The Best Restaurants in Denver

The strip-mall address on East Alameda is doing this Italian restaurant no favors, but the inside goes full fine-dining with veal marsala, house pasta, and pizzas that take themselves seriously. The kitchen also folds in the brothers' Mexican heritage on the brunch menu, which keeps things from getting too reverent. Regulars apparently start with the calamari and work backward from there.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Fried Calamari · Best of Denver

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3. Westword 2023 · Best Pickle Shots · Best of Denver

A walk-up sandwich counter tucked at the end of a thin alley in Five Points, with old photos of famous Dukes lining the path to the window. The menu runs to four sandwiches, which sounds like a dare until you see the chopped cheese, a New York import of griddle-smashed beef and white cheddar on a soft hoagie with pepperoncini. Naming your place "Good Sandwiches" is either false modesty or excellent bait.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Sandwich Shop in an Alley · Best of Denver

A food hall just west of Denver where you can walk in for tacos, stay for Ethiopian, and leave with a new tattoo if the afternoon really gets away from you. The layout is easygoing enough that grabbing a drink first while you decide where to eat feels like the obvious move. Vendors rotate and grow, so there's usually something new to investigate alongside the regulars.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Food Hall · Best of Denver

The green chile here is a gravy-thick, pork-studded Colorado classic that regulars order straight up with tortillas, no plate required. El Tejado is an old-school Mexican diner on South Broadway, and the room does look a bit like a cartoon cave, which somehow suits it. The hot version of that chile is a separate proposition entirely, built in layers rather than just spiked, and it will find your limits.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Liver and Onions · Best of Denver

The curry is the reason regulars keep coming back, which surprises people who think of Vietnam and curry in the same sentence as a typo. This strip-mall Vietnamese spot in Aurora has been serving pho and homey staples forever, but the house curry, built on madras powder, coconut milk, and a heavy hand with lemongrass, lands somewhere all its own. Nothing Thai about it, nothing Indian, just a dish that makes the menu feel longer than most.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Vietnamese Restaurant · Best of Denver

The menu comes with a warning: "Hot, not recommended for the first-time visitor." This no-frills Thai spot takes that seriously, leaning on Thai chiles the way other places lean on salt. Green curry, larb, drunken noodles, and pineapple fried rice all land with real heat beneath the lemongrass and galangal. Order mild if you want to taste dinner rather than survive it.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Thai Delivery · Best of Denver

A coffee shop that also pours wine and cocktails, Little Finch sits on the 16th Street Mall as one of the rare locally owned spots among the chain-store sprawl. The team behind Olive & Finch built it to run all day, moving from pastries and fresh-pressed juices through sandwiches and salads into a proper bar program, which is either very convenient or very dangerous depending on your afternoon.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Addition to the 16th Street Mall · Best of Denver

A food trailer parked in a restaurant's lot, Pablito's slings breakfast burritos to the green-chile-obsessed Denver crowd that takes these things very seriously. The menu runs four standards plus a build-your-own, but most people end up ordering the one called The Best Damn Burrito...Period, which commits fully to its own marketing. Westword named it Denver's best breakfast burrito in 2023, and the line on a cold morning makes a decent argument.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Breakfast Burrito · Best of Denver

Pochitos is a north Denver tortilla factory that also sells tamales by the dozen, and that second fact tends to overshadow the first. It's a bulk-buy, family-run shop where you stock the fridge: tortillas, chips, salsas, refried beans, rice, and masa for the ambitious. The tamales come in red and green, and they sell masa too, in case you want to make your own, though most people try one and quietly put that plan away.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Tamales · Best of Denver

Denver has a genuine Ethiopian dining scene, and this East Colfax restaurant quietly anchors it. The kitchen is largely a one-woman operation, and the food reflects it: injera that's properly tart and springy, stewed lentils and collards that take their time, and a shared platter loaded with enough variety to make the table a conversation. Come with people you like, because eating solo here would be missing the point.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Ethiopian Restaurant · Best of Denver

1. Westword 2023 · Best Green Chile Cheeseburger · Best of Denver

A Thai cafe tucked into a strip mall on South Colorado, Thai Pot Cafe is the kind of neighborhood spot that fills up fast on weeknights. The drunken noodles are the draw, charred thick and loaded with eggplant, green beans, and tomatoes. Heat runs on a scale where ten counts as "Thai mild," so the numbers above that are not decorative. Westword named them Denver's best drunken noodles in 2023, which the regulars already knew.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Drunken Noodles · Best of Denver

1. Westword 2023 · Best Afternoon Tea · Best of Denver

Outdoor grilling stations let you cook your own marinated meats al fresco, which is either a dream or a chore depending on your relationship with fire. This Indian grill in the Park Meadows mall takes familiar dishes, butter chicken, dal, coconut curry, and runs them through a French culinary lens. Everything arrives at one spice level, with the chef's hot sauce on the side to dial up the heat yourself.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Indian Restaurant · Best of Denver

The heat levels at this Edgewater Thai spot are not a performance; the chiles do actual structural work, balancing galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime, and ginger rather than just torching everything in their path. Curries arrive thick and deeply spiced, and the papaya salad dressing pulls no punches with lime and fish sauce. Order mild if you need to, but the kitchen built this menu for people who don't. Sloan's Lake is two minutes away, just in case.

1. Westword 2023 · Best Thai Restaurant · Best of Denver

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