The Best Places to Drink and Stay in Five Points & around

A cocktail bar that calls itself a nerdy cocktail bar, a natural wine bar, and your favorite dive bar, and then has the audacity to be all three. The Old Bay Martini landed it on Esquire's radar and the Spirited Awards named it the top U.S. cocktail bar, but the room itself is the tell: hot dogs share menu space with wine you've never heard of, and nobody in here seems to think that's unusual.

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Winner · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar
2. The 50 #67 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Esquire The Best Bars in America

The Rocky Mountain views from this downtown luxury hotel are so insistent, staring back at the Rockies from nearly every room, that forgetting you're in Denver takes real effort. Earth tones and a modern-residential feel keep the aesthetic grounded rather than fussy. The Four Seasons holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star, and the staff's habit of anticipating what you need before you ask is the thing guests tend to mention first.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key
3. The 50 2025 · Most Admired Hotel Group Award

Rooms here start at 500 square feet, which in downtown Denver is its own kind of statement. The Ritz-Carlton is a full-service luxury hotel dressed in navy, cream, and dark wood, with Frette robes, deep soaking tubs, and rainforest showers doing the heavy lifting. Elway's steakhouse runs from breakfast through dinner on the ground floor. The Forbes Four Star property draws suits on weekdays and the charity-gala crowd on weekends, with staff sharp enough to handle both without missing a beat.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The martini here gets shaken with both vodka and gin, which is either a provocation or a correction depending on your religion. Death & Co is a cocktail bar that started in New York and landed in RiNo, bringing the same intricate, unhurried approach to drinking. The room is loungey and deliberate, the kind of place where settling in for three rounds feels like the obvious move rather than a guilty one.

1. Esquire The Telegraph · The Best Martinis in America
2. Thrillist The Best Bars in Denver
3. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Denver

1. Punch The Who’s Who of Beer Cool
2. Westword 2023 · Best Beer Service · Best of Denver
3. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

A wine bar in RiNo that keeps fried chicken and tinned fish on the menu alongside Khikhvi, Nerello Mascalese, and a Mencía from Oregon that has no business being that good. The list leans hard into natural, biodynamic, and small-production bottles, and the staff can talk you through all of it without making you feel like a student. Grape nerds and people who just want a glass with snacks coexist peacefully here.

1. Thrillist The Best Bars in Denver
2. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Denver
3. Eater The Best Bars in Denver

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Denver
2. Eater The Best Bars in Denver
3. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

A portrait of an imperial bulldog greets you at the door, which is a fair warning. Pony Up is a cocktail bar in LoDo that earns its personality through drinks like a tequila-shochu-sherry situation spiked with Korean chili paste, and shots of George Dickel chased with roast-beef jus. That jus comes from the kitchen, which runs French dips as its signature, an odd pairing that somehow makes complete sense by the second round.

1. Thrillist The Best Bars in Denver
2. Eater The Best Bars in Denver
3. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key
2. Westword 2025 · Best New Building · Best of Denver

Tucked below the Dairy Block, this cocktail bar serves its menu on a deck of playing cards, which tells you everything about the room before you've ordered. Plush banquettes, leather chairs, patterned wallpaper, and cabinets of rare vintage bottles conspire to make it feel like a speakeasy that never quite left. The martini section alone could occupy an evening, and the reserve cocktails lean into vintage spirits for those feeling loose with their wallet.

1. Eater The Best Bars in Denver
2. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Denver
3. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

The menu at this Uptown Mexican restaurant isn't fully translated into English, which the staff treat as a feature rather than a bug. Chef Erasmo Casiano's cooking runs from dry-aged hamachi crudo to duck carnitas tacos, and the cocktails lean on prickly pear, tomatillo, and jicama. Esquire named the Martini Cochinero among the best martinis in the country, which tells you something about where the bar program sits.

1. Esquire Martini Cochinero · The Best Martinis in America
2. Westword 2025 · Best New Restaurant · Best of Denver
3. 5280 The 25 Best Restaurants in Denver

The lobby doubles as an active train station waiting room, which makes check-in feel like a minor performance art piece. The Crawford is a boutique hotel tucked inside Denver's restored Beaux-Arts Union Station, holding a Michelin Key, and sitting at the center of the LoDo neighborhood's comeback. The 112 rooms sit above the bustle of one of the city's genuinely communal gathering spots, with rail passengers and cocktail drinkers sharing the same grand hall below.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Southern cooking and a cocktail program that pours buttermilk and benne seed into the glass share equal billing at this casual Five Points restaurant and bar. The chef runs with heirloom grits and collard greens but also hot-and-sour catfish and sorghum-tamarind pork shoulder, so the kitchen respects the tradition without being hostage to it. The team behind the preeminent cocktail bar Yacht Club runs the drinks side, which explains the ambition in a room that looks relaxed about the whole thing.

1. 5280 The 13 Best New Places to Eat and Drink in Denver
2. Eater The Best New Restaurants in Denver
3. Westword 2026 · Best New Bar · Best of Denver

1. Eater The Best Bars in Denver
2. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

A boutique hotel in LoDo, steps from the restored Union Station, with rooms that balance mountain-lodge warmth against proper city-hotel polish. The common spaces lean into it: Citizen Rail does wood-fired cooking downstairs, and Tavernetta handles pan-Italian next door. The neighborhood does the rest, since LoDo has quietly become one of those districts where you barely need to plan anything.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Thrillist The Best Bars in Denver
2. 5280 Best for a Big Night Out · The 23 Best Bars in Denver
3. Westword 2023 · Best Use of a Leopard Speedo · Best of Denver

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A downtown Denver hotel that manages to be colorful without leaning on spurs and tumbleweeds. The rooms pull off local flavor with some actual restraint, and the Spa Rooms add soaking tubs for anyone who wants to edge toward full luxury. Kimpton's daily hosted wine hour is a genuine institution across their properties, and the in-house Italian restaurant, Panzano, punches well above hotel-dining expectations. The Michelin Guide has it among their selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The atrium lobby rises eight stories, all wrought iron and stained glass, and has been doing so since presidents started treating the place as a second home. This grand old Denver hotel has hosted every commander in chief since Teddy Roosevelt, plus Elvis, John Wayne, Buffalo Bill, and at least one burlesque star, which covers a decent range of American ambition. The rooms are exactly as formal as the history suggests.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A boutique hotel planted steps from Coors Field, The Rally is what happens when a city's downtown revival actually takes hold. The LoDo neighborhood around it fills with bars, restaurants, and a game-day crowd that knows exactly where it's going, and the hotel sits at the center of McGregor Square's mix of shops, event spaces, and nightlife. A Michelin Selected Hotel, so the rooms won't let the location down.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The cast-iron and red-brick facade fits right into Denver's River North Arts District, but the interiors take a sharp left turn into the salon of a 17th-century French marquise. This boutique hotel pulls it off without apology. Rooms run contemporary and plush, the staff dress the part, and the building houses Death & Co's Denver outpost alongside a pan-Latin restaurant from James Beard winner Dana Rodriguez.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Rolling garage-door windows that open flush to the Colorado air are the detail that makes this RiNo boutique hotel click. It sits on an old ironworks site in Denver's River North arts district, and the 100 rooms lean into that industrial past with polished concrete, Baltic birch, and spare Japanese-influenced furniture. The neighborhood's warehouse-and-mural energy is right outside, which is exactly why people book here instead of downtown.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Sitting at 16th and Market, this boutique luxury hotel puts you within walking distance of Union Station, Coors Field, and most of Denver's better dinner decisions. Rooms lean into a retro-inflected modern sensibility that the Thompson brand does well. Ludo Lefebvre's French restaurant Chez Maggy is downstairs, and the rooftop bar Reynard Social has a Rockies view that makes it hard to go back inside.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

RiNo has been through its artist-loft-to-restaurant-row arc, and the Catbird arrived as the boutique hotel chapter. The rooms run studio and loft sizes, but the design packs in more considered comfort than the square footage should allow, with a modernist sensibility that reads less Denver and more Amsterdam. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels, which tracks for a neighborhood that treats "evolving" as a permanent state.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Sunset Better Bars · Where to Eat and Drink

1. Thrillist The Best Bars in Denver

1. Thrillist The Best Bars in Denver

The entrance is a walk-in freezer door at the back of an ice cream shop, which sets the tone perfectly. Behind it is a sci-fi cocktail lounge with a glowing backbar and B movies running on the wall, where the drinks are named after cult films and built with ingredients that require a moment to process. The kind of bar that rewards people who ask questions.

1. Eater The Best Bars in Denver

The 12th-floor balcony of this penthouse lounge looks out over RiNo, and the room inside, all emerald banquettes and moon-like pendant lights, is doing its level best to compete with the view. Cocktails lean botanical and a little precious, saffron gin and rose water that kind of thing, which fits the vibe perfectly. The snacks are luxe and unapologetic. Eater named it among Denver's best bars, and the crowd tends to dress for the occasion.

1. Eater The Best Bars in Denver

1. Eater The Best Bars in Denver

1. Westword 2025 · Best New Neighborhood Bar · Best of Denver
2. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

1. Westword 2023 · Best Beer to Drink Ringside: Helles · Best of Denver
2. Westword 2024 · Best Brewery to Take Visitors · Best of Denver
3. Westword 2026 · Best Brewery Upgrade · Best of Denver

1. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

1. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

1. Westword 2025 · Best New Bar Where Everything Is $5 · Best of Denver
2. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

1. Westword 2025 · Best Distillery for Cocktails, With or Without Booze · Best of Denver
2. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

1. Westword 2026 · Best Bar Programming · Best of Denver
2. Westword The Top 50 Bars in Denver Right Now

1. 5280 Best for Slow Sipping · The 23 Best Bars in Denver

1. Westword 2024 · Best Coffee Shop for Conversations · Best of Denver
2. 5280 Best for Catching Multiple Buzzes · The 23 Best Bars in Denver

The name comes from David Bowie's "Space Oddity," and the kitchen leans into the theme without going full theme-restaurant about it. This New American bar and restaurant on Larimer keeps things approachable, with a concise menu that rotates through tight, careful cooking. It shares a block with the tasting-menu sibling next door, so the crowd tends to know what they're doing, which keeps the energy easy without feeling sleepy.

1. 5280 The 25 Best Restaurants in Denver
2. 5280 Best for Filling Bellies · The 23 Best Bars in Denver
3. Westword 2023 · Best Pork Chop · Best of Denver

1. 5280 Best for Day Drinking · The 23 Best Bars in Denver