The MICHELIN Guide has made its debut in Colorado. Five One-MICHELIN-Star establishments and four MICHELIN Green Star restaurants were honored on Tuesday, Sept.12 at the Mission Ballroom in Denver.
Denver’s Brutø and The Wolf’s Tailor restaurants were each awarded one MICHELIN Star, plus a MICHELIN Green Star.
The full selection, including Bib Gourmand restaurants and Recommended eateries, totals 44 restaurants.
“This is a proud moment for Colorado and for the MICHELIN Guide, with five MICHELIN-Starred restaurants highlighting the state’s debut selection of restaurants,” said Gwendal Poullennec, the international director of the MICHELIN Guides. “It’s quite an impressive feat for a debut selection to include so many MICHELIN Green Stars. Our famously anonymous inspectors were wowed by these restaurants’ high-quality, local ingredients, sourced seasonally and sustainably. It’s a very exciting time for the culinary community here, and we feel the momentum growing.”
The MICHELIN Guide 2023 Colorado at a glance:
- 5 One MICHELIN Star restaurants
- 4 MICHELIN Green Star restaurants
- 9 Bib Gourmand restaurants
- 30 Michelin Selected restaurants
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 multicourse 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.
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