There is nothing more Denver than the Executive Lunch at the Buckhorn Exchange. It's the perfect combination of pot roast and dark rye bread, a sandwich and a bean soup, Denver's past and Denver's current. Well, not so much the current, as there is really nothing current about the place except for the prices.
A runner up is Charlie Brown's. The food isn't great. The service is friendly but unspectacular. The drinks aren't always mixed right. But it was good enough for Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg. And I always think of Denver when I'm in there. A beat city on the windswept, snowy plains, lying across I-70 like sweet, sad roadkill. And here we are in the heart of Victorian Capitl Hill, where beat got its name. Like Denver, it's a combination of whites, blacks, Hispanics, cowboys, native Americans, poets, artists, hippies, yuppies, young hopeful kids, crazed old men who talk to trees, punks, gangbangers, government bureaucrats, Republicans, Democrats -- whatever and whoever the wind couldn't blow into Kansas....
Couldn't have said it better myself. -- Jason Sheehan