In June, the Michelin Guide announced that it would begin awarding stars to restaurants in the US state of Colorado, specifically in five cities: Aspen and Snowmass; Vail; Beaver Creek; Boulder; and Denver.
As it turns out, five is also the total number of stars the guide doled out. Diners bent on visiting the starred restaurants can spend the majority of their time in Denver, where three of them are, and make side trips to Boulder and Aspen.
Michelin announced the list on Tuesday at a live event in Denver, capital of the Rocky Mountain State known for its winter sports. The guide defines a one-star establishment as “high quality cooking, worth a stop”.
The number of stars awarded for Colorado is the lowest for any guide in North America. When the inaugural Florida guide was unveiled in June 2022, 15 restaurants in Miami and Orlando received stars, with one earning two stars (“excellent cooking; worth a detour”).
Likewise, the first guide for Toronto, released in September 2022, named 13 restaurants with stars, including one with two stars.
The best-known restaurant with a star in the Colorado guide is Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, a 19-year-old destination that serves bold takes on the cooking of Northern Italy. It also has one of the more thoughtful wine lists in the US.
The four-course menu goes for US$140 and has included risotto with aged Carnaroli rice and New York strip steak with horseradish.
At Brutø in Denver, chef Michael Diaz de Leon received a star for his wood-fired, Latin American-accented tasting menus, which showcase tacos filled with the catch of the day as well as white Sonora fettuccine with salsa macha.
A second Denver restaurant that was given both a conventional star and a Green one was The Wolf’s Tailor; it focuses on international flavours and techniques and zero waste, with dishes like lamb’s neck with tamarind sweet soy, cooked on a robata grill.
The pace at which the Michelin Guide is expanding has again brought up the question of what makes a restaurant star-worthy – among the highlighted dishes at the newly starred Bosq in Aspen is a caviar bump for US$35 – and how much those stars still matter, anyway.
The guide to Colorado is the sixth guide for the US; the others cover New York, California, Washington DC, Chicago and Florida.
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It won’t be the newest for long. This autumn, Michelin will publish its first Atlanta guide. And coming soon for North America is a Michelin guide to Vancouver.
How Michelin chooses new areas to cover seems to be guided by the budgets of local tourism agencies. Tim Wolfe, the director for the Colorado Tourism Office, announced last year that it would spend an additional US$9 million to attract tourists after visitors’ spending fell by US$9 billion from 2019 to 2020.
The agency is paying US$100,000 annually to have Michelin in Colorado, according to The New York Times; the agreement is to run for three years.
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Local agencies in Vail, Denver, Aspen and Beaver Creek also reportedly agreed to pay from US$70,000 to US$100,000 each. Colorado cities that did not participate, such as Colorado Springs and Aurora, were not visited by the guide’s anonymous inspectors.
It remains to be seen how people in a city like Beaver Creek, which had no starred restaurants on the list and scored only a pair of places on the “recommended” list – designated as a place with “well-cooked” food – will feel about how their money is being spent.
At the end of August, Michelin announced the Colorado Bib Gourmands, or “cheap eats”. Of nine on the list, eight are in Denver.
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Still, some chefs defend the guide’s importance. David Kinch, who closed his three-Michelin-star restaurant Manresa in California at the end of 2022, has argued that the star system remains relevant.
“It’s easy to pick on Michelin,” he said last year in an interview. “But anyone who says they lost their influence has no idea what they’re talking about.”
Colorado’s 1-Michelin-star restaurants
Beckon, Denver; Bosq, Aspen; Brutø, Denver; Frasca Food and Wine, Boulder; The Wolf’s Tailor, Denver
Colorado’s Bib Gourmand restaurants
AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q, Denver; Ash’Kara, Denver; Basta, Boulder; Ginger Pig, Denver; Glo Noodle House, Denver; Hop Alley, Denver; La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal, Denver; Mister Oso, Denver; Tavernetta, Denver
Colorado’s Michelin Green-star restaurants
Blackbelly Market, Boulder; Bramble & Hare, Boulder; Brutø, Denver; The Wolf’s Tailor, Denver
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