Best Vegetarian Restaurant 2012 | WaterCourse Foods | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Vegetarian Restaurant

WaterCourse Foods

Danielle Lirette

WaterCourse Foods just keeps getting better. The atmosphere has always been lovely: The open, airy space features animals and landscapes painted across the walls by Ravi Zupa, with tall stools lining the bar and comfortable booths tucked by the walls. But over the past year, WaterCourse cut out its weekday breakfast hours, allowing chef Rachel Kesley to concentrate on the meals where the kitchen really shines: lunch and dinner. In addition to a solid spread of appetizers, salads, sandwiches and other entrees, there are daily specials, including creative soups and rotating cheese boards, and the dessert tray is massive and decadent. Add to those elements a solid wine and beer list, and you've got a vegetarian restaurant that caters to any palate, every day of the week. But Kesley's penchant for rolling out multi-course spreads tied to Valentine's Day, Denver Beer Week and other blowout occasions makes this a great special-occasion spot, too.

Readers' Choice: WaterCourse

Best Vegetarian/Vegan Food Truck

Vegan Van

Amie Arias took to the streets with the Vegan Van last November, bringing an international menu to different points about Denver. She changes her lineup regularly, so whether her van is pulling up to Great Divide or idling at a corner for lunch, there's always something interesting to try; the rotating winter selections have included a notable take on a Caesar salad, a buffalo-tofu sandwich and beer-battered nori "fish," as well as dessert specials and flavor-infused waters. Wherever the Vegan Van cruises, plant-based eaters are certain to follow.

Best Veggie Burger

Park Burger

Park Burger makes the best veggie burger in the city, hands down. A grain-based patty is bound together with egg and then smashed on the grill until it's perfectly browned; the chef then adds lettuce, tomato, onion, a special sauce and whatever else you might want, including a fried egg, mushrooms or onions. The regular fries make a perfect traditional side, or you can mix things up with the sweet-potato variety. Whether you want to wash your meal down with a cold draft beer or a Moscow Mule, arm yourself with plenty of napkins — because it's going to be a falling-apart, messy, delicious ride until the savory end. Even without moo juice.

Readers' Choice: Park Burger

Best Vietnamese Hot Pot

DaLat

It's no secret that some of the best cooking in town happens on Federal Boulevard, Denver's melting pot of noodles and pho, street tacos and salsas, dim sum and durian. If you aren't willing to duck into a seedy taqueria that's roosting next to a foot massage parlor, or a restaurant adjacent to a liquor store that reeks of stale cigarettes, then you're going to miss out on on some special dishes — including the seafood hot pot at DaLat. This Vietnamese spot has a behemoth menu — make that menus — that can make ordering a challenge, if only because there are so many dishes that beg for your attention. Still, while the pages go on...and on...and on, it's rare that we make it past the hot pot, a seething ocean of broth bubbling with crushed chiles, perfectly cooked seafood, crisp vegetables and astringent Vietnamese basil, one of the most herbaceous scents in the universe.

Best Vietnamese Restaurant

Saigon Bowl

Saigon Bowl has held down its spot in the Far East Center for more than fifteen years, but it would probably take a lifetime to eat your way through its extensive menu. The kitchen cooks up a vast array of bun and worthy, consistent pho, but it also turns out stir-fried frog's legs, jellyfish salad, lobster tail, a variety of traditional fish preparations — including one stewed for hours in a clay pot — and a particularly excellent seafood soup, served in a flame-shooting pot. The specialty, though, is the restaurant's appetizer combo, a platter piled high with soft-shelled crab, egg rolls, grilled pork and shrimp paste served with a stack of rice papers and a mélange of produce so you can create your own rolls.

Readers' Choice: New Saigon

Best Waffle

City, O' City

Hunter Stevens

When we've maxed out our meat quota, the kitchen at City, O' City, one of Denver's few vegetarian restaurants, does a body good, especially at breakfast time. We're bewitched by the joint's savory waffle, a gluten-free marvel made with potato starch and tapioca flour, that's pelted with zucchini, flax seeds and carrots. Ringed with a creamy garlic-and-shallot-scented Taleggio sauce that's richer than Oprah, and topped with a crop of roasted root vegetables — and an egg if you want it — this is the waffle to beat.

Best Wheat Meat

Denver Seitan Company

If you've ever cooked with store-bought seitan, you know how slimy and downright unappetizing the stuff can be. And while making your own seitan is a relatively easy process, it's tedious and time-consuming. But now Denver Seitan Company has packaged the convenience of store-bought seitan with the taste of the homemade stuff — and the result will have even your carnivore friends drooling. Cooked up weekly in Chickenesque, SmokySpicy, Sicilian and Sureizo varieties, this seitan is delivered to two designated pickup locations in Wash Park and Capitol Hill — and you get discounts if you purchase a membership. When it comes to wheat meat, there's nothing like DSC seitan.

Best Wine Bar

Cellar Wine Bar

We've visited a lot of wine bars in our time, and despite the fact that we should be their ideal customer — we're obsessed with wine! We have an insatiable thirst! — more often than not we end up disappointed rather than delighted. But that's never the case at Cellar Wine Bar, which is an incredibly comfortable spot with an amazing array of wine. Walking through the front door, you're greeted like family by one of Denver's most passionate wine purveyors, Evan Williams, who practically glows with giddiness over the latest cool pick he can't wait to pour you. And you might be tempted to simply let him choose, because all of the Cellar's ten wine flights look ridiculously good. And then there are the possibilities available by the glass — more than fifty vintages. As Cellar approaches its second birthday, we're starting to suspect that just like a great bottle, this wine bar will only get better with age.

Readers' Choice: Cru Wine Bar

Best Wine List

Row 14 Bistro & Wine Bar

Mark Manger

We fell head over heels in love with Row 14's wine list the first time we laid eyes on it. Curated with a heady mix of precision, nuance and a food-focused viewpoint by owner David Schneider, this list reads like a wine geek's all-star lineup of fantasy bottles, and is definitely edgier than other rosters in this city — edgier, but not unapproachable. Oenophile-worthy bottles of chenin blanc and grüner veltliner cuddle up to familiar pinot grigio; varietal cab franc and carmenère share space with pinots from around the globe. But what truly makes this list so sublime is its ongoing, wholehearted dedication to repping the entire wide world of wine — and that includes paying respect via its "Colorado Proud" flight to some of the best bottles to be found right here in our own back yard.

Best Wings

Vine Street Pub & Brewery

Though sports bars the world over serve up chicken wings, it's surprisingly difficult to find good ones: If they're not limp and soggy after being tossed in the fryer straight out of the freezer bag, they're smothered in some creative sauce that's no improvement on the original. But at Vine Street Pub, the chicken wings really soar. Large and meaty, the bone-in bits of bird are fried until the skin is crispy and the flesh juicy, then served piping hot, six to an order. Though you can opt for a sweet, sticky barbecue sauce, our favorite slather is the traditional, lip-stinging red hot, well-paired with a cooling side of ranch or chunky blue cheese dressing.

Readers' Choice: Quaker Steak and Lube

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