Colorado proudly congratulates five One-MICHELIN-Star restaurants, four Green Star restaurants, nine Bib Gourmand designations, and thirty Recommended restaurants . The full selection of MICHELIN awardees totals 44 restaurants. This momentous occasion celebrates the diversity, quality and exceptional talent that define the state’s vibrant culinary landscape. Here is the complete list of Colorado Michelin-Star restaurants.
Below are the new One-MICHELIN-Star restaurants, with inspector notes provided by MICHELIN, followed by the Green Star, Bib Gourmand, and Recommended restaurants. The Colorado Michelin-Star restaurants and Michelin-Recommended will not disappoint!
One MICHELIN Star
Beckon (Denver; Contemporary cuisine)
More than just a name, it’s an ethos at this ambitious RiNo dining room from Chef Duncan Holmes where staff warmly welcome you. Once inside this Scandi-cool space, diners pull up a chair at the 18-seat counter facing the kitchen where a focused team is hard at work. The multicourse contemporary tasting menu rotates quarterly (think harvest-themed in the fall). This kitchen offers far from typical dishes. Seared quail breast with a confit leg is spot on, especially when sided by creamed kale made with sunflower seeds and a quail reduction.
Bosq (Aspen; Contemporary cuisine)
At this singular enclave, Chef Barclay Dodge and his team are executing seasonally inspired cooking that focuses on foraging, fermenting and local farms. The menu format allows diners to customize their own tasting of four or more courses. From hand-picked spruce tips to butter from locally sourced cooperative dairy cows, this is a concept that pays attention to details — even ingredients from farther afield, like lobster from New England, gets a hit of local flavor from being grilled over juniper wood.
Brutø (Denver; Mexican/Contemporary cuisine)
Chef Michael Diaz de Leon runs the show here, where the team takes a serious approach to locality and seasonality, not only in the produce but also the grains, which they mill or nixtamalize in-house. The mastery of the hearth as the primary cooking implement makes this operation special, and it infuses each of the tasting menu’s courses with distinct notes. The menu, which is Mexican at its core, has a clear narrative, and is perhaps best displayed in lamb prepared two ways — as a street-style taco and ground lamb leg kushiyaki with a quenelle of mole chichilo.
Frasca Food and Wine (Boulder; Italian cuisine)
All are treated as special guests here, where Chef Ian Palazzola’s cooking is Italian, but in a hyper-specific way: It’s the food of the northeast Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. You’ll find pasta and seafood on the prix fixe and tasting menus, but Slavic and Alpine elements also appear. Focused and distinct, the menu might showcase a lesser-known part of Italy, but the ingredients are clearly Coloradan. The plates are beguiling with a minimal, straightforward approach, as in cjalson, half-moon fresh spinach pasta pockets filled with an English pea and potato purée.
The Wolf’s Tailor (Denver; Contemporary cuisine)
With culinary stylings as singular as its name, this charmer stands apart from the pack. Chef Taylor Stark shepherds a creative multi-course menu that abounds with personality, boasting a unique, genre-defying style that draws variously from Nordic, Italian and East Asian cuisines, but nonetheless feels focused and cohesive. Although the menu shifts throughout the year to explore different themes, diners will find a common thread in cooking that highlights ingredients while displaying technical precision and harmonious flavors, with fermentation a frequent motif.
MICHELIN Green Star
Blackbelly Market (Boulder; American cuisine)
Initiatives: full utilization of every ingredient and animal, most of which are butchered in-house; sourcing from local ranches and farms that apply natural practices to everything they cultivate; herbs and flowers for plates grown on property.
Bramble & Hare (Boulder; American cuisine)
Initiatives: organic farm with 70 acres growing more than 250 varieties of vegetables, herbs and grain, which is ground into flour on a stone mill; an acre of chamomile for restaurant use; 360 acres of pasture for raising heritage sheep and pigs.
Brutø (Denver; Mexican/Contemporary cuisine)
Initiatives: zero-waste ethos; fermentation program to create umami-based ingredients; house-milled grains grown in Colorado; hyper-local sourcing; partnership with Zero Foodprint to help reduce carbon footprint and carbon emissions.
The Wolf’s Tailor (Denver; Contemporary cuisine)
Initiatives: zero-waste mentality; local apple cider vinegar project; recycling bread waste into sourdough gochujang; contract farming to grow heirloom wheat for flour on organic, regeneratively farmed land; on-site pollinator garden; certified sustainable foraging program.
Brutø and The Wolf’s Tailor each were awarded one MICHELIN Star, plus a MICHELIN Green Star.
Bib Gourmand
The MICHELIN Guide Inspectors identified nine restaurants to award the Bib Gourmand designation, which recognizes eateries for great food at a great value:
- AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q (Denver)
- Ash’Kara (Denver)
- Basta (Boulder)
- The Ginger Pig (Denver)
- Glo Noodle House (Denver)
- Hop Alley (Denver)
- La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal (Denver)
- Mister Oso (Denver)
- Tavernetta (Denver)
Recommended Restaurants
Colorado received 30 MICHELIN Recommended restaurants:
- A5 Steakhouse (Denver)
- Barolo (Denver)
- Blackbelly Market (Boulder)
- Bramble & Hare (Boulder)
- Dio Mio (Denver)
- Dushanbe Tea House (Boulder)
- Element 47 (Aspen)
- Fruition (Denver)
- Guard and Grace (Denver)
- Hey Kiddo (Denver)
- Marco’s Coal Fired (Denver)
- Mawa’s Kitchen (Aspen)
- Mercantile Dining and Provision (Denver)
- Mirabelle (Beaver Creek)
- Noisette (Denver)
- Oak at Fourteenth (Boulder)
- Olivia (Denver)
- Osaki’s (Vail)
- Potager (Denver)
- Prospect (Aspen)
- Q House (Denver)
- Safta (Denver)
- Santo (Boulder)
- Smok (Denver)
- Splendido at the Chateau (Beaver Creek)
- Stella’s Cucina (Boulder)
- Sweet Basil (Vail)
- Temaki Den (Denver)
- Wyld (Beaver Creek)
- Zoe Ma Ma (Boulder)