What are the best restaurants in Denver?
Start with The Wolf's Tailor in Sunnyside, the state's lone two-star kitchen. Seven more Denver restaurants hold a single star (Alma Fonda Fina, Beckon, Brutø, Kizaki, Margot, Mezcaleria Alma and Milpero), and ten hold the value-focused Bib Gourmand. All 37 are listed below and searchable.
Most "best restaurants in Denver" lists are somebody's opinion dressed up as a ranking. This one is not a ranking at all.
It is the 2026 MICHELIN Guide Colorado, reorganized so you can actually use it: searchable by name, filterable by award level, neighborhood and cuisine, with the street address for every entry and a link to the restaurant's own website where we could verify one. We did not decide who is on it. Inspectors did.
Where we do have opinions — on how to get a table, on which neighborhoods are worth the drive, on what to order that is actually from here — those are clearly ours and clearly labelled.
How to read the list
What The Awards
Actually Mean
Michelin arrived in Colorado in 2023. Four levels of recognition, and they do not mean what most people assume.
Worth a detour
Excellent cooking, worth going out of your way for. Colorado has exactly one, and it is in Denver.
High quality cooking
Worth a stop. A star is awarded for what is on the plate — not the tablecloths, the view or the price.
Great food, fair price
Michelin's value designation — a good three-course meal at a reasonable price. Often the most useful list in any city.
Above average
Inspected and endorsed, but not at star or Bib level. Still a strong bet, and often easier to book.
A Michelin Green Star is separate and recognizes sustainability: ethical sourcing, waste reduction, working with sustainable producers. Two Denver restaurants, The Wolf's Tailor and Brutø, held one in the 2025 selection.
The most useful thing to understand: a Bib Gourmand is not a consolation prize. It is a different category entirely, and for most people planning a normal Friday night rather than a milestone dinner, it is the more relevant list.
The directory
Every Michelin-Recognized
Restaurant in Denver
Search by name, neighborhood or cuisine. Filter by award level. Everything stays on the page — nothing loads in, and nothing is hidden behind a paywall.
Denver Restaurant Directory
All 37 restaurants-
Two Michelin Stars
The Wolf's Tailor
Tasting menuSunnyside
4058 Tejon St., Denver, CO
Colorado's first and only two-star restaurant, kept in 2026. Held a MICHELIN Green Star in the 2023, 2024 and 2025 selections.
Tasting menu
Green Star (2025) -
One Michelin Star
Alma Fonda Fina
MexicanLoHi
2556 15th St., Denver, CO
Chef Johnny Curiel. Modern Mexican with a chef's counter. Curiel was a 2026 James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Mountain.
Mexican -
One Michelin Star
Beckon
Tasting menuRiNo
2843 Larimer St., Denver, CO
U-shaped chef's counter. Vegetarian and pescatarian menus planned in advance.
Tasting menu -
One Michelin Star
Brutø
Tasting menuLoDo
1801 Blake St., Denver, CO
Everything centred on a wood-burning hearth. Held a Green Star through the 2025 selection.
Tasting menu
Green Star (2025) -
One Michelin Star
Kizaki
JapanesePlatt Park
1551 S. Pearl St., Denver, CO
Edomae-style sushi counter from chef Toshi Kizaki. Starred since 2025.
Japanese -
One Michelin Star
Margot
Tasting menuPlatt Park
1551 S. Pearl St., Denver, CO
Opened June 2025 and starred within months. Bar and dining room take à la carte.
Tasting menu -
One Michelin Star
Mezcaleria Alma
MexicanLoHi
2550 15th St., Denver, CO
Chef Johnny Curiel's second starred restaurant, next door to Alma Fonda Fina.
Mexican -
One Michelin Star
Milpero
MexicanRiNo
3455 Ringsby Ct., Denver, CO
Starred 2026: Johnny Curiel's third star.
Mexican
New 2026 -
Bib Gourmand
Ash'Kara
IsraeliLoHi
2005 W. 33rd Ave., Denver, CO
Contemporary Israeli cooking, vegetable-forward.
Israeli -
Bib Gourmand
The Ginger Pig
ChineseBerkeley
4262 Lowell Blvd., Denver, CO
Began as a Boulder food truck; on Lowell Boulevard since 2020.
Chinese -
Bib Gourmand
Glo Noodle House
RamenWest Highland
4450 W. 38th Ave., Denver, CO
A Bib Gourmand in every Colorado selection.
Ramen -
Bib Gourmand
Hop Alley
ChineseRiNo
3500 Larimer St., Denver, CO
Bar director Dustin Lawlor won MICHELIN's 2025 Exceptional Cocktails Award for Colorado.
Chinese -
Bib Gourmand
Mexican
-
Bib Gourmand
Chinese
-
Bib Gourmand
Latin American
-
Bib Gourmand
Pig and Tiger
TaiwaneseFive Points
2200 California St., Denver, CO
Bib Gourmand since 2026.
Taiwanese
New 2026 -
Bib Gourmand
Rougarou
SouthernFive Points
2844 Welton St., Denver, CO
Bib Gourmand since 2026.
Southern
New 2026 -
Bib Gourmand
Tavernetta
ItalianUnion Station
1889 16th St., Denver, CO
From the Frasca Hospitality Group team.
Italian -
Recommended
Steakhouse
-
Recommended
Alteño
MexicanCherry Creek
249 Clayton St., Denver, CO
Johnny Curiel's restaurant in the Clayton Hotel.
Mexican -
Recommended
Italian
-
Recommended
French
-
Recommended
Dear Emilia
ItalianRiNo
3615 Delgany St., Denver, CO
Listed 2026. A sibling of Restaurant Olivia.
Italian
New 2026 -
Recommended
Dio Mio
ItalianRiNo
3264 Larimer St., Denver, CO
Counter-service handmade pasta.
Italian -
Recommended
Florence Supper Club
ItalianWashington Park
375 S. Pearl St., Denver, CO
Listed 2026.
Italian
New 2026 -
Recommended
Heretík
FrenchRiNo
1441 26th St., Denver, CO
Listed 2026, with the 2026 Sommelier Award.
French
New 2026 -
Recommended
Contemporary
-
Recommended
Japanese
-
Recommended
Madeline
ContemporaryCheesman Park
1313 E. Sixth Ave., Denver, CO
Listed 2026.
Contemporary
New 2026 -
Recommended
Pizza
-
Recommended
Contemporary
-
Recommended
Restaurant Olivia
ItalianWashington Park
290 S. Downing St., Denver, CO
Heather Morrison won MICHELIN's 2025 Outstanding Service Award for Colorado.
Italian -
Recommended
Israeli
-
Recommended
Barbecue
-
Recommended
Japanese
-
Recommended
Japanese
-
Recommended
Wildflower
ContemporaryLoHi
3638 Navajo St., Denver, CO
Aiden Tibbets was named MICHELIN's 2025 Young Chef of the Year for Colorado.
Contemporary
No restaurants match that. Try clearing a filter.
Source: MICHELIN Guide Colorado 2026 selection, announced September 14, 2026, as reported by MICHELIN, Visit Denver and KDVR. Neighborhoods are our placement by street address. Website links go to the restaurant's own site where we could verify it, otherwise to its MICHELIN Guide listing. "Map" opens the address in OpenStreetMap. The full list is also published as open data at /data/restaurants.json. Restaurants close and move; confirm before you travel.
The story
How Denver Quietly
Caught Up
For decades the national dining conversation ran through New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Then inspectors showed up in Colorado, and the answer changed.
The Michelin Guide came to Colorado in 2023. That first year was cautious — a handful of stars, nine Bib Gourmands, and a lot of people asking whether Denver really belonged in the conversation.
By the 2025 selection the answer was settled. Colorado had its first two-star restaurant, three newly starred restaurants in Denver alone, ten Bib Gourmands across Denver and Boulder, and 50 restaurants recognised statewide.
The two-star
The Wolf's Tailor sits on Tejon Street in Sunnyside and does an eclectic multicourse tasting menu built around Colorado ingredients. It moved from one star to two in 2025 and simultaneously held its Green Star for sustainability — the third consecutive year it has done so.
Chef Kelly Whitaker has described grain as the restaurant's luxury item, which tells you most of what you need to know about the place. It is not a foie gras and caviar operation. It is a restaurant that treats a heritage wheat variety the way another kitchen would treat truffle.
Whitaker's Id Est group also runs Brutø in LoDo, which holds its own star and its own Green Star, cooking almost everything over a central wood-burning hearth.
The Mexican breakthrough
The most significant thing in the 2025 Colorado guide might be that chef Johnny Curiel holds two Michelin stars on the same block.
Alma Fonda Fina on 15th Street in LoHi earned a star for modern Mexican cooking — blue-and-yellow striped corn tortillas, ceviche and aguachile, traditional dishes rebuilt with real technique. Then Mezcaleria Alma, immediately next door, earned its own star in 2025 for a small-plates menu backed by one of the most serious mezcal programmes in the country.
Two starred restaurants, one chef, adjacent addresses. That does not happen often anywhere.
Platt Park's unlikely double
The other 2025 story is a single building on South Pearl Street that now contains two starred restaurants.
Kizaki is an intimate Edomae-style sushi counter from chef Toshi Kizaki, who has been a defining figure in Denver sushi for decades and, in his seventies, earned a first Michelin star. Margot, in the same building, opened in June 2025 and was starred within months — chef Justin Fulton had been running pop-ups for three years before getting his own room.
Platt Park is a residential neighbourhood south of downtown. It is not where anyone would have predicted this.
The Bib Gourmands are the real list
If you take one thing from this page, take this: the Bib Gourmand list is where most people should actually eat.
Ash'Kara doing contemporary Israeli cooking in LoHi. Hop Alley doing modern Chinese in RiNo, where bar director Dustin Lawlor also took Michelin's 2025 Exceptional Cocktails Award for Colorado. Glo Noodle House for ramen in West Highland. MAKfam in Baker. La Diabla doing pozole and mezcal in Ballpark. Tavernetta by Union Station. And, new in 2026, Pig and Tiger and Rougarou near Five Points.
These are places you can get into on a Thursday. They are also, by Michelin's own criteria, serving genuinely great food. The gap between a Bib Gourmand dinner and a starred dinner is much smaller than the gap in price.
A perfectly made taco or a rustic loaf of bread is now enough to attract Michelin inspectors. That change is the reason Denver is on the map.
What changed in 2026
Colorado's first statewide guide landed in mid-September 2026, and Denver lost nothing at the top. One more kitchen joined the starred group: Milpero, another Curiel restaurant.
Two value picks near Welton Street and four recent openings were added, and one long-listed steakhouse left. Every name, and what each change means, is in our 2026 guide breakdown.
Sources: MICHELIN Guide Colorado 2025 and 2026 selections; 5280 magazine's complete Colorado Michelin list (September 2025); Visit Denver and KDVR coverage of the 2026 guide (September 2026). Quotes and award language attributed to MICHELIN and the restaurants' own chefs as published.
Practical
How To Actually Get
A Table
How far in advance should you book a Denver restaurant?
For a starred restaurant with a chef's counter — The Wolf's Tailor, Beckon, Brutø, Kizaki, Margot — book as soon as the window opens, typically 30 days out, and set a calendar reminder for the release time. For Bib Gourmand restaurants, a week ahead is usually enough, and walk-in bar seats are often available. For everything else in Denver, a few days.
Denver is not New York. You do not need a fixer. But the top of the list has genuinely tightened over the last three years, and the people who get in are the ones who understand how the systems work.
The counter restaurants are a different animal
Several of Denver's starred restaurants are chef's counters with a fixed number of seats and a single seating. Beckon has a U-shaped counter. Kizaki and Margot both run counters. Brutø seats guests around a hearth.
That means the entire night's capacity might be sixteen people. Reservations do not trickle out — the whole month drops at once and is gone in minutes. Find the release schedule on the restaurant's own site, set an alarm, and be logged in before it opens.
Book the bar
Margot has a bar and dining room at the front of the space serving cocktails and à la carte dishes for people who cannot commit to the full tasting menu. That is not a lesser experience — it is the same kitchen. A meaningful number of Denver's best rooms have a bar or lounge that takes walk-ins, and almost nobody thinks to ask.
Eat early or eat late
A 5:15 or a 9:00 booking is dramatically easier than 7:30 at every restaurant on this list. If your priority is the food rather than the hour, the whole calendar opens up.
Tuesday and Wednesday
Denver's dining crowd is heavily weekend-weighted. Midweek at a starred restaurant is frequently bookable inside a week. The kitchen is often better on a Tuesday than a Saturday, because nobody is in the weeds.
Watch the cancellations
Most reservation platforms have a notify function. Turn it on for the date you want rather than checking manually. Cancellations at counter restaurants get taken within minutes, and the notification is how you get there first.
Call. Actually call.
A surprising number of Denver restaurants hold seats back from online platforms. Picking up the phone at 3pm on a weekday, when the host stand is quiet, still works better than any app. It works especially well if you are flexible about the time.
One last thing, and it is not a tactic: if you book a counter seat and cannot make it, cancel it. A no-show at a sixteen-seat restaurant is a real financial hit to a small business, and Denver's restaurant scene is small enough that it matters.
Keep going
Beyond The Guide
The Michelin list is a starting point, not the whole city. Denver's food culture predates any inspector's visit, and the guides below go deeper by neighborhood and by cuisine.
- Denver restaurants by neighborhood — RiNo, LoHi, LoDo, Cherry Creek, Platt Park, Baker, Berkeley, Union Station and Ballpark, with what each one is actually good at.
- The best brunch in Denver — the meal this city takes more seriously than almost any other, and the one where reservations matter most.
- What to eat in Denver — green chile, the classics, and the dishes that are actually from here rather than imported.
- All Denver dining guides: RiNo and Five Points, the Highlands, South Pearl and Cherry Creek, plus Mexican, Asian, Italian and tasting-menu guides.
- How to get a reservation: booking windows, waitlists and walk-in tactics.
- Build your Denver meal: pick a craving, an occasion and an area, and get five matching restaurants plus a drinks stop nearby.
- Beyond MICHELIN: fourteen James Beard-recognized kitchens, bars and city institutions the guide does not list, each with its sources.
And if you are building a trip around the food rather than the other way round, our statewide sister guide Best Restaurant Colorado covers the mountain towns and road trips, and Colorado What's Up covers everything else outside the city.
Common questions
Denver Dining, Answered
What are the best restaurants in Denver?
Denver's most decorated restaurant is The Wolf's Tailor in Sunnyside, Colorado's first and only two-Michelin-star restaurant. Seven Denver restaurants hold one star in the 2026 selection: Alma Fonda Fina, Beckon, Brutø, Kizaki, Margot, Mezcaleria Alma and Milpero. Ten carry a Bib Gourmand for value, including Ash'Kara, Hop Alley, MAKfam, Glo Noodle House and Tavernetta.
Does Denver have Michelin star restaurants?
Yes. The Michelin Guide came to Colorado in 2023, and the 2026 selection recognized 63 restaurants statewide, 37 of them in Denver. Denver holds Colorado's only two-star restaurant, The Wolf's Tailor, along with seven one-star restaurants, ten Bib Gourmands and nineteen recommended restaurants.
What is a Bib Gourmand and is it worth it?
A Bib Gourmand is Michelin's designation for good quality food at a good value — a solid three-course meal at a reasonable price. It is not a lesser version of a star, it is a different category. For most people planning a normal Friday night rather than a milestone dinner, the Bib Gourmand list is the more useful one, and those restaurants are far easier to book.
How far in advance should you book a Denver restaurant?
For a starred restaurant with a chef's counter — The Wolf's Tailor, Beckon, Brutø, Kizaki, Margot — book as soon as the reservation window opens, typically 30 days out, and set a reminder for the release time. Several of these seat fewer than twenty people a night. For Bib Gourmand restaurants a week ahead is usually enough, and bar seats are often available to walk-ins.
What neighborhood in Denver is best for restaurants?
RiNo has the highest concentration of Michelin-recognized restaurants in the city, ten in 2026, including Beckon, Milpero, Hop Alley, Mister Oso, Dio Mio, Dear Emilia, Heretík, Safta, Smok and Temaki Den. LoHi is next with Alma Fonda Fina, Mezcaleria Alma, Ash'Kara, Kawa Ni and Wildflower. For a single night with the most options within walking distance, those two are the answer.
What is the best Mexican restaurant in Denver?
The guide's answer is Johnny Curiel: his LoHi pair and his RiNo tasting room all hold a star. For something more casual, look to the Bib-rated pozoleria in Ballpark. Details are in our Mexican restaurants guide.
Is Denver a good food city?
Increasingly, yes. Michelin began covering Colorado in 2023, Denver got the state's first two-star restaurant in 2025, and the city now accounts for well over half of everything the Colorado guide recognizes. One chef holds three stars here, one Platt Park building holds two, and a Denver dumpling chef took the 2026 regional James Beard award.
What changed in the 2026 Michelin Guide for Denver?
Denver ended up with six more listings than in 2025: one extra star, two extra Bibs and a net three more recommended rooms. Our 2026 breakdown names them all.
Do you accept payment to be listed in this directory?
No. Every restaurant in the directory appears because the Michelin Guide recognized it, not because anyone paid. We do not rank restaurants ourselves and we do not sell placement. The site carries display advertising served by Google, kept separate from the directory.
What should I eat in Denver that I cannot get elsewhere?
Colorado green chile is the regional dish that actually matters here — pork-based, thinner than the New Mexico style, and poured over almost anything. Beyond that, Colorado lamb and Palisade peaches in late summer show up on menus across the city, and several Michelin-recognised kitchens build their menus specifically around Colorado farms and ranches.