Denver’s food scene is growing faster than ever, with Michelin-starred restaurants and new global concepts, but chefs say diners haven’t fully caught up. As acclaimed restaurants and ambitious newcomers raise the bar, many culinary leaders are still walking a tightrope between innovation and Denver’s famously basic tastes.
“The adventurous eater still doesn’t call Denver home yet,” said Michelin-recommended restaurant Mercantile Dining and Provision’s executive chef, Alex Grenier. “The audience in Denver is still a meat-and-potatoes type of audience.”
Across the city, chefs echo Grenier’s observation, noting that Denver’s rapid culinary expansion has outpaced the comfort zones of many local diners. While Michelin’s arrival has drawn national talent and emboldened restaurants to experiment, most chefs say they must introduce new techniques and flavors slowly, meeting customers where they are while nudging them toward a more adventurous palate.
“I saw that the culinary scene had some opportunity to be a real up-and-comer,” Grenier said. Grenier is originally from Connecticut and moved to Denver from the Bay Area in 2017. He built his culinary chops at some of the Bay Area’s big hitters, such as Lure + Till, Left Bank Brasserie and Bywater, and was a sous chef for the Bay Area’s first Nobu in Palo Alto.
“You actually see a lot more big-name chefs starting to move here and opening restaurants here,” Grenier said. “The barrier to entry is so much [lower] than going to New York. You got a million restaurants [in New York] all competing for the Michelin.”
Grenier is now among friends as he pushes Mercantile onto a new list of Michelin-recommended restaurants in Colorado. A definitive trait of Denver’s stage of executive chefs is a more accessible style of cooking with unique, personable details hiding within their menus.
“I’m not going to chase something that doesn’t mean a huge amount to me,” said Grenier in relation to Michelin distinctions. “I’d rather cook things that I love to cook, and then if people love it too—great.”
That same balancing act of pushing quality while keeping things approachable defines many of the city’s rising culinary leaders, including Chef Gregory Mak of the Welton Room. “It’s all very approachable food, but it’s handcrafted and it’s done very well,” Mak said in reference to Denver’s booming restaurant scene.
The Welton Room opened in 2022 as a dark L.A.-esque cocktail lounge at 2590 Welton Street. It’s a full-service kitchen next to its predecessor, the Monkey Bar. “Simply put, it’s high-end cocktails paired with good food,” Mak said.
Mak described his menus as eclectic and an alternative to constricted, forced order options. Also hailing from Nobu Palo Alto, Chef Mak was inspired to create a tasting experience for diners by diversifying his menu items with small courses.
“I really fell in love with small plates as a concept—a few bites here or there,” said Mak. “It’s kind of like a ‘build your own experience.’”
But like Grenier, Mak quickly discovered that Denver diners weren’t always ready for unfamiliar flavors. Initially, the unique menu items at the Welton Room were not well-received. It seemed as though Colorado was lacking the palate for caviar and pâté, so Mak decided to evolve his own style of cooking and adjust his menu to better reflect the meat and potatoes Denver restaurant-goers were accustomed to.
“We ended up shifting the food to something more approachable,” Mak said. “We never set out to be over-the-top with the food to begin with … we shifted to things that people could look at on the menu and say, ‘Oh! I know what that is! I’ve never had that, but that looks approachable. I’ll try it!’”
Since adjusting to Denver’s more traditional customer base, The Welton Room has seen much success. Mak’s goal is to slowly push the envelope on tradition and reintroduce more eclectic and outlandish menu items that people may want to take a chance on. Mak currently has his sights on pâtés, new seafood dishes and foie gras.
While fine dining struggles to find a broad footing, global cuisine continues to thrive by embracing Denver’s casual dining culture rather than diverting from it. Brothers Xi Yong and Xi Nuan Zheng, the owners of the 15-year-old Okinawa Japanese Cuisine, celebrated the grand opening of their new dim sum and dumplings establishment, Ma’s Kitchen, this November. Alan Cheng, a business associate of the Zhengs’ operation, had described Ma’s Kitchen as a fun and casual dining experience with Cantonese and Singaporean influences.
“All the restaurants have been surviving through the BRT [construction], and we wanted to bring the fun dining experience back to Colfax,” Cheng said. “[Chef Xi Nuan Zheng] was a chef in Singapore for seven years so there’s a lot of fusion happening in the food as well besides regular dim sum.”
Cheng described their long-time success as being in line with the traditional eating-out experience in Denver. “We wanted people to come back into this Colfax corridor and have fun grabbing a beer at the bars, then sit down and dine at the restaurants,” he said.
Similar to Grenier, the Zhengs recognized the casual proclivities of their audience and made sure to parallel that appetite while still elevating the Denver culinary community. Their success suggests a turning point: even in neighborhoods long associated with no-frills dining, chefs are finding ways to incorporate more experimental options alongside dishes that people already enjoy.
It’s a slow evolution, but a noticeable one, and it has many culinary leaders wondering whether Denver is on the cusp of a broader shift in taste. As new restaurants open and Michelin attention lingers, the future of Denver’s food scene may depend on how willing chefs and their diners are to keep pushing that boundary between comfort and curiosity.
“The food is being elevated. You see higher-end technique now … it’s a good thing for the Colorado scene,” Grenier said. “The adventurous eater doesn’t quite call Denver home … but it’s getting there.”
