Denver’s Best Restaurant Openings and Saddest Closings in 2025

Much of the country’s restaurant news over the past year (or past several years, really) has focused on the difficulty in running a business through rising costs, supply chain interruptions, and tightening budgets. But Denver has surprised us in 2025 with all manner of new eateries, from ambitious chef’s counters to raucous taquerias.

Here, 15 of the Mile High City’s best new places to eat and drink, plus a few that we’ll miss.

The Best New Restaurants Openings in Denver in 2025

Alteño

• Location: 249 Clayton St., Denver (Cherry Creek)
• Cuisine: Highland and coastal Jalisco Mexican
• Price: $$$$

Johnny and Kasie Curiel earned a Michelin star in September 2024 for their first restaurant, LoHi’s bright and lively Alma Fonda Fina. Just six months later, they unveiled dark and sultry Alteño in Cherry Creek, showcasing the cuisine of Johnny’s childhood home of Jalisco.

A wood-fired oven anchors a menu that’s split between Pacific Ocean seafood (oysters on the half-shell, tuna aguachile, a portobello mushroom generously stuffed with crab, and pan-roasted halibut, to name a few) and the highland flavors of Guadalajara (which sits at the same elevation as Denver) as embodied in fire-roasted chicken, slow-cooked lamb, and steakhouse cuts like ribeye and an impressive 32-ounce porterhouse. The chef’s deep dive into Mexican cuisine yields salsas and moles seldom found in Denver, as well as herbs and chiles that give each dish distinct zest and zing.

BearLeek

• Location: 2611 Walnut St., Denver (RiNo)
• Cuisine: Eclectic shared plates
• Price: $$$

Head downstairs into the underground RiNo lair of BearLeek, where serious eats sport whimsical touches and a seat at the chef’s counter yields an eclectic range of flavors and textures from around the world. Start with house-baked brioche rolls with seasonally flavored butter that comes in the shape of a gummy bear (which makes a second appearance for dessert).

Small plates range from Mediterranean roast beets with labneh, dukkah, and za’taar to wagyu tartare with Latin American and Japanese influences. Mid-sized plates include central European classics such as potato rösti (like a giant hashbrown) and tender pierogi, while shareable entrées like some of Denver’s best fried chicken span multiple continents in each bite. Don’t miss happy hour here, with creative $10 cocktails, $5 craft beers, and $8 brisket skewers in beef fat caramel.

Boombots Pasta Shop

• Location: 2647 W. 38th Ave., Denver (Sunnyside)
• Cuisine: Hand-made pasta and other Italian-ish eats
• Price: $$

Odie B’s founders Cliff and Cara Blauvelt have a flair for unbridled fun, as evidenced by their sandwich shop’s iconoclastic assault on the sanctity of classic sandwiches. Breakfast sausage on a chopped cheese? Green chiles and a hashbrown patty on a classic NYC BEC? That attitude transfers to Boombots Pasta Shop, which opened in November next door to their original Sunnyside deli (there’s even a door inside connecting the two). Cliff explains that the new eatery’s moniker refers to 1970s SNL character Dr. Vinnie Boombatz, whose name is synonymous with “idiot” in Italian-American slang. “The idiots thing appealed to us because it’s a crazy time to open a restaurant in Denver right now,” he says.

The couple note that they wanted to open a pasta joint that doesn’t follow the standard Italian or Italian-American playbook. You’ll find familiar pasta styles—bucatini, cavatelli, and agnolotti, for example—but those are dressed with dirty martini sauce, stroganoff with everything-bagel seasoning, and pea-and-potato samosa filling, respectively. Even a basic fried mozzarella stick gets reworked; its interior is a gooey blend of cheese and marinara and the whole thing is scaled up to almost ridiculous proportions. Expect similar creativity with the bar program, especially the NA beverages, an important part of the experience for the Blauvelts because of their dedication to providing an inclusive space for both guests and employees.

The Counter at Odell’s Bagel

• Location: 3200 Irving St., Denver (West Highland)
• Cuisine: Traditional Japanese kaiseki with modern touches
• Price: $$$$

In Japan, kaiseki is an elaborate, multi-course meal highlighting seasonal, local ingredients in a very specific order (a flame-grilled meat follows a lidded soup, for example). Every Thursday through Sunday evening, chef Miles Odell rolls out a seafood-heavy kaiseki menu at his West Highland bagel shop for a dozen or so guests who sign up for the $175-per-person experience.

Dinner may start with a board of fresh vegetables and herbed butter before moving on to seared scallops, savory chowanmushi (an egg-and-broth custard), several rounds of sashimi handed to you across the counter, and exquisite flame-grilled lamb chops. An optional beverage pairing enhances each bite with carefully chosen wines (such as a full range from Palisades’ Ordinary Fellow Winery) or other drinks. You’ll dine in full view of the bakery’s bagel baskets, offering the added temptation of an a.m. return for open-face sandwiches topped with house-cured fish or fresh-made jams.

Fortezza Ristorante

• Location: 7916 Niwot Road, Niwot
• Cuisine: Northern Italian
• Price: $$$

Adam and Natalie Moore, who both grew up in Longmont, return to their Boulder County roots with Fortezza, located in tiny Niwot (population: 4,100). Adam Moore has been a front-of-house specialist for nearly 20 years in Denver’s high-end restaurant scene (Edge Restaurant & Bar, Quality Italian, and Guard and Grace, to name a few), and that level of hospitality is on display at Fortezza, which opened in August.

The couple took inspiration for their menu and wine cellar from one of their favorite restaurants, Osteria de Logge in Siena, Italy. The kitchen is headed by executive chef Egan Ma and sous chef Dylan Rigolini (who both previously worked at Berkeley’s Hey Kiddo). Top bites include the house focaccia, the panissa (chickpea fritter) served with Parmigiano-Reggiano espuma, the egg yolk-filled raviolo, and the duck breast with cherry jus. In keeping with Moore’s steakhouse experience, the ristorante also offers celebration-priced steak cuts from Colorado Springs–based Callicrate Beef. With Fortezza as your destination, a short drive to Niwot stands in well for a flight to Tuscany.

The Guest

• Location: 1432 Market St., Denver (LoDo)
• Cuisine: Chef’s tasting menu with Peruvian notes
• Price: $$$$

Brian De Souza and Sydney Younggreen have been creating singular dining experiences in Boulder and Denver since 2020, first with a series of private dinners dubbed the Guest in their Boulder home and then at the Regular, a clubby dinner spot that opened in LoDo in 2023. The Regular has since morphed into a special-events space, but the couple has relaunched the Guest (with the help of the Culinary Creative Group, which also runs nearby A5 Steakhouse, among others) as a multi-course chef’s tasting menu in an elegant 22-seat dining room located inside the Regular’s labyrinthine space.

Dinner comprises 11 courses served twice nightly every Thursday through Sunday for $195 per person, plus optional beverage pairings. Courses run from the playful (B’s Burger is De Souza’s one-bite take on a Freddy’s burger, only with venison tartare as the meat element) to the bizarre (a torched, hollowed-out apple that you lift to reveal a kind of apple and kombu soup) to the deeply evocative (a falling-apart duck leg surrounded by juniper and herbs). Hints of the chef’s native Peru weave through the menu, with aji amarillo, huancaina, and choclo making appearances and potato treated with reverent respect in a lobster-based “cappuccino” that eats like clam chowder.

Insee Father Noodles House

• Location: 1700 Platte St., Denver (LoHi)
• Cuisine: Thai street food
• Price: $$

Chef-restaurateur Ounjit Hardacre opened her new noodle shop, Insee, right next door to her more upscale eatery, Daughter Thai, naming the place after her father. She explains that he owned his own wholesale business supplying restaurants in her native province of Kanchanaburi. “He told me I could do whatever I wanted—except open a restaurant, because he knew how hard it can be,” she says. “But I’m not afraid of hard work.”

Her effort, along with that of business partner Dueanphen “Pom” Rungrueang, is evident in the beautiful dining room, split between a raised seating area intended to evoke an outdoor food market and a lower level (where you might spy a photo of Hardacre’s father) that she designed to look like a typical Thai home. The menu grounds itself in street-food specialties from Kanchanaburi and Chiang Mai (Rungrueang’s home town), with beefy Mae Klong noodles (often called boat noodles), powerful Khaosan tom yum noodles, and the amusingly named Khao moo moo moo, a dish featuring pork (moo in Thai) three ways, as sausage, glazed belly, and thin-sliced barbecue.

When you go, you might see Hardacre cooking up sweet khanom krok, lens-shaped rice flour cakes stuffed with coconut, for dessert. If so, order some while they’re warm and thank us later.

Kizaki

• Location: 1551 S. Pearl St., Denver (Platt Park)
• Cuisine: Japanese omakase
• Price: $$$$

Sidle up to the front bar at the sleek, austere Kizaki while you wait for your seat at the chef’s counter and ask for a sake or cocktail recommendation from the knowledgeable staff. Once seated, marvel at chef-owner Toshi Kizaki’s masterful sushi skills as he and his culinary team put bite after bite into historical and culinary context. This is what’s known as Edomae-style omakase, where the chef presents a series of hot and cold plates as they have evolved from the 1800s to present-day Tokyo. Delicate black sesame-marbled tofu, a meaty tuna cut from beneath the fish’s pectoral fin, and a flame-kissed scallop sliced into thin coins are just a few of the 20 or so bites you’ll sample (for $225 per person), each selected daily to be at the peak of freshness. While it’s not an everyday meal, this Michelin-starred experience is worth a special-occasion splurge.

Malinche Audio Bar

• Location: 1541 Platte St., Denver (LoHi)
• Cuisine: Mexican spirits and Japanese-Mexican small plates
• Price: $$$

Chef Jose Avila isn’t content to give diners a standard restaurant experience. Instead, he draws from the pozole houses, the smoky borrego pits, and the lively pulquerias of his days in Mexico to present not just the food but the overall sensory experience and mood of his home country. His first restaurant, La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal, delivers that with regional variations on the namesake soup, a trompo of sizzling meat spinning on the sidewalk outside, and weekend-only cookouts served up on the back patio.

The theme continues at Malinche Audio Bar, but Avila looks to Mexico City’s modern trends rather than its deep-seated traditions for inspiration. Japanese cuisine and style are having a moment in Mexico’s capital city, and Malinche captures the theme in its “Nikkei-Mexa” menu of small plates, its vinyl-only playlist inspired by Tokyo listening rooms (but fueled by Avila’s collection of Latin American records), and its mashup cocktails that might find the pungent herb epazote sharing a glass with zippy wasabi in a tequila-based cocktail.

The menu is only six dishes deep, so you can put together your own tasting menu to experience big, tempura-fried leaves of hoja santa, a mini tamal stuffed with braised rabbit, a warm maitake mushroom salad, and a tender octopus arm nestled in a jet-black sauce of miso and chilmole. Finish your night with mezcal, raicilla, sotol, and other rare Mexican spirits, some poured from damajuanas—handblown green glass jars kept behind the rustic bar.

Mama Jo’s Biscuits & Barbecue

• Location: 3525 E. Colfax Ave., Denver (City Park)
• Cuisine: Southern and barbecue
• Price: $$

The menu at Jodi and Ben Polson’s casual smokehouse isn’t big, but deciding what to eat is still difficult. Everything is just so tempting, from the Nashville hot chicken sandwich to the sticky spare ribs to the banana pudding hand pie. And that doesn’t even include daily specials like some of Denver’s best wings served every Wednesday, bone-in fried chicken on Fridays, and smoked brisket on Saturdays.

Bring an appetite—and a few friends—so you can try a little of everything. Make sure you include sides like pimento cheese mac and cheese, loaded tot-chos, and bacon-studded collard greens to go along with the pulled pork, smoked jackfruit, house-made pickles, and smoked-gouda biscuits. The most important question is: What time are we meeting you there?

Margot

• Location: 1551 S. Pearl St., Denver (Platt Park)
• Cuisine: Seasonal European with chef’s counter
• Price: $$$-$$$$

Margot chef-owner Justin Fulton doesn’t want you to feel locked into one style of dining. So you can go a la carte with a menu of ever-evolving shared plates or head back to the eight-seat chef’s counter for a twelve-course tasting menu (at $165 per person) with very little overlap. And if you can’t quite decide, there’s a five-course dinner served in the dining room ($95 per person).

Whichever you choose, you’ll discover clever ingredient combinations (like duck breast with green curry and trout roe or beet and miso sorbet), attention to detail (like toothsome sourdough toast from Boulder’s Kinship Bread), and the feeling that the night, the food, and the service are all just for you. Sometimes chef-driven cuisine, especially tasting menus, can feel too serious, but Margot maintains a lighthearted charm—and even a little rock-and-roll swagger—from opening cocktails through dessert.

Pig and Tiger

• Location: 2200 California St., Denver (Five Points)
• Cuisine: Taiwanese
• Price: $$

Pig and Tiger started its life in 2020 as a walk-up counter from chefs Darren Chang and Travis Masar at Boulder’s Avanti Food & Beverage. They launched their brick and mortar five years later in Five Points, giving the neighborhood a deep dive into Taiwanese cuisine.

The chefs balance flavors and textures familiar to Western diners with ingredients less commonly found in Denver restaurants. Dumplings are a good place to start, either veggie-filled with tender skins or bold and spicy chili wontons stuffed with pork and shrimp. The Taiwanese fried chicken offers comfort-food vibes with a hint of spice, a shower of fried Thai basil leaves, and a side of deeply satisfying chicken-fat rice. The LA beef rolls start with thin slices of beef shank and slow-cooked tongue, but they’re presented as a build-your-own taco platter complete with charred scallion tortillas. A handful of noodle and rice bowls will keep you coming back, whether you choose the cold sesame noodles decorated with edible flowers or the fiery mapo tofu, here made with roasted mushrooms instead of the more typical ground pork.

The focus extends even into dessert, where pineapple shaved ice with almond panna cotta and Thai basil offer equal parts sophistication and childlike joy. In short, Pig and Tiger offers many reasons to return.

Molino Chido

• Location: 2501 Dallas St., Aurora (inside Stanley Marketplace)
• Cuisine: Mexican
• Price: $$

Tommy Lee and Michael Diaz de Leon have already achieved great success in the Denver restaurant scene, the former as chef-owner of Uncle and Hop Alley and the latter with a Michelin star earned in 2023 while heading the kitchen at Brutø. Their combined talents and vision have spawned something completely unexpected though: a taqueria with flame-seared carne al pastor, handmade nixtamal tortillas (you can see sacks of whole Colorado-grown corn stacked near the entrance), and a beverage program that spans aguas frescas, creative cocktails, micheladas, and natural wines.

Our favorite tacos? The pavo, with turkey, egg, and inky Yucatecan recado negro, and the lengua, topped with bison tongue and frites. The best seats in the house are at the bar, where you can peruse bottle after bottle of mezcal and chat with the bartender about building your own flight.

Rougarou

• Location: 2844 Welton St., Denver (Five Points)
• Cuisine: Bayou Southern
• Price: $$$

Mary Allison Wright and McLain Hedges know how to throw a party. Their Cole neighborhood bar, Yacht Club, has been overflowing since the day it opened in late 2021. The bon temps continue with Rougarou, which debuted in Five Points in August, giving chef (and Mary’s brother) John David Wright a full dinner menu to present his interpretation of Southern cuisine.

The restaurant is named after a mythical swamp creature that shifts from human to wolf form, and the scene here also shifts easily from quiet sit-down dining in the early hours to a livelier affair as the midnight hour approaches. Don’t expect heavy food or Cajun classics; the kitchen keeps things light and bright with a West Indies crab salad, chilled black-eyed peas, and a blue cheese tart buoyed by green tomato and pickles. Even Granddad’s Chicken is a braised (not deep-fried) dish, with a tangy Alabama white sauce continuing the menu’s theme of acidity over fat. If you’re looking for something fried though, the hot and sour catfish sports a delicate crust coating mild, flaky fish.

For drinks, go savory with a muffuletta martini (inspired by the famous New Orleans sandwich) or Holy Trinitini (that’s bell pepper, celery, and onion), or choose from an impressive collection of natural bubbles and wines by the glass and bottle.

Riot BBQ

• Location: 2180 Delaware St. (Overland)
• Cuisine: Texas-style barbecue with Mexican flavors
• Price: $$

Some folk moan and groan about Denver’s lack of a good barbecue scene, but the reality is that what the Mile High City lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality and dedication to craft. After all, Riot BBQ’s pitmaster, Patrick Klaiber, earned Michelin recognition in 2023, and its chef, Manny Barella, was one of the highlights in season 21 of Top Chef. Their combined talents offer brisket that all but melts on your tongue, house-made sausage studded with jalapeño and cheddar, succulent ribs spiced like al pastor, and pulled pork that’s equally good on its own or paired with loaded esquites cornbread.

Like every great barbecue joint, Riot often sells out of its most popular items early, so lunchtime is often the best bet. Just be sure to ask about occasional specials like achiote-crusted chicken pibil or wagyu pastrami.

The Saddest Restaurant Closings in Denver in 2025

Dimestore Delibar (closed in October)

Anytime I hosted an out-of-town visitor for the last three years, our first stop was always Dimestore Delibar. For six tasty years, the LoHi shop specialized in “dimerolls,” sandwiches built on toasted focaccia bread and rolled into a burrito-like handheld. You couldn’t go wrong with any of the sammies on the menu, but the fact that I will never enjoy another Dimestore Italian—stuffed with mortadella, salami, prosciutto, coppa, and more—keeps me up at night. Bon voyage to the best sandwich in Denver, and if anyone has their pasta salad recipe, my inbox is open. —Jessica Giles

The Hornet (closed in August)

When the Hornet opened in Baker in 1995, locals were skeptical that something new could take the place of longtime favorite, Mary & Lou’s Cafe. But owners Sean and Betsy Workman proved to the neighborhood that their welcoming bar and grill was a worthy addition. Nearly 30 years later, the Hornet poured its last rounds and took down the letters on its often-amusing billboard (which once sported the message “Again, not a drive-thru” after a second car plowed through its front window). We’ll miss the nachos, the good prices, and the warm hospitality, but at least we still have the Workmans’ Acova in Highland offering the same vibe and a great, family-friendly menu.

Osaka Ramen and Sushi-Rama (closed in February and April, respectively)

Chef-restaurateur Jeff Osaka served some of Denver’s best noodle soups at Osaka Ramen for a decade in its underground RiNo space before he shut it down in February, citing the growing challenges and rising costs in the restaurant industry. Two months later, his conveyor-belt sushi bar, Sushi-Rama shuttered its original location (several suburban outposts had closed in 2024) just a block away. Osaka was fiercely dedicated to the highest quality ingredients and time-honored methods, and his presence in the scene is sorely missed. Over the years, the chef charmed us with a range of eateries, including Ballpark’s Twelve, which ran from 2008 to 2014,  and Twelve at Madison, which served Congress park from 2016 to 2020.

Middleman and Misfit Snackbar (closed in June)

The Bus Rapid Transit construction project has been tough for the businesses lining East Colfax Avenue; one of the summer casualties was Jareb Parker and Charlie Thomas’ Middleman, a favorite hangout for industry folks, oddballs, and neighborhood residents alike. With it went Misfit Snackbar, where chef Bo Porytko presented a gloriously loony menu of global flavors. The bar has since reopened as the Lowbeam (from the owners of the Horseshoe Lounge, the Embassy Tavern, and the Dewdrop Inn) and the clientele hasn’t changed much. And Porytko’s cooking can still be experienced at Molotov Kitschen & Cocktails—one of Denver’s 25 best restaurants this year—just a block away.

Q House (closed in October)

Right next door to the Middleman, upscale Chinese eatery Q House went from earning a spot on Michelin’s recommended restaurants list in September to serving its last bowl of Chong Qing Chicken in October. We loved going with a big group to celebrate over rounds of chef-owner Christopher Lin’s inspired dishes.