Take a look at our list and create your own market tour!
Food Halls
Residing in Denver's Lower Highland (LoHi) neighborhood, Avanti Food & Beverage, a dynamically diverse food hall holding court in a former printing plant, shelters a collection of self-contained shipping containers, each of which is a mini restaurant. Diners can choose from a world-spanning variety of cuisines—everything from Venezuelan arepas to chicken-and-chive dumplings—and enjoy their lunch or dinner in the communal first-floor dining area, or on the riveting rooftop deck bedecked with modern lounge furniture and enthralling views of the downtown Denver skyline. Along with its restaurants, Avanti lays claim to two bars, including one on the altitude-high terrace.
At Denver Union Station, The Mile High City’s main transportation hub, morning train travelers hit up Pig Train Coffee Co. for a caffeine thunderbolt and Snooze for the profoundly delicious pineapple upside-down pancakes. Locals and tourists alike huddle at Stoic & Genuine to indulge in sensational seafood and fish creations that rival its coastal counterparts, while the foods of Spain and Portugal shine at Ultreia , a snug, sunlit gastroteka that takes diners on a culinary sojourn through Iberia—a journey that’s enriched by a terrific bar program that dives into Basque ciders, fortified wines, sherry, port and gin tonics, by which they’re known in Spain. Mercantile Dining & Provision, a lovely New American restaurant, sells hand-crafted jams, spreads and pickled vegetables, along with sandwiches and terrific cheeses. Book a dinner reservation at the chef’s counter to fawn over chef Alex Seidel’s beef tartare, bucatini or burger. If you’re lusting for libations, flash back to the golden years at The Cooper Lounge , an elegant mezzanine hideaway overlooking the 100-year-old great hall, or commune in the historic ticketing office that’s now the Terminal Bar, a convivial watering hole that pours craft beers, cocktails and wine.
Milepost Zero gets major points not just for bringing a solid lineup of excellent foodstuffs to baseball crowds, but also for its enviable Ballpark location just a bat’s swing from Coors Field , home to the Colorado Rockies. A mecca of gathering places, including 28,000 square feet of al fresco plaza space, Milepost Zero — its name a nod to the city’s early railway days when Milepost 0 was the center of where Denver’s train tracks began — is already a home run for the food-obsessed. The restaurant concepts include Tora Sushi + Ramen, TaCo (where enchiladas, burritos and even a Bangkok Bowl join the street taco menu), Anthony's Pizza & Pasta, and Burgers & Dreams. Loading the bases is the Milepost Zero Bar, which trumpets a self-serve tap wall flowing with craft cocktails, wine, hard seltzers, cider and beer.
Always a hot spot in the Ballpark neighborhood’s historic Dairy Block (now owned by Sage Hospitality), the 16-venue Denver Milk Market has a kitchen to satisfy every culinary itch: wood-fired artisanal pizzas; crisp-fried hot chicken; specialty salads; jolts of caffeine coupled with breakfast pastries; burgers and sandwiches; shakes, fresh-spun ice cream and gelato; eggs Benedicts and Belgian waffles; poke bowls; lobster rolls and fish tacos; burrito bowls and carnitas plates. The stalls are anchored by three drinking emporiums, including a gorgeous craft beer bar. On Sunday mornings, things get rambunctiously fun during drag bingo brunch.
The River North Art District (RiNo) is arguably the city’s most dynamic neighborhood, thanks in large part to urban developers Mickey and Kyle Zeppelin, a father-and-son team who, in 2013, opened The Source, a pioneering epicenter for food pilgrims, cocktail connoisseurs and craft beer geeks. The sprawling two-market complex populates an industrialized ironworks building that’s a multi-purpose village of culinary hotspots: Temaki Den, one of the city's top sushi restaurants; Reunion Bakery, a James Beard Award nominated destination for baked goods; Safta , award-winning chef Alon Shaya’s homage to unassailable Israeli cuisine; smōk, whose superlative barbecue scents the heavens with mega doses of smoky puffs; and The Woods , a restaurant and rooftop bar that dispenses liquid gold from New Belgium Brewery, which brews its beers onsite and hosts private events inside its ground level brewhouse.
River North Art District (RiNo) locals are spoiled rotten by the terrific combination of culinary concepts at this high-spirited food-and-drink emporium grandstanding eleven ace vendors, including Vero Italian, GreenSeed, High Point Creamery, Tammen’s Fish Market and Temper Chocolate and Confections . If you crave caffeine, swing by Crema Bodega for a pick-me-up cappuccino, and when the clock rings in cocktail hour, snag a seat at the bar at Curio for a boozy Manhattan, negroni or boulevardier. The 14,000-square-foot space also highlights brilliantly graffitied outdoor picnic tables painted by local artists. If you’re flying in or out of Denver International Airport , look for the Market’s second (and smaller) outpost on the A Concourse.
This industrialized, cutting-edge food hall in the River North Art District (RiNo) is a hipster hangout with an eclectic vibe and a top-notch roster of traders selling a noteworthy repertoire of global foodstuffs, including juicy burgers from Uptown & Humboldt; carnitas, tacos and alambre from Purisima; specialty rolls and poke bowls from Sushi Koro; and excellent rolled ice cream from Frozen Spirals. For cocktails and craft beers, swoop into the bar. If it’s entertainment you seek, you’ll find plenty of new and retro arcade games to test your competitive spirit.
Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace already boasts a beautifully browsable cluster of independent boutiques, bookstores, markets, breweries and wine-and-spirit shops scattered across its vast expanse, all of which is surrounded by alluring food temptations. Empanada lovers feast on the best at Maria Empanada, coffee connoisseurs get their caffeine injections from Logan House Coffee, those with a sweet tooth savor the gorgeous bonbons and candy bars from Miette et Chocolat, morning types break for the unassailable breakfast bagel sandwiches at Rosenberg’s, and date-night couples book a coveted table at Annette , chef/owner Caroline Glover’s petite nirvana of season-intensive culinary excellence. If you just want a beer, the 37 pour-your-own tap handles at Stanley Beer Hall should suffice.
Gourmet Food Markets
If you're looking for the tastiest, healthiest produce at good prices, head over to Farm & Market in the River North Art District (RiNo). This unique eatery is many things: a fast-casual restaurant, a gourmet market and an urban farm (vertical/hydroponic agriculture) under the same roof. You'll be amazed at how good the greens and tomatoes taste. Besides unleashing a universe of flavors, it also unleashes a universe of combinations. The market section has everything you need to put together your own meals from salad dressing to pasta. There's plenty of parking in their lot along Walnut Street.
It’s difficult–very difficult–to overstate the rapture that’s the Savory Spice Shop, a sensory experience steeped in aromatic euphoria. With stores across the state—and beyond—this is where home cooks and accomplished chefs go to search for an exhaustive A to Z collection of spices, spice blends, spice sets, salts, dried herbs, peppercorns, meat and seafood rubs, baking sugars and powders, mulling spices, popcorn seasonings, and so much more. Long story short? If you need spices, whether basic or exotic, the Savory Spice Shop most likely carries them. And if you’re looking to give and receive, you can’t go wrong with the themed gift boxes.
Seafood Landing
Landlocked, you say? No fresh seafood, you mumble? Think again, coastal counterparts. While it’s true the ocean is miles away from our mountainous land of marvels, you can absolutely, positively find superb ocean critters at Seafood Landing, a tidy, family-run storefront in Highland overseen by serious fishmongers who sell whole fish with bright eyes—an indication of their impeccable freshness. If it swims, swishes, rolls, burrows or crawls in the ocean—grouper, tuna, halibut, live Maine lobsters, scallops, mussels and clams—there’s a good chance Seafood Landing sells it. And if you don’t see what you’re looking for, just ask. The shop will do its best to haul in your catch.
Marczyk Fine Foods
The sandwiches alone are worth a visit to this beautifully curated market and specialty food shop in Uptown (there’s a second location at 5100 E. Colfax) that parades artisan cheeses, hard-to-find products from around the globe, kitchen gadgets, beautiful olive oils, pedigreed dried pastas, thoughtfully sourced seafood, fish and meats, paella kits, fresh-baked breads, small-batch, scratch-made ice creams, and local foodstuffs that make for a brilliant gift basket saluting Colorado’s bounty. The adjacent boutique wine shop—Marczyk Fine Wines—is a deep dive into esoteric and largely unknown producers, and with prices that regularly ring up under the $15 mark, you can buy a case of juice that won’t shatter your bank account.
Tony’s Meats & Market
A staple in the Centennial suburb since the 1970s when the city was little more than tumbleweeds nosediving across the asphalt, the original Tony’s Market—and the duo of others in Castle Pines and Littleton—is a gourmet paradise swelled with fresh produce, house-butchered meats (the Castle Pines location boasts a dry-aging room) and fish, excellent sandwiches, decadent fruit pies, fancy provisions and prepared foods that range from prosciutto-wrapped asparagus and twice-baked potatoes to picnic potato salad and party meatballs.
Leevers Locavore
“Elevating local food” is the motto of this next-level Highland market parading local, organic and natural products, coupled with several restaurants, a café that pours fresh cups of java and kombucha, and a bar dispensing wine and beer that customers can sip while strolling around the market. In addition to staples like milk and eggs, pick up organic produce, unassailable meats (including sausage, turkey, ham and beef) and stop by the store’s Chop Shop to collect sliced and diced fruits and vegetables for dinner at the table. Bonus: On Saturday afternoons, you can shop to live music.
Truffle Cheese Shop
A lifeline for cheese heads, this tiny Cherry Creek citadel of curds and whey is awash in whiffs of ripe aromas, a marker of the stellar collection of dairy delights that overwhelm the fancy display cases. Specializing in small-batch, artisan cheeses procured from here, there and everywhere, the family-owned shop also carries an impressive catalog of charcuterie, olive oils, vinegars, chocolates, crackers, jams and beautifully assembled party platters. And if you want a hands-on experience in cheese-making, sign up for one of the interactive classes, which are led by the shop’s super-talented cheesemongers.
Spinelli’s Market
A beloved bastion of the Park Hill neighborhood, this old-school Italian-leaning market stocks a sky-high variety of imported dried pastas, lovely Italian cheeses, the shop’s own line of pasta sauces, everything required to make pizza in your home kitchen (including fresh dough and still-warm orbs of fresh mozzarella) and a litany of prepared foods—spaghetti and meatballs, stuffed cheese shells, eggplant Parmigiana and lasagna—that amount to a feast. Fancy a sandwich? The deli excels in that department, too.
Pizzeria Leopold
Co-owner Chris Lyons presides over the pizza oven, scroll of sandwiches and salumi-and-cheese case at this unassailable Lakewood market/deli/pizzeria that unleashes unexpected marvels—the sort of marvels that can only be achieved by a perfectionist, which Lyons is. His brazen sandwiches, for example, include something called the Notorious P.I.G., a stacked masterpiece of first-rate prosciutto, fresh mozzarella (the best in the city), ripened tomatoes, arugula, cipollini onion gastrique, olive oil and a smear of prosciutto butter. His thin-crusted pizzas, specked with char and blasts of blackened bubbles, are small miracles, and the deli case, an homage to Italian meats, cheeses and prepared foods, is the real thing. And the cannoli? You want more than one.
Edwards Meats
One of the most prominent meat markets in the city, Edwards Meats, located in Wheat Ridge, is a carnivore’s utopia extolling, among other things, exceptional housemade sausages: Belfast bangers and Irish bangers, andouille, Louisiana boudin, elk brats, Wisconsin beer brats, pork-and-leek breakfast links, lamb sausage, and dozens more. The sprawling butcher case, a splay of backyard barbecue beef cuts (some prime), plus chicken, pork and several different variations of bacon, is pretty legendary, too—and the butchers don’t bat an eye if you ask for custom cuts. Still, one of our favorite perks of Edwards is the fact that it grandstands a section dedicated to offal: beef kidneys and beef hearts, buffalo tongue and kidneys, lamb hearts and pork trotters. Oh, and if you’re hunting for rendered duck fat, Edwards has that, too, along with European butter, fresh eggs, tons of barbecue sauces and a litany of spices and rubs to dress up any dish.
Carniceria Latina
A cornerstone in Aurora, a neighborhood flush with international markets, this Mexican carniceria is worth its weight in meat. When you walk in, sidestep the pinatas swooping down from the ceiling, brush past the cleaning supplies and head straight for the butcher counter, a mind-blowing splay of carne, including chorizo, chicken, barbacoa, carnitas, oxtail, skirt steak and tripe. The citrus-splashed house marinade, which can be added to just about any meat, is flat-out delicious, as are the housemade salsas and guacamole, scratch tortillas, real-deal street tacos and the tamales, which are available on weekends. You’ll also find a small selection of fresh vegetables and herbs and a monumental supply of spices and fresh and dried chiles.
H Mart
The lights are as bright as the beam of the sun at this mega Asian-American supermarket, its penetrating glare illuminating the abundance of bundled Asian herbs and produce that fill the baskets and carts of the shopping masses. There’s nothing quite like H Mart, which occupies a large plot in Aurora and a second location in a Westminster strip mall. Its focus favors Korean products, but there’s so, so much more to ogle, to touch, to buy: honey butter chips, kimchi, chile pastes, live lobsters, pea shoots, bok choy, fish cakes, coconut milk, rice and rice noodles, toasted seaweed, frozen dumplings, Thai okra, pork belly and pork jowl, oxtail, frozen bulgogi meat and beef tongue. You could spend all afternoon wandering the aisles of H Mart’s immense selection of foodstuffs, but the deep collection of housewares—woks, ramen noodle pots, rice cookers, bamboo steamers, chopsticks, sushi rollers and electric hot pots—is a sight to behold. If you want to get lost in a supermarket, this is the place.
Gulzar Halal Market
When you’re on the prowl for Arabic foods, you should absolutely make the pilgrimage to this butchery, market and bakery in Aurora. Stocked with fresh kosher meats, including lamb, plus a vast array of bulk dry foods, Middle Eastern sweets and exotic spices, you’ll find everything you need here to cook a fitting Mid-East feast. The back of the market is a dedicated bread bonanza with a display kitchen showcasing freshly baked, smoking-hot, saucer-sized ovals of charred and bubbly naan bread. It’s worth going here just for that, as evidenced by the long lines of breadheads who buy the masterpieces in mass quantities.
