Best Restaurants 2018: Cholon

French onion soup dumplings. Pork ribs, sticky with lemongrass glaze, paired with a crunchy green papaya salad. Rack of Colorado lamb with charred eggplant purée and spiced chickpeas. Mussels swimming in a spicy green curry, with fried garlic bao alongside to mop up every drop. These perfectly rendered dishes, among so many others on ChoLon’s Pan-Asian menu, highlight chef-owner Lon Symensma’s talent for taking sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami flavors into fine-dining territory. The eight-year-old restaurant updated its decor and improved its acoustics this summer, but with young gun chef de cuisine Becca Henry at the wok, ChoLon’s food is the same as it’s always been: brilliant. $$$, 1555 Blake St., 303-353-5223