Best Restaurant Patio 2012 | Bittersweet | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Restaurant Patio

Bittersweet

How does your garden grow? Just ask Olav Peterson, the exec chef/owner of Bittersweet, who skillfully designed his fetching urban patio to ensure that his menu stays seasonal and fresh through much of the year. Strewn with shrubbery and shady trees that shimmer in the sun- and moonlight, as well as edible flowers, dozens of herbs and an abundance of vegetables, including squash and zucchini, numerous varieties of heirloom tomato plants, Swiss chard and collard greens, this is a gorgeous garden patio that makes eating in the great outdoors even greater.

Readers' Choice: Linger

Best Restaurant Patio With a View

Linger

Shawn Campbell

Justin Cucci's redesign of the old Olinger Mortuary is stunning, and the view of the skyline from inside Linger is lovely, too. But from high on the rooftop deck, tucked just below the old Olinger sign, the sight of the city stretching out before you is positively breathtaking. And while you point out features of the Platte Valley and downtown Denver beyond — even Pikes Peak on clear days — you can sip cocktails poured specially for this part of the restaurant. Even the patio itself is a pretty picture: At night, it twinkles under strands of Christmas lights and takes on an air of intimacy — no matter that it's usually packed to capacity. And soon, Linger will have a kitchen up there, too.

Readers' Choice: Linger

Best Return to Glory

Barolo Grill

Barolo Grill

This past summer, when owner Blair Taylor took the staff of his twenty-year-old restaurant on their annual trip to Italy, he used the time to give the interior of Barolo Grill an update, keeping the red-and-gold color scheme but getting rid of the '90s-era wall hangings and artwork in favor of a cleaner, more classic feel. The menu, too, has been updated. Barolo still offers two ways to dine: à la carte, or from a fixed-price, five-course tasting menu. But the kitchen's offerings have become more playful, with unexpected combinations — such as risotto and escargot — and unusual garnishes, including persimmon and pumpkin flakes. Impeccable service caps off the experience, and as this restaurant enters its third decade, it has not only reaffirmed its relevance to the Denver dining scene, but evolved into an exciting spot that keeps getting better.

Best Rise From the Ashes

Oak at Fourteenth

Evan Semón

Business at the six-month-old Oak at Fourteenth was on fire when the restaurant actually caught fire last March, forcing owners Bryan Dayton and Steve Redzikowski to rebuild their spot from the ground up. It was a long road back, but after nine months the partners finally reopened Oak's doors in December, revealing a restaurant that was even better than before. Besides making some big changes to the aesthetic — including an expansion and a decor scheme focused on warm woods and light-blue glass — the partners revamped the menu and drink list, keeping their upscale North American neighborhood restaurant theme but adding a few twists and surprises, including housemade, bottled alcoholic sodas.

Best Rising Chef

Samir Mohammad

Forget Smashburger and Chipotle. Samir Mohammad, the chef of Village Cork, is the best thing to emerge in Denver in years. Long before he could drive, the Miami-born kitchen king, who was raised in New Mexico, was blistering his hands cooking red and green chile, flipping burgers and tossing pizzas, shaping a culinary career that would ultimately lead him to Denver — and to his own unassailable brand of globe-trotting cuisine, which he shares with enamored diners who drop their jaws in awe at each plate. His kitchen might be limited in equipment, but there's no end to his mad talent and chutzpah.

Best Rum Selection

Cafe Brazil

Summer Powell

As cocktail culture ramped up in Colorado and many spots started focusing on gin-and-housemade-tonic or drinks that were brown, bitter and stirred, Café Brazil decided to give drinkers a place where they could learn about sugarcane spirits, so they added a beach-themed Rum Room. The best education is delivered in the rum flights, lineups that each showcase four of the spot's 75 offerings. For an understanding of what aging does to alcohol, try the Flor de Cana flight, which offers a side-by-side comparison of the same Nicaraguan rum aged four, five, seven and twelve years. Or experience how four different countries make rum with the South American flight, which includes selections from Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. Our favorite could be the Añejo flight, four heady samples of stuff aged at least 21 years, basking in their vanilla-caramel glory and so smooth you could be sipping nice bourbon. If you're not ready to try your rum neat, Cafe Brazil makes great versions of Caribbean cocktails, including the Brazilian caipirinha, a sexy sweet mojito and batidas — icy fruit juice disguising the spirit so well that it's almost impossible not to suck down the drink much too fast. And if you're really into rum, make sure to ask about special offerings not on the list: The Rum Room keeps some rare stuff on a back shelf for true fans.

Best Salad Bar/Shop

Fourleaf Chopped Salads

The Denver Tech Center is full of green energy, thanks to Fourleaf Chopped Salads, a homegrown marvel. This subterranean spot is only open weekdays, and only at lunch — when it's always packed. The menu features a dozen specialty salads, as well as some basic choices of greens, a couple dozen dressing options and a dizzying number of proteins and other possible additions: tofu, shrimp, turkey, salami, three kinds of chicken, apples, artichoke hearts, avocado, broccoli, chickpeas, corn, cranberries, eggs, jicama, olives, peas, pasta, sunflower seeds...and on and on. After you choose between iceberg, romaine, spinach or spring mix, you can add as few or as many toppings as you like; everything is then stashed in a bowl, and just before serving, a staffer dumps the mix on a cutting board and works it over with a giant, two-handled rocking knife that chops it all into bite-sized pieces. It's fresh, it's fast, and it's amazingly good.

Readers' Choice: Mad Greens

Best Salsa Bar

Carnitas Estilo Michoacan

"Burn, baby, burn" should be the slogan of Carnitas Estilo Michoacán,a superior taqueria whose savage salsas would knock Mike Tyson out of the boxing ring...after just one round. There are ten in all, in varying hues of green, orange, red and firecracker, residing in side-by-side metal buckets. There's a creamy avocado, jalapeño and tomatillo version; another with honey, fresh orange juice and bracing chile de arbol, as well as a hell-hot salsa with mixed chiles that hits more high notes than most mariachi bands. The salsa bar is stocked with plenty of other street-taco requisites, too, including sliced radishes, cucumbers, cilantro, lime wedges and pickled onions, carrots and jalapeños. And while there's no alcohol to dull the pain (a liquor license is pending), the housemade aguas frescas are terrific.

Readers' Choice: Tacos y Salsas

Best Sandwich Shop

Masterpiece Delicatessen

You can get a sandwich just about anywhere, but if you want to wrap your muzzle around a monument, then you need to go to the master of sandwich-making. And that's Masterpiece Deli, the spot that Justin Brunson opened several years ago in Lower Highland, before this part of town was a hot restaurant neighborhood. The come-to-Jesus white-truffled egg salad is the best in the city, but you can say the same for the Italian and the roasted vegetable, the pastrami special and the braised beef brisket on a baguette. This shop sticks to a simple formula: Use the best ingredients you can get your hands on (Brunson's own bacon, for example). And the result is inevitably a masterpiece.

Readers' Choice: Snarf's

Best Seafood Restaurant

Jax Fish House

Jax Fish House

This LoDo shrine to aquatics — thankfully bereft of any Disneyland-under-the-sea nonsense — is quite a catch for crab cakes, catfish and calamari, paddlefish and luxurious caviar, as well as a lovely raw bar glistening with oysters, the true benchmark of a seafood restaurant. Purists will insist that fresh oysters need no adulteration; dispense with the cocktail sauce and the Mignonette, they'll demand, and for chrissakes, never, ever cook them, they'll tell you, shuddering at the mere thought of oysters Rockefeller. And Jax does hustle fresh, briny oysters by the boatload, their exposed flesh scented with nothing more than the purity of the exotic sea. But there are exceptions to every rule — even for purists. To wit: the Hama Hama oyster, the fat mollusk floating in a tide pool of classic buerre blanc, its body festooned with translucent orbs of salmon roe, microgreens and scant shavings of black Périgord truffles. Proof positive that life is better on the half shell.

Readers' Choice: Jax Fish House

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