Colorado Steakhouses | SteakMap

The Best Steakhouses in Colorado

Colorado has 51 steakhouses across 29 towns, which makes it one of the broadest rosters in this directory. Denver holds 9 and Colorado Springs 5, but the striking thing is how much sits in the mountains — Vail, Aspen, Breckenridge, Crested Butte, Steamboat Springs, Estes Park, Winter Park, Silverthorne and more all carry a serious steakhouse, because ski towns and expensive beef go together.

Denver has a quirk of its own: two of its best steakhouses are owned by the men who won the Broncos back-to-back Super Bowls.

The Colorado Ten

1. Guard and Grace (Denver) — Troy Guard’s modern steakhouse downtown, and the critics’ pick in the city. Dry-aged, grass-fed and Wagyu on one list.
2. Shanahan’s Steakhouse (Denver) — co-owned by Mike Shanahan, the coach who won Super Bowls XXXII and XXXIII. Steaks aged 28 days and broiled at 1,500 degrees, with the championship memorabilia you would expect.
3. Urban Farmer (Denver) — the sibling of the Portland room, same farm-sourced, grass-fed argument applied to Colorado ranches.
4. Cowboy Star (Colorado Springs) — a restaurant with its own butcher shop attached, which is the single most reliable signal in this entire directory.
5. A5 Steakhouse (Denver) — named for the top Japanese beef grade, and the place in Colorado to actually eat it.
6. Steakhouse No. 316 (Aspen) — the Aspen institution, with a Boulder sibling.
7. Elway’s (Vail) — John Elway’s room upstairs in The Lodge at Vail. There is a second, genuinely good Elway’s inside Denver International Airport, which is not a sentence you write often.
8. Devil’s Thumb Ranch (Tabernash) — a working ranch resort in the Fraser Valley, and the most beautiful place to eat beef in the state.
9. Elk Avenue Prime (Crested Butte) — the best steak in the least accessible ski town in Colorado.
10. 8th Street Steakhouse (Steamboat Springs) — ranch country rather than resort country, and it shows on the plate.

The Broncos own two of Denver’s best steakhouses

In January 1998 and January 1999, the Denver Broncos won consecutive Super Bowls. The quarterback was John Elway. The head coach was Mike Shanahan.

Both of them now have their names over steakhouse doors in the same city. Shanahan’s sits in the Denver Tech Center, ageing its beef 28 days and finishing it in a 1,500-degree broiler. Elway’s runs rooms in Vail and at Denver International, built on hand-cut USDA Prime and a lamb chop fondue that has no business being as good as it is.

Athlete-branded restaurants are usually a licensing deal with a logo on the window. These are not that — they are working steakhouses that locals book, in a city where the Broncos are the closest thing to a civic religion. It is the most concentrated example in this directory of a steakhouse scene shaped by a sports team.

A steakhouse in every ski town

The mountain roster is the other half of Colorado. Beyond the Ten there is The Monarch in Aspen, Legends in Breckenridge, Vail Chophouse and Up the Creek in Vail, Wyld in Avon, Mint in Silverthorne, 5th Avenue Grille in Frisco, Hunters Chop House in Estes Park, Deno’s in Winter Park and Juicy Lucy’s in Glenwood Springs.

Two old mining towns turned gambling towns also carry one each: Rick’s in Central City and 980 Prime in Cripple Creek — the same casino-funded preservation logic that keeps Deadwood standing.

The national chains

Nine across the state, and almost all of them sit in a single corridor south of Denver — Del Frisco’s Double Eagle, Eddie V’s and Ocean Prime in Greenwood Village, Fleming’s and Eddie Merlot’s in Englewood, Perry’s in Lone Tree, plus STK, Ocean Prime and Del Frisco’s Grille in Denver itself. That cluster is the Denver Tech Center office belt, which is the same expense-account logic that built Tysons Corner.

Browse by city: Denver, Colorado Springs and Vail.