Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver

Dolce Sicilia has authentic Italian cookies, tasty sandwiches and serious tiramisu, but we're most partial to its remarkably inexpensive scratch-baked breads, including semolina, baguettes and heavenly ciabatta: a powdery crust, not too tough or too flaky, wrapped around a wonderfully textured, chewy-airy center that screams of quality ingredients and straight-from-the-oven freshness. A jug of wine, a loaf of this stuff and thou...heck, we'd be just fine without thou. More for us. There's something to be said for a place that does pizza and nothing but pizza. No pastas, no hoagies, no chicken parm sandwiches or slices of up-from-frozen cheesecake. Although the Oven doesn't rise to that level of obsessive focus - you can get apps of olives and fresh mozzarella, still almost liquid, and there are a few other slight departures - it comes close with a menu that has pizza as its heart and soul. Really good, really consistent, really rustic pizza served with love and pride. The Oven crew makes everything to order (including the dough, cheese and sauce) for a house that is almost always full, shuffling pizzas around in the big, exposed wood-fired ovens and boxing takeout requests with shocking speed. Every neighborhood should have a pizza place as good as the Oven.

www.theovenpizzaevino.com

Get past the naming conventions (every specialty pie here is named after a song, a band, a musician, whatever), get past the open-mike nights and the D Note's double life as a live-music venue. Get past the location - smack in the middle of cutesy Olde Town Arvada - and the overt half-vegetarianism of the place. Just get here for some of the best pizza in town, courtesy of ex-Mercury Cafe cook Amy Wroblewski. The pies are big, piled impossibly high with well-sourced and earth-friendly ingredients, in combinations that manage to be tastefully original. Yes, the D Note has a distinctly hippie vibe and the service can sometimes be less than lightning-fast, but who cares? When the pizza is this good, nothing else matters.

www.thednote.com

Decades before "Rocky Mountain High" became Colorado's second official state song, diners were singing the praises of the Wazee Supper Club. In fact, the Karagas brothers opened their restaurant bar in 1974, just two years after John Denver wrote that song, and today the Wazee is just as much an examplar of this state as is that cheesy number. And so is the pizza coming out of the Wazee kitchen - which has more than its own share of cheese, as well as a uniquely sweet sauce that never changes. Other things have changed, though, including the Wazee's owners (today it's part of the Wynkoop group), hours (it still serves late and is now open Sundays, too) and menu. In addition to pizza and sandwiches, there are appetizers, salads, even condiments. And, as always, plenty of beers on tap to enjoy in this Colorado classic.

www.wazeesupperclub.com

The pizza is tasty, but it's the ambience that really draws people to Oblio's - that and the liquor license that so many Park Hill NIMBYs fought against. Today ex- naysayers tie their drooling golden retrievers to the fence and join the queue of folks waiting for a seat in the jammin' joint. Fortunately, neighborhood respectability has not ruined Oblio's; it still has the same sweet hippie-dippie vibe it did when it opened back in 1996, complete with hallucinogenic menus creatively constructed from '60s and '70s album covers. What a long, strange trip it's been.

www.obliosparkhill.com/

Two things saved Via from slipping into that great, yawning pit of mediocrity above which so many restaurants hang. First, there was last fall's hiring of chef James Mazzio and his decision to stand his post right on the line. And second, there were the pizza ovens - real wood-fired ovens of the very, very old-school variety that could turn out similarly old-school pizzas of the Neapolitan variety. As a matter of fact, these pizzas were so authentic that Via was actually certified by the United States branch of the (essentially the Italian pizza police), which speaks to the authenticity of Via's product. But the true arbiter is always taste, and one bite of the three-cheese, prosciutto and arugula Parma pizza is enough to make anyone a believer. Buenos Aires has long been a magnet for immigrants. Successive waves of wanderers from Italy, Africa, Asia and elsewhere have washed up in that cosmopolitan city, and each group has brought a little taste of their homeland with them. And now we have all those tastes here in Denver at Buenos Aires Pizzeria, where Buenos Aires native Francis Carrera serves all the variegated flavors of his home town in pizza form. Skip the more traditional pies in favor of something unusual, something you've never had before - hearts of palm, maybe, or a pie speckled with bits of hard-boiled egg. Then make a note to return for gnocchi night or one of the kitchen's excellent Cuban sandwiches.

www.bapizza.com

Buenos Aires Pizzeria features the full spectrum of Argentine immigration in pizza form, but Francis Carrera's Buenos Aires Grill goes much deeper, offering perfect renditions of many of the international plates that have fed generations of Buenos Aires residents and shaped the cuisine of that city. The focus at this lovely restaurant is definitely meat - a churrasco board dominates - but so many excellent plates can be found hovering around the edges of the menu that one meal here just leaves you wanting more. The blood sausage is the best we've ever had, the bacalao (salt cod) an upscaled version of a peasant classic, and almost anything coming off the grills tastes of a deep cultural understanding that's rare in even the most rigorously authentic ethnic restaurants. Denver has always had plenty of Mexican restaurants - old Mexican, new Mexican, regional Mexican, Mexican done both fancy and plain. But it wasn't until recently that we started tasting the true potential of internationally influenced Latin American cuisine. That potential is best realized at Sabor Latino, a charming spot that serves up ceviche, bandeja paisa with plantains and Colombian chicharrones, Chilean bride's soup in a huge bowl filled with fish and shrimp and baby clams (because that's just what a new bride wants on her wedding night: clam breath) and big, big drinks. The menu is like an arrow pointing the way for chefs looking for new inspiration in the coming years.

www.saborlatinorestaurant.com

Los Cabos II picks up extra points for authenticity. Well, authenticity - and the giant stuffed llama. When the dining room is quiet, this restaurant can (and does) double as a sort of Peruvian cultural museum - but it's best during the lunch and dinner rushes, when everyone's ordering and then digging into huge plates of multi-ethnic South American grub. From the simplest dishes of lomo saltado and strange Chinese/Spanish fusions to the seriously Spanish paella specials, mustardy potato salad and weekend buffets, everything is delicious and served in huge portions by a staff that's as friendly as the one at the corner diner.

www.loscabosii.com