Best Steakhouse for Democrats 2007 | Club 404 | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Steakhouse for Democrats

Club 404

Even though this Broadway landmark now sports a renovated dining room, it hasn't lost an inch of history or an ounce of soul. Club 404 is the kind of joint that attracts everyone from local construction workers to the guys from Antique Row, Broadway street creatures, daytime drinkers, broke neighborhood hipsters, finger-licking carnivores and families looking for a cheap night out involving a fat steak, an iceberg salad and a couple of cold beers that won't put them into bankruptcy arbitration. Wait long enough and you'll see half the city pass through this bar. And no one ever leaves Club 404 hungry.

Best Steakhouse for Republicans

Northwoods Inn

The steaks are big, the sides are big, the tables are big -- everything about the Northwoods Inn is big except the prices, which are reasonable if you consider that the meals are all-inclusive and portions can be measured by the pound. This is a family spot, owned by the same family for generations (and through two locations) and catering to big clans interested only in the simplicity of a bygone age, when Ronald Reagan was still a TV star. It's also an indisputably Western restaurant, with its penchant for square-state chuckwagon chic (soup is served communally in a cast-iron pot) and a decor comprising framed, folksy witticisms and the heads of dead animals hanging on the walls. Move 'em out!

Best Steakhouse for Tourists

Buckhorn Exchange

Buckhorn Exchange
If you have friends coming in from out of state, a passel of carnivorous German tourists to impress, family in town expecting a "real Western experience" or just a pressing need to find a menu with balls (literally) late on a Thursday night, head on over to the Buckhorn. The staff is one of the friendliest and most accommodating in the city. The menu (which is translated into a half-dozen languages) consists almost entirely of meat -- primarily beef steaks of various crippling sizes, but also some unusual game dishes always handled with surprising restraint -- and the atmosphere is dark, cluttered, historic (there's actually a museum upstairs past the bar full of guns, whiskey bottles and other civilizing artifacts of the good ol' days) and full of vicious creatures that have been shot, stuffed, mounted and forced into an eternity of watching you eat parts of their brethren. Serves them right for being so delicious.

Best BBQ

Cabin Creek Smokehouse BBQ

Courtesy Cabin Creek Smokehouse Facebook
The standard barbecue offerings at Cabin Creek are excellent: the ribs stiff and smoked all the way to the bone with a surface like shellacked hardwood; the pork juicy, fatty, tender and woody-sweet, turned electric with the addition of a great Carolina mustard-and-vinegar sauce. But what elevates this spot above all other barbecue joints is the rest of the menu. The kitchen does open-faced barbecue sandwiches and barbecue po' boys. It does green chile shot with barbecued pork, cowboy chili made molasses-sweet, and red-chile-spiked baked beans hit with a handful of pulled pork or shredded brisket. The crew also rolls a terrific barbecue burrito, wrapping spicy beans and pork in a tortilla and smothering it with green chile, cheese and sour cream. And then there's the ultimate in barbecue-junkie midnight hangover food: the BBQ masher, a bowl of mashed red-skin potatoes topped with pulled pork or brisket, topped again with cheese and again with sour cream. There hasn't been anything done better with barbecue since the first pork sandwich with pickles was invented.

Best BBQ Sandwich

Sam Taylor's Bar-B-Que

The worst thing about barbecue is waiting for it. And the worst thing about wet barbecue is that it can't be eaten while driving. Well, not without seriously compromising the resale value of your ride. Thus, the very worst thing about Sam Taylor's barbecue -- which comes slathered in a thick, sticky, gloss-black sauce, a Tennessee-meets-K.C. riff that packs both heat and sweet -- is that it's done wet, which means the only thing to do when you're buying a whole lot of barbecue to go is to top off your order with a "poke sammich" -- a pork sandwich done on a grilled roll with enough structural integrity that you can eat it one-handed in traffic.

Best BBQ Pork

Yazoo BBQ Company

Cassandra Kotnik
When Yazoo owner Don Hines says he's doing Deep South barbecue, he's not kidding. He's from Mississippi, and it shows when he smokes. His meat cooks low and slow -- twelve hours -- over a combination of hickory and pecan wood, with only a strong dry rub to keep it company. As his website advises, "All Yazoo meat items can fend for themselves in taste, but we will let you add different barbecue sauces." That always kills us -- "let you," as if the pit man needs to grant permission before anyone can fuck up his own supper. But Don's right: Straight from the smoker, Yazoo's meat -- and in particular, the pork shoulder, powerfully flavored by sweet pecan and hickory smoke -- is so good that absolutely nothing else is required.

Best Asian BBQ

Pacific Ocean International Market

Barbecue isn't an exclusively American passion. Far beyond the traditions of this country's pit masters, there's a world full of ropa vieja, churrasco and smoky roasted pig head that drives us just as wild as that perfect shredded pork butt redolent of hickory and slapped with a brush of sweet-hot K.C. mop. To us, barbecue is a global sensation, a borderless pleasure that has the same meaning in Guangdong Province as it does in Greenville. And when we're in need of a fix of international barbecue, we head straight for the counter at Pacific Ocean. Here, Chinese barbecued pork -- along with trotters, pig's heads and all the other carnivorous Asian ephemera -- is laid out in huge slabs and orders measured either in pounds or the space between two fingers, then taken home and sliced or shredded for shameless midnight consumption.

Best BBQ From a
Drive-Thru

Jim 'n Nick's

Hunter Stevens
What's better than barbecue? That's right: fast barbecue. While Jim 'n Nick's has all the trappings of a traditional barbecue restaurant -- tables, menus, waiters and such -- what makes it special is the drive-thru. Not only can you order off the entire menu here, but service is lightning-quick, and the real wood smokers fill every car with the smell of good old-fashioned brick-pit barbecue.

Best Potato Chips

Govnr's Park

In thirty years, you learn to do some things right. And Govnr's Park, which marked its thirtieth anniversary last summer, does potato chips very, very right: sliced thin, freshly fried, salted and served on greasy waxed paper.

Best French Fries

Via

Since chef James Mazzio took over the kitchen at Via, a lot of things have improved. The biggest improvement? Definitely the fries, which are now so good they'd be impossible to improve on. Served in a tall paper cone stuck inside a cool wrought-iron holder, in both presentation and taste these are reminiscent of the award winners that Mazzio served at the late, lamented Triana. They're cut thin, fried just right, hit with a little sugar and a little spice mix, then served with a side of excellent housemade horseradish cream sauce. Fries don't get any better than this.

Best Of Denver®

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