege rations brought into India by Muslim invaders -- then he'd appreciate Jewel of India. And so would anyone else ever taken aback -- stunned, stricken momentarily dumb -- by the depth of richness and layered flavor of an Indian entree. The culinary world has the Mughals to thank for that; we're just thankful that Jewel of India keeps the tradition alive.

Best Vegetarian Indian

Masalaa

Creamed spinach can be great, but the best friend that creamed spinach ever had was a steak. Make that the best American friend that creamed spinach ever had was a steak, because there are plenty of ethnic restaurants where vegetarianism is not about the denial of pleasure (read: meat), but the glorification of vegetables. And at Masalaa, you'll be so busy eating creamed spinach with twenty different spices and squeaky cubes of cheese -- better known as saag paneer -- that you won't give a thought to the missing pork chops or porterhouse. There's just too much on this menu to enjoy. The gigantic food-as-art dosa are meals in themselves, the innumerable chickpea creations are excellent, and every creamy, rich and stunningly complex sauce is a masterwork.

Best Vegetarian Restaurant

D Note

The D Note's menu isn't entirely vegetarian, but the parts that are -- better than half of the offerings, with many of them completely vegan -- are so good that you'll barely notice the lack of pepperoni and hot Italian sausage. And if you do, there's always the other half of the menu on which to slake your carnivorous bloodthirst. Chef Amy Wroblewski and the DeGraff brothers, who own the D Note, have assembled a wild board of custom pizzas with carefully sourced, high-quality ingredients piled so high you'll never leave hungry. For vegetarians, virtue has its own reward: an overloaded monster covered in oil and basil pesto, huge puffs of ricotta cheese, vegan mozzarella, artichoke hearts or anything else your twig- and berry-eating heart desires.

Best Greens

Mercury Cafe

Who is this city's most fierce, forward-forging green advocate? The answer is blowing in the wind. This year, Marilyn Megenity -- who infuses her Mercury Cafe with good, organic food and intelligent entertainment and fuels her own car with vegetable-oil fuel -- took out a loan on her home so she could install two forty-foot-tall Air X turbines on the roof of the Merc's longtime home in downtown Denver. Though Megenity's quixotic installation (which is small in comparison to those that whir out on the prairie) isn't big enough to completely cover the restaurant's energy-consumption needs, the windmills do something else just as important: They set an example for the rest of us.

Best Garden in a Restaurant

Gaia Bistro

Gaia is the goddess of the earth and everything that comes from the earth, including all of the wonderful dishes -- the buttery quiches and buckwheat crepes wrapped around peppered lamb loin with wild mushrooms and fragrant pots of French-pressed, organic Kaladi Brothers coffee -- served by Patrick Mangold-White and Jon Edwards at Gaia, a restaurant tucked into a little clapboard house on South Pearl. But it's in the summer months that the place really comes alive. That's when the focus moves from the charming window seats indoors to the outdoors, where the raised beds in the back yard produce much of the menu's ingredients. This is truly a garden of the food gods.

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