Best Pupusa 2011 | Pupusas Sabor Hispano | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Pupusa

Pupusas Sabor Hispano

From the moment Pupusas Sabor Hispano opened five years ago in a dilapidated roadside shack in north Boulder, the citizens of the People's Republic clamored for more. They clamored so hard, in fact, that last fall owner Nancy Reed shuttered the original Pupusas and relocated to a bigger, more contemporary spot across the street. But while the new space is larger and loftier, the pupusas — orbs of masa stuffed with everything from fiddlehead ferns and Anaheim chiles to chicharrones, beans, rajas, zucchini and molten cheeses — remain as humble and delicious as ever. They're served with curtido, the tart and fiery slaw that's a pupusa's proverbial sidekick; if you want to take a ride on the wild side, you can dress them up from the well of flavor-bombed, fire-jolted salsas.

Best Ramen

Sachi Sushi

Mark Manger

Tucked into a corner of the Niwot Market grocery store, the modest Sachi Sushi spends most of the week serving up raw fish offerings. But on Sundays, owner Tsukasa Hibino cooks up a batch of authentic, Kyushu-style ramen that's better than anything you'll find along the Front Range. Cloudy tonkotsu broth, made by boiling pork and chicken bones for hours until the liquid is infused with heady flavor and velvety collagen, holds a mass of springy noodles, dense enough to balance a bevy of ingredients near the surface: cuts of fat-laced pork, strips of black seaweed, half a hard-boiled egg, bits of scallion, a sprinkling of sesame seeds and a star-shaped slice of pink-swirled narutomaki, a fish cake that adds more color than flavor to the bowl. The result is deeply aromatic and savory, the noodles fattening as they soak up liquid, your lips getting sticky with fat as you slurp the soup.

Best Restaurant Decor

Beatrice & Woodsley

When Kevin Delk and John Skogstad opened Beatrice & Woodsley, they crafted an elaborate backstory, weaving a tale of a woodsman and a daughter of a winemaking family who came to settle in the Colorado mountains. And then the restaurateurs brought the story to life, outfitting their Broadway spot with light wood slats, round booths that appear almost carved into the walls, chainsaws that hold up shelves behind the bar, and the most interesting — and puzzling — bathroom sinks we've ever seen. The whole place is softly lit by hanging lanterns and imbued with a fairytale ambience that makes you feel as if you're really dining in an enchanted forest.

Best Restaurant Neighborhood

LoHi

Right beside the 26-year-old Rosa Linda's Mexican Cafe, the two-year-old Squeaky Bean unleashes a porkerific platter of fine swine followed by Brussels with mussels. A few doors down the street, there's the burble of frivolity emanating from LoHi Steak Bar, home to the city's best chocolate pudding and blue-cheese fondue. Down the block and around the corner, culinary creativity awaits at Z Cuisine, a tiny French bistro with more regulars than an army. And then there's Lola, swimming in coastal Mexican seafood, and an itsy-bitsy bakery called the Wooden Spoon, and half a dozen more great restaurants within as many blocks. What do they all have in common? They all boast addresses at the edge of Highland — LoHi, as the real-estate pushers now call it — and those of you who live in that 'hood should consider yourselves extremely lucky, because this urbanized enclave boasts a group of restaurants that make the rest of the city sigh with envy.

Best Restaurant Street

Federal Boulevard

One of Denver's main north-south thoroughfares, Federal Boulevard is lined with dilapidated strip malls, a patched-together network of parking lots and unkempt buildings. Still, there's plenty to look at: an unbelievable assortment of excellent restaurants that serve cuisine from all over the globe. Federal is home to countless pho shops, several restaurants offering dim sum, many more Asian joints, and Mexican spots that range from seafood stops to burrito joints to kitchens that sling authentic menudo. And wherever there might be a gap in the buildings, there are taco trucks and carts serving fresh shrimp cocktail. Whether you're craving xiao long bao, banh mi or street tacos, you'll find it on Federal.

  • S. of I-70 and north of 285, Denver, 80219 Map

Best Rising-Star Chef

Jorel Pierce

Jorel Pierce worked the line at Rioja for nearly four years under chef Jennifer Jasinski (who owns Rioja, Euclid Hall and Bistro Vendôme with business partner Beth Gruitch) before taking his maverick prowess to Euclid Hall, where he now mans the kitchen. Pierce is confident, brilliantly innovative and, at 26, one of the city's youngest kitchen kingpins to pioneer a line that turns out what may very well be the most ambitiously executed menu in Denver. His board, a witty, pithy digest of under-represented foodstuffs — blood sausage, for instance — dazzles, as does he. "This is my life, this is what I do, and I take it very, very seriously," Pierce says of his craft — a craft that's just beginning to shape a very bright future.

Best Salsa Bar

El Jakalito Taqueria y Panaderia

In salsas, as in sex, it's all about the spice. And at El Jakalito, a canary-yellow taqueria that serves up tacos, gorditas, tostadas, tamales and tortas, the salsa bar — actually a stainless-steel cart — is filled with exotic concoctions powerfully fragrant with the fruit of chiles, most of them lashed with fire. You'll want to douse everything on your plate with a little of this and a little of that — a dab of red, a jolt of green, snapping up cucumbers, radish coins, ribbons of cabbage, marinated carrots and onions, and chubby pickled jalapeños, their seeds hotter than a Sunset Boulevard hooker — along the way.

Best Sandwich Shop

Spinelli's Market

Molly Martin

Generation after generation of sandwich lovers stroll through the aisles of this market-cum-sandwich emporium, pausing to rap with neighbors and non-neighbors — most of whom are headed for the deli case, filled with cold cuts and cheeses, salads and spreads, olives and roasted peppers, shells and sauce. During the lunch rush, Spinelli's Market is busier than a free day at the zoo, and the countermen, seasoned professionals who prefer that you order with rapidity, don't waste any time assembling your order. But with nearly two dozen choices on the board, selecting a sandwich can be beyond daunting. Fortunately, it doesn't really matter which way you roll: Everything — from the Reuben stacked with corned beef, lacy Swiss and sauerkraut to the hot Italian roast beef — is the stuff of daydreams.

Best Sandwiches

Carbone's

Mark Manger

The lines outside Carbone's spill onto the sidewalk, a declaration of the devotion that cultists have for this decades-old, ramshackle purveyor of Italian meats and cheeses, spicy peppers plumped with Provolone and prosciutto, dried pastas, frozen pastas, meatballs and marinara sauce and, most important, sandwiches. Owner Rose Lonardo knows just about everyone by name, and everyone certainly knows hers. She'll size you up faster than you can say "meatball," and she's a quick-witted master conversationalist. She also knows a thing or two about Italian sausage, which she makes in-house, flecking the ground pork with fennel and crushed red pepper. Her Italian-sausage sub, a flattened brick of pigginess sheeted with Provolone and tucked into a long, chewy roll smeared with an herb-specked marinara and dotted with pickled jalapeños, is one of the best sandwiches in Denver. So is the No. 2 Italian. Take our advice and get one of each.

Best Sausages

Il Mondo Vecchio

Mark DeNittis, Denver's high priest of salumi, is a sausage-slinging genius, his pristine laboratory of pig — and the state's only USDA-inspected salumeria — a shrine to dry-cured sausages and fresh sausage links made with amore from a hot-blooded Italian who's devoted his career to pimping meaty, salty, pudgy ropes and rings of porky goodness. Sausage-making is his passion, and after biting off more than we can chew — hot Italian sausage flecked with crushed red pepper, breakfast sausage injected with Stranahan's whiskey, British-style beer bangers, German beer brats, Greek loukanika, Polish sausages and Mexican chorizo — we still want more.

Best Of Denver®

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