We know, we know: Denver Central Market isn't so much a restaurant as it is a collection of stalls where you can buy everything from coffee to your weekly produce to a meatball sub. But this all-purpose food hall certainly functions as a restaurant, at least during lunch and dinner hours, when neighbors, gawkers and tourists descend on it en masse and post up at long tables with ceviche, pasta, sandwiches and porchetta, paired to all manner of drinks. It also functions as a meeting place, a cocktail bar (thank Curio bar for that), a meat and produce market, a coffee shop and, for Denver's many freelancers, a de facto office; that versatility ensures the place is packed nearly from when it opens in the morning until it closes late at night. Built into an old antiques warehouse, there's nothing else in the Mile High quite like it, which may be why Denver Central Market quickly became a neighborhood anchor in one of the fastest-growing parts of the city.
Readers' Choice: Rioja
