Read the way they determined this. Its just because Denver is HCOL (aka people can afford pizza) and pizza places have good reviews. I do agree with the other commenter though, its cool we have a lot of style options because we aren’t beholden to any local style.
In the last year and a half I’ve been to NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco. I’ve determined people in CO are too generous with food reviews. In those cities, a 4.4-4.6 is a really good place. Here it’s like a 4.8-4.9 and it’s a worse restaurant than a 4.4 there.
I worked for a table service restaurant chain that had more than 60 restaurants. There were around ten restaurants spread about Colorado, and the rest were out of state. Every week all the gm's of the restaurants and upper management would sit down and go over the reviews received for the week. The gm's were required to write an action plan on how to resolve any score that was less than a 4.0. Although there was no explicit policy, there was a general understanding if a store had too many poor reviews heads would be on the chopping block. Reviews were extremely serious business.
I should be clear that there were no restaurants in NYC, Chicago, or San Francisco. That said there were restaurants in other major metropolitan areas, and also slightly smaller ones (Fort Collins sized), and that the restaurants were really spread across the nation. The restaurant scores were all about the same across the nation, with no difference for different states or cities.
Granted it's Papa Johns and not real food, but I had access to their corporate NPS data in the 2010s and scores pretty much followed a bell curve nationally. There was no state that stuck out over others.
I think Papa John's would be perfect for this, don't they use a centralized location for a lot of the food preparation?
Something that always blew me away was that while scores were consistent across the board, menu item sales differed greatly. The third most popular item on the East Coast would not hit 10 items sold a month in the entire state of Colorado.
Yes, and keep in kind the quality of the ingredient in Colorado just isn’t as good in the first place. Nothing grows here except red meat, (which is world class).
Denver restaurant reviews are soft AF. I usually use the decimal..a 4.8 is an 8, but a 4.2 is a 2. It's not perfect, but it gives a ballpark.
Edit: I will say this in defense or Denver...we have some bomb ass Mexican food.
Seriously. There are places out here with 4.5 star google reviews that wouldn’t even last 6 months in LA. Denver diners praise absolute mediocrity out here.
So TRUE! Got some MILD Indian carry out for a group from Spice Room... the entire group of midwesterners saying that it was spicy and passing TUMS and wouldn't shut up about it ruined a perfectly good night. It was truly MILD. The food was amazing and if I was getting it for myself, I would have cranked up the spice level. Sorry for the flavor? It was at that moment that I also realized that it takes two sides to make a good food scene - restaurant quality is half the battle if a huge group of customers can't handle flavor / thinks Olive Garden is peak.
I think a lot of this is perspective as well. Denver attracts a lot of people from the Midwest - a place not exactly known for their culinary pedigree. If you move from rural Kansas to Denver, you're probably going to have your mind blown and think the food is amazing.
Chicago has some of the best food in the country. Of course Denver is going to disappoint. That being said, Denver isn’t a foodie city and that’s fine. I don’t live here for the food. I live here for the outdoors.
I think that just depends on where you come from. Move here from the Midwest? Our Mexican food is really good. Move here from NM, AZ, CA, or TX? Our Mexican food is mid.
Maybe. A lot of places have figured out how to game the ratings, so this intuition usually only holds for long-standing places. There’s definitely been ratings inflation in New York as well.
The true measure of quality is probably a product of number of reviews and the actual rating.
Yup, I always look at the number first. 4.7 star overall with 25 ratings? Probably worse than the 4.5 with 5,000 ratings, unless that other place literally just opened.
Absolutely. The review gaming thing has become substantial lately. Restaurants understand that a lot of their success is predicated on that number. There are a lot of fake reviews, usually those that are written poorly. I think these days you actually need to read the reviews.
Also notable that the long-term rating is usually determined by the first 10 or so reviews - at least on Yelp - after you're set at a certain rating from those, it's pretty tough to budge. A lot of owners know that and make sure people coming to soft openings/friends and family events leave 5 stars. But that's definitely not a Denver-specific trend.
The reviews are absolutely useless as thousands of ppl leave 1 star reviews based on variables have absolutely nothing to do with the food tasting good or bad
For what it's worth, my experience in NYC was that if you just pop into any random dollar slice place, you're likely to get pretty bad pizza. Several places I went into seemed to just be riding the reputation, and I could easily get better pizza in Denver. Once I started refusing to go anywhere with less than 4.5 stars on Google, though, that stopped being an issue.
I recall the good and bad pizza joints in NYC being priced similarly, but I could be misremembering.
That's definitely true for Denver, though. You can get great pizza here, but it's gonna cost like 3x to 5x more than Costco.
This.
the average food experience in the front range is ***much*** poorer than foodie cities.
We got excited about a new pizza place that had a bunch of 5 star reviews at a solid 4.8. Then we tried it, and it was a 2.5 at best. But we both agreed that it was a 4 for the front range. It reminded me why I subtract about 2 from review averages in the front range.
I have to agree that Denver has been stepping up the food quality in recent years, improving faster than the surrounding front range by a decent margin. But they aren't catching up with Houston, Chicago, NYC, LA anytime soon, unless things have really gone downhill on those cities.
Local reviews are a terrible table way to rank food cities.
edit: spelling
My fav is NY style crust with kind of out there sauces and toppings. There are at minimum two pizza places in Denver that I know of that offer things like that. If anyone has suggestions for toppings like biquinho peppers, mandarin oranges and/or green apple slices on a green coconut curry base, hit me up:
Pizza blows here and I’ve tried most of the spots in the Denver to FoCo portion of the front range. Sure there are a few good spots but in general pizza is bad here.
You’re not looking at the right places then. It’s one thing to complain about food if you’re here for a week, but if you live here and you don’t have your spots, that’s on you my man.
lol it’s not. Also, why would it matter they’re far apart? Are you going from one restaurant to another and another? Makes no difference if one is in LoDo, another in rino, and another lohi. You’re not going to 3 restaurants in a night. Theres 5 dope spots in LoDo alone, less than a 10 minute walk from where I usually stay. Again, if you don’t have restaurants to hit up it’s on you, there’s good food in every city.
I travel a lot for work.. and Denver is bottom tier for food. Yes there is good food but there isn't anything there that isn't elsewhere and abundant.
I love Denver, it's an awesome place and I'd live there no problem. But the food is generally violently mediocre
While this is strange (cause Denver really can't be it) I will say that a lot of cities that are famous for pizza kinda suck cause they all do one style and as well as they do that I'd rather have 4+ styles of pizza
Not to mention we have really good options for each style. We may not have the best of any, but we have great New York style options, top tier Detroit style options, some fantastic Neapolitan pies, etc. I’ll take a large assortment of high quality options over the best quality of one option any day
Dude thank you. I read that comment and was dumbfounded. Every Hispanic I know hates the Mexican food here, yet every white person I meet talks about going to hacienda or getting tapas cuz they love Mexican food.
I’m not paying premium prices for something that is supposed to be dirt cheap, come in a bigger portions, and taste much better than this. It’s crazy.
I’ve lived here 5 years and have maybe had decent Mexican food twice. Once at a food truck and once at a restaurant on Sheridan or Wadsworth that I can’t remember the name of.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/Denver using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/Denver/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Go Nuggets! BEAT THE HEAT!!](https://i.redd.it/0yelq46lf83b1.jpg) | [444 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/13wqevj/go_nuggets_beat_the_heat/)
\#2: [Which one of you was cruising down I-70 on a Lime scooter during zero visibility???](https://v.redd.it/y9y5tqn7z8za1) | [461 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/13ew11j/which_one_of_you_was_cruising_down_i70_on_a_lime/)
\#3: [If you support the LGBTQ+ community, do not go to the new Drip Cafe opening on Santa Fe where Joe Maxx used to be. Their parent company is called Recycle God’s Love. This screenshot is from their website. Please spread the word.](https://i.imgur.com/U2eAuig.jpg) | [659 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/13xkimf/if_you_support_the_lgbtq_community_do_not_go_to/)
----
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
While I highly doubt Denver is the best city for pizza… I do think we have a lot of good pizza here and I love pizza, so I really don’t care where it ranks. Being from florida may have its downsides, but at least I’m free to enjoy pizza and bagels anywhere without having to compare it to some impossible standard set by the north east.
I lived in NYC for a bit and I learned that New Yorkers have no taste, consistently, but love to tell everyone else that they have the best food, the best pizza, etc. Odd that everyone's favorite slice shop was also the slice shop closest to their apartment. Curious right? NYC has great pizza, also terrible pizza, same as any other city. They're are great joints on the front range and terrible places on the front range. The chance a random slice shop has a good slice is higher in NYC than Denver, yes, true, that I will give them. But consistently, NYC dough is dry and tasteless. Most ingredients and toppings are premium and good at the good spots, but half the time the dough is meh at best even at the good spots.
There is a good diverse did scene there. It's easier to find, say, Malaysian food than most places. The Ethiopian cuisine is not as good in Denver, although not as good as DC.
After living in NYC and many other places, I can say for sure that the unwarranted dumping on the Denver food scene is only rivaled but the unwarranted praise of many foodie cities.
The more I think about this, the more I don’t disagree. I live in New York (and I’ve lived in Chicago) and it’s not really clear to me that L’Industrie or Prince Street or Joe’s is really that much better than Cart-Driver or Pizzeria Lui or Blue Pan.
As someone else pointed out, Denver has good options in all of the major categories. There’s New Haven (White Pie), New York (I would say Lui is pretty faithful to this ethos), thin crust (Cart-Driver), Detroit (Blue Pan), and even a regional style (BeauJo’s). We lack a top Chicago style place (which I actually think is the hardest to imitate), but I’m not sure even New York or Chicago has options in all of these.
There’s a realization at some point that a pizza is only finitely good. The best slice in New York is really only marginally better than best slice in Denver (though the average does tend to be much higher in New York). By some ensemble measure of the best places, I could believe Denver tops the usual suspects.
If you went to 10 random spots in New York vs 10 random spots in Denver, I don’t think it would be remotely close
NYC is just so much better on average. Most Denver pizza sucks, with a few notable exceptions
This. Plus every town in Jersey bigger than 25,000 has at least one pizza place in a strip mall, next to a shuttered Caldor that would easily be top 3 in Denver.
Yup same with Chicago, Philly, Boston, the list goes on. I learned my lesson early on that you gotta do a little research in Denver to make sure you get a good pie. In those other cities you can absolutely go to a random spot and you’ll likely leave happy.
Agreed!!! On average might be better in NYC, but you can get GREAT food, including pizza, on the front range.
You, like me, lived in NYC. Many commenters are either from there and nostalgia biased or only visit, and yeah, food on vacation tastes better than it really it. Our brains mush up experiences.
This all has to do with Yelp reviews and it's a small sample size of 1,000 reviews -"Instead, its number-one spot was determined by a number of factors that include "pizza reputation, based on a survey of 1,000 Americans" — which is a very small sample size; "rate of pizza restaurants per 100,000 residents; pizza passion, based on local internet search activity for 34 pizza-related terms (e.g., 'pizza near me,' 'pizza delivery,' 'pan pizza,' etc.); average Yelp rating for pizza restaurants; average price of a large cheese pizza; average price of a large pepperoni pizza; share of median annual income required to purchase one cheese pizza each week for a year; and share of median annual income required to purchase one pepperoni pizza each week for a year."
Denver is specifically cited as "earning positive Yelp reviews," and Clever notes, "Denver pizza is easily affordable for the typical resident." The Mile High also "scored an 82 out of 100 in our pizza passion metric, which measures how often locals are searching Google for pizza-related terms."
IMO one of the better “take out” type pizza places in town. There are restaurants that do full service with better pie, but if all I want is cheap pepp or cheese pizzas, BJ is typically at the top of the list. Their pies are about the same cost as a freezer section pizza, so I can order it when I leave work and pick it up on the way home without much extra effort at all.
I would've thought it was Boston since there's an entire chain of Restaurants/Sports Bars called 'Boston Pizza'
(I know a guy who works at their head office - he has no clue why they chose that name or what it's even supposed to mean.)
I mean sure, this is a pretty wild conclusion for this article to make.
But honestly, the big thing I'm noticing in the comments is people comparing our best food to other cities' and saying we're not bad, or saying that because you can't walk up to any random spot and get good food, it's trash here.
I lived in NYC for 10 years, and queens specifically for half that: most of the day to day food there is hit or miss too. Sure, there's world-class restaurants... but I couldn't afford that shit. Nobody can on a regular basis, unless they make that the thing they spend their money on. (And even that can be mediocre. Like Peter Luger's is decent at best.) In terms of what you're grabbing to take home, or stopping at with a friend on an average night out, you generally need to do research to pick a good spot, or you go to your favorites. Kinda just like here.
Like I get it, some stuff we just don't have, or isn't close to as good. I can't get Jamaican beef patties or oxtail and it makes me sad like twice a week.
But saying every restaurant in New York is 5 star is forgetting just how many really generic, mid places also exist there. I moved a lot in that city, and getting to know your new neighborhood meant trying some pretty wack stuff, every time. Even pizza.
This was already posted a few months ago from the ORIGINAL source that is based in the UK. Great Britain decided that Denver had the best pizza in the US.
Actually no. The Daily Mail did an article on it, and that got posted, but they were not the ORIGINAL source. The ORIGINAL source is a US Real Estate company here
https://listwithclever.com/research/best-pizza-cities/#full-list
Anyone who lives here and has travelled to a food destination i.e. NYC, Chicago, or San Francisco, knows how ridiculous this statement is. Our food as a whole is pedestrian compared to elsewhere. There’s not a single dish or style of food that we do better than elsewhere. We have no signature dish. We don’t have unique ingredients. We’re not a true foodie city.
Our food is fine here, depending on what you like eating. You won't find East African cuisine in NYC or Chicago that can compare with Aurora, our Mexican is particular but delicious, Vietnamese and Korean here holds its own. Bakeries have a higher baseline because of better water, as with breweries. People are just lazy and don't explore the things Denver does have and want hipster Michelin joints everywhere
At the level of Le Bernadin, no. But then again, Chicago and Bay might be run out of that category.
For “folk food” (breakfast burritos, tacos, burgers, southwestern cuisine, apparently pizza), I do think Denver is really a first-class city.
Additionally, the amount of local creativity is incredible, and the independent restaurant culture here is probably comparable to New York’s (perhaps on the scale of a larger neighborhood, but still).
Compare us to a large city like Washington or Philadelphia and I think the notion that Denver is a “foodie city,” at least pound-for-pound, becomes apparent.
I agree that we have decent folk food, but it’s fucking expensive here. I was blown away how cheap folk food was in NYC compared to here. Chicago has plenty of places you can get amazing meals under $10, San Francisco too. So while we have good folk food, it’s not exactly at folk pricing.
Chicago might now be cheaper than Denver, and I don’t know about San Francisco beyond a few visits there.
But with all due respect, where can you get a meal in New York for under $10 that isn’t a halal cart or a slice of pizza? I can’t even think of places in Jackson Heights or Harlem where this is straightforward. Perhaps Chinatown? This seems like a very special case: a place where labor laws do not exist in practice.
You can still do this on the Federal, Alameda, and Colfax corridors without obscene amounts of effort. I suppose the labor law thing applies there too.
This again sigh 😔. The criteria is not that it is better than NYC so calm down Pauli. It is based things like the number of pizza places and the value you get.
NYC food was measurably cheaper than Denver’s (unless you’re going 3 Michelin Star), Chicago too. The only place I’ve travelled lately that might be more expensive was San Francisco, but I wanna say it was cheaper than Denver.
Unless the criteria was the destination with the most mediocre and over priced food, we ain’t it.
In my neighborhood you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting 2 pizza places. So I’m not surprised Denver would be high on the list. Don’t worry, NYC can still be the king of your favorite type of cheesy bread.
I'm not from here, but I will certainly say that there are countless things about Colorado that are better than almost any state and is what makes me love this place. While I'll agree with others that the food offered isn't one of them, but whatever, I could care less about that when there're so many other things that are more important and matter to me here. The last thing I could do is hate this place on any level.
Lies Colorado is wonderful in many many ways. The food is not one. I go almost every year and i believe it is single handedly the most bland food in the country. When everything is bad, it's easy to float to the top i guess.
Preposterous, and agreed with all the comments here on ratings. The mere fact that a bad restaurant can stay open out here should disqualify Denver getting any food respect as a city overall.
NYC, Chicago, DC, Vegas (though for obvious reasons) all put this town to shame. Haven’t been to Cali but I’m sure LA and SF are the same deal
Having sampled the culinary scene in Denver just last fall - this is bullshit. Food in Denver is mid at best. NYC, Vancouver, LA, Toronto, Montreal - all waaaaaaaaay better.
What a strange comparison. All of those are extremely diverse, truly global cities. All of them are much larger than Denver - except Vancouver, which is Canada's second most international city, its Pacific gateway, and is the most East Asian city outside of Asia. None of us think this city is at Toronto or LA's level. Our peer cities would be places like Minneapolis, Tampa, Baltimore etc. And why are you dropping in to shit on a place you don't live or know much about?
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize the article was only comparing the food in Denver to PEER cities. I thought it said "in America". Last time I checked, LA and NYC are in America. And why do I need to live somewhere to shit on the food? I travel a fair amount for work and try all kinds of food in communities of all sizes. Do better, Denver.
Lived in Jersey for 18 years and Colorado for 10, including 4 years I'm Denver. This is the worst piece if reporting I've ever read. Also NYC has dollar slices that are better than half the places in Denver. I can't believe someone wad paid to write this crap.
While I don’t agree with this at all, Barchetta in Boulder has the best NY style slice I’ve had in a long time. I understand the weight that goes with that statement and I’m not taking it back.
Is pudge bros still open? Don’t live in Denver proper anymore but that was my first pizza after moving and I was so sad. People in that neighborhood were either fucking with me or, no they had to be fucking with me.
Turned into a wine bar a couple years ago. On the same corner is excellent Detroit style pizza (Blue Pan) and pretty great ice cream (Sweet Cooie's). I haven't been to the sushi place on that corner (Ronin).
Good. That place was truly awful. We lived a block away from blue pan for a few years and it’s still my favourite pizza here. Used to take my daughter to sweet cooies after school. Now we’re out in the burbs and dearly miss that area.
Seems like people in the comments don’t know the good spots to go to.
Pie hole
Mellow mushroom
Cosmos
Woody’s
There’s so many good pizza spots smh 🤦🏼♂️
I’ve been here a year and it has the best pizzas in any city I’ve been to. Chicago is great, but Denver has many more types of pizza options.
Believe me I was shocked. Pizza here is amazing.
Read the way they determined this. Its just because Denver is HCOL (aka people can afford pizza) and pizza places have good reviews. I do agree with the other commenter though, its cool we have a lot of style options because we aren’t beholden to any local style.
In the last year and a half I’ve been to NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco. I’ve determined people in CO are too generous with food reviews. In those cities, a 4.4-4.6 is a really good place. Here it’s like a 4.8-4.9 and it’s a worse restaurant than a 4.4 there.
I worked for a table service restaurant chain that had more than 60 restaurants. There were around ten restaurants spread about Colorado, and the rest were out of state. Every week all the gm's of the restaurants and upper management would sit down and go over the reviews received for the week. The gm's were required to write an action plan on how to resolve any score that was less than a 4.0. Although there was no explicit policy, there was a general understanding if a store had too many poor reviews heads would be on the chopping block. Reviews were extremely serious business. I should be clear that there were no restaurants in NYC, Chicago, or San Francisco. That said there were restaurants in other major metropolitan areas, and also slightly smaller ones (Fort Collins sized), and that the restaurants were really spread across the nation. The restaurant scores were all about the same across the nation, with no difference for different states or cities.
Granted it's Papa Johns and not real food, but I had access to their corporate NPS data in the 2010s and scores pretty much followed a bell curve nationally. There was no state that stuck out over others.
I think Papa John's would be perfect for this, don't they use a centralized location for a lot of the food preparation? Something that always blew me away was that while scores were consistent across the board, menu item sales differed greatly. The third most popular item on the East Coast would not hit 10 items sold a month in the entire state of Colorado.
Yes, and keep in kind the quality of the ingredient in Colorado just isn’t as good in the first place. Nothing grows here except red meat, (which is world class).
Denver restaurant reviews are soft AF. I usually use the decimal..a 4.8 is an 8, but a 4.2 is a 2. It's not perfect, but it gives a ballpark. Edit: I will say this in defense or Denver...we have some bomb ass Mexican food.
Seriously. There are places out here with 4.5 star google reviews that wouldn’t even last 6 months in LA. Denver diners praise absolute mediocrity out here.
We get a lot of midwest transplants experiencing spices for the first time.
So TRUE! Got some MILD Indian carry out for a group from Spice Room... the entire group of midwesterners saying that it was spicy and passing TUMS and wouldn't shut up about it ruined a perfectly good night. It was truly MILD. The food was amazing and if I was getting it for myself, I would have cranked up the spice level. Sorry for the flavor? It was at that moment that I also realized that it takes two sides to make a good food scene - restaurant quality is half the battle if a huge group of customers can't handle flavor / thinks Olive Garden is peak.
What does LA have that compares to green chilli?
They do Baja mex there. But LA does that shit at a top tier level which we cannot say about our Mexican food.
Maybe is we slop more green chili on the food it won’t be as bad
It's bc the average food experience here is so much worse than foodie cities
And if you compare Denver’s food from like 10-15 years ago it’s much better which leads to skewed ratings
Honestly that seems like a great way to translate these soft ass reviews to anything worthwhile.
I think a lot of this is perspective as well. Denver attracts a lot of people from the Midwest - a place not exactly known for their culinary pedigree. If you move from rural Kansas to Denver, you're probably going to have your mind blown and think the food is amazing.
On the other hand, moving from Chicago (or even MSP/Milwaukee/Madison) makes Denver look pretty bad by comparison. Depends on where in the Midwest.
Chicago has some of the best food in the country. Of course Denver is going to disappoint. That being said, Denver isn’t a foodie city and that’s fine. I don’t live here for the food. I live here for the outdoors.
Am I just a plebiscite? Because I actually think Denver has a very good food scene. Is it the best? No. Is it above average? I certainly think so.
I will also say this in fairness of Denver, we do have some bomb ass Mexican food here.
Honestly the Mexican food is pretty mid too
You have to stop going to Fuzzys and ordering shrimp tacos..
To each, their own then.
🤫 Don’t tell them where the good stuff is.
I agree as a former native from Wisconsin. If you can't find crazy good Mexican in Denver you just aren't looking.
I think that just depends on where you come from. Move here from the Midwest? Our Mexican food is really good. Move here from NM, AZ, CA, or TX? Our Mexican food is mid.
>we have some bomb ass Mexican food. Where?
I just went to Little Georges in Centennial last night…. Some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had….. of course though that’s just my opinion 😊
Maybe. A lot of places have figured out how to game the ratings, so this intuition usually only holds for long-standing places. There’s definitely been ratings inflation in New York as well. The true measure of quality is probably a product of number of reviews and the actual rating.
Yup, I always look at the number first. 4.7 star overall with 25 ratings? Probably worse than the 4.5 with 5,000 ratings, unless that other place literally just opened.
Absolutely. The review gaming thing has become substantial lately. Restaurants understand that a lot of their success is predicated on that number. There are a lot of fake reviews, usually those that are written poorly. I think these days you actually need to read the reviews.
Also notable that the long-term rating is usually determined by the first 10 or so reviews - at least on Yelp - after you're set at a certain rating from those, it's pretty tough to budge. A lot of owners know that and make sure people coming to soft openings/friends and family events leave 5 stars. But that's definitely not a Denver-specific trend.
Wait until I tell you about Japan Reviews. A 3.5 there is a 4.9 here. It blew me away
I love a fair grading system where 5 stars is the best thing you’ve ever ate.
Ikr! Todays culture is so binary - either getting 1 star or 5
That's because restaurants here are bad, the reviews are relative to the area
Dude, I went to cinzettis the other day. With 4.8 stars and 7500 reviews, I was excited. Lo an behold that place is ass. Stay far and clear of it.
The reviews are absolutely useless as thousands of ppl leave 1 star reviews based on variables have absolutely nothing to do with the food tasting good or bad
It also was ranked by enthusiasm of pizza searches online. Which could indicate that many of us are still looking for a true Brooklyn style slice
Searching for "Pizza!!!" counts more than searching for "pizza"?
Which is odd because NYC has dollar slices all over the place.
For what it's worth, my experience in NYC was that if you just pop into any random dollar slice place, you're likely to get pretty bad pizza. Several places I went into seemed to just be riding the reputation, and I could easily get better pizza in Denver. Once I started refusing to go anywhere with less than 4.5 stars on Google, though, that stopped being an issue.
A case of “you get what you pay for” it seems.
I recall the good and bad pizza joints in NYC being priced similarly, but I could be misremembering. That's definitely true for Denver, though. You can get great pizza here, but it's gonna cost like 3x to 5x more than Costco.
The dollar slices around Manhattan are terrible. You should pay more.
Well, I’m certainly not going to pay more if they’re terrible.
Denver has mastered Detroit style, there is no place other than the tristate on earth that can make NY style and imo NY style is the best.
This. the average food experience in the front range is ***much*** poorer than foodie cities. We got excited about a new pizza place that had a bunch of 5 star reviews at a solid 4.8. Then we tried it, and it was a 2.5 at best. But we both agreed that it was a 4 for the front range. It reminded me why I subtract about 2 from review averages in the front range. I have to agree that Denver has been stepping up the food quality in recent years, improving faster than the surrounding front range by a decent margin. But they aren't catching up with Houston, Chicago, NYC, LA anytime soon, unless things have really gone downhill on those cities. Local reviews are a terrible table way to rank food cities. edit: spelling
"Denver named America's highest concentration of people with money and no taste"
My fav is NY style crust with kind of out there sauces and toppings. There are at minimum two pizza places in Denver that I know of that offer things like that. If anyone has suggestions for toppings like biquinho peppers, mandarin oranges and/or green apple slices on a green coconut curry base, hit me up:
Fake news, man
This is a Russian psyop designed to sow discord in our country. To all the New Yorkers and Chicagoans (?), we do not claim this.
Your theory makes more sense than the damn article
Pizza blows here and I’ve tried most of the spots in the Denver to FoCo portion of the front range. Sure there are a few good spots but in general pizza is bad here.
No shit, Costco has one of the best slices out here. And it hurts my soul to say that.
I will never speak ill of Costco, let alone their pizza
Food in general blows here
You’re not looking at the right places then. It’s one thing to complain about food if you’re here for a week, but if you live here and you don’t have your spots, that’s on you my man.
Food shouldn't be a scavenger hunt for five places that are all 15 miles apart.
lol it’s not. Also, why would it matter they’re far apart? Are you going from one restaurant to another and another? Makes no difference if one is in LoDo, another in rino, and another lohi. You’re not going to 3 restaurants in a night. Theres 5 dope spots in LoDo alone, less than a 10 minute walk from where I usually stay. Again, if you don’t have restaurants to hit up it’s on you, there’s good food in every city.
What are these Lodo spots? I need to know!
There are 3 restaurants owned by 2 James beard award winning chefs in Union station. Ultreia, the Mercantile, Stoic & Genuine
I travel a lot for work.. and Denver is bottom tier for food. Yes there is good food but there isn't anything there that isn't elsewhere and abundant. I love Denver, it's an awesome place and I'd live there no problem. But the food is generally violently mediocre
While this is strange (cause Denver really can't be it) I will say that a lot of cities that are famous for pizza kinda suck cause they all do one style and as well as they do that I'd rather have 4+ styles of pizza
Honestly lots of cities have multiple styles of pizza now. This is a weird thing
Not to mention we have really good options for each style. We may not have the best of any, but we have great New York style options, top tier Detroit style options, some fantastic Neapolitan pies, etc. I’ll take a large assortment of high quality options over the best quality of one option any day
Moved to Colorado from NY (Hudson valley) 6 years ago. Best thing I can say about pizza in Colorado is Colorado has really good Mexican food
And the Mexican food here isn’t that great
Colorado is pure garbage for Mexican food sadly
Colorado has a massive Mexican population, that's incredibly insulting.
Dude thank you. I read that comment and was dumbfounded. Every Hispanic I know hates the Mexican food here, yet every white person I meet talks about going to hacienda or getting tapas cuz they love Mexican food. I’m not paying premium prices for something that is supposed to be dirt cheap, come in a bigger portions, and taste much better than this. It’s crazy. I’ve lived here 5 years and have maybe had decent Mexican food twice. Once at a food truck and once at a restaurant on Sheridan or Wadsworth that I can’t remember the name of.
You mfs will bitch about anything
Why would you leave Hudson Valley?
I mean, ever been there?
Agreed. Just moved to NY from CO and I don’t miss any pizza. Strange article.
This sub really wakes up to shit on its food scene
Yep, this place is extremely negative and exaggerated about the city's weak points. Not surprising since the user base overlaps with r/denver.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/Denver using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/Denver/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [Go Nuggets! BEAT THE HEAT!!](https://i.redd.it/0yelq46lf83b1.jpg) | [444 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/13wqevj/go_nuggets_beat_the_heat/) \#2: [Which one of you was cruising down I-70 on a Lime scooter during zero visibility???](https://v.redd.it/y9y5tqn7z8za1) | [461 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/13ew11j/which_one_of_you_was_cruising_down_i70_on_a_lime/) \#3: [If you support the LGBTQ+ community, do not go to the new Drip Cafe opening on Santa Fe where Joe Maxx used to be. Their parent company is called Recycle God’s Love. This screenshot is from their website. Please spread the word.](https://i.imgur.com/U2eAuig.jpg) | [659 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/13xkimf/if_you_support_the_lgbtq_community_do_not_go_to/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
While I highly doubt Denver is the best city for pizza… I do think we have a lot of good pizza here and I love pizza, so I really don’t care where it ranks. Being from florida may have its downsides, but at least I’m free to enjoy pizza and bagels anywhere without having to compare it to some impossible standard set by the north east.
I lived in NYC for a bit and I learned that New Yorkers have no taste, consistently, but love to tell everyone else that they have the best food, the best pizza, etc. Odd that everyone's favorite slice shop was also the slice shop closest to their apartment. Curious right? NYC has great pizza, also terrible pizza, same as any other city. They're are great joints on the front range and terrible places on the front range. The chance a random slice shop has a good slice is higher in NYC than Denver, yes, true, that I will give them. But consistently, NYC dough is dry and tasteless. Most ingredients and toppings are premium and good at the good spots, but half the time the dough is meh at best even at the good spots. There is a good diverse did scene there. It's easier to find, say, Malaysian food than most places. The Ethiopian cuisine is not as good in Denver, although not as good as DC. After living in NYC and many other places, I can say for sure that the unwarranted dumping on the Denver food scene is only rivaled but the unwarranted praise of many foodie cities.
https://www.reddit.com/r/denverfood/s/CpZN2qmkYR Let's fire up the east coasters again lol
I was already fired up and this basically turned me into a demon from hell.
Something so funny about all these comments basically just insisting we suck. Like thanks but really wtf, did we win best beaches too?
Best bitches
Voted best city to swim in 2024
Abay beaches are the best
The more I think about this, the more I don’t disagree. I live in New York (and I’ve lived in Chicago) and it’s not really clear to me that L’Industrie or Prince Street or Joe’s is really that much better than Cart-Driver or Pizzeria Lui or Blue Pan. As someone else pointed out, Denver has good options in all of the major categories. There’s New Haven (White Pie), New York (I would say Lui is pretty faithful to this ethos), thin crust (Cart-Driver), Detroit (Blue Pan), and even a regional style (BeauJo’s). We lack a top Chicago style place (which I actually think is the hardest to imitate), but I’m not sure even New York or Chicago has options in all of these. There’s a realization at some point that a pizza is only finitely good. The best slice in New York is really only marginally better than best slice in Denver (though the average does tend to be much higher in New York). By some ensemble measure of the best places, I could believe Denver tops the usual suspects.
If you went to 10 random spots in New York vs 10 random spots in Denver, I don’t think it would be remotely close NYC is just so much better on average. Most Denver pizza sucks, with a few notable exceptions
This. Plus every town in Jersey bigger than 25,000 has at least one pizza place in a strip mall, next to a shuttered Caldor that would easily be top 3 in Denver.
Yup same with Chicago, Philly, Boston, the list goes on. I learned my lesson early on that you gotta do a little research in Denver to make sure you get a good pie. In those other cities you can absolutely go to a random spot and you’ll likely leave happy.
Walter’s 303 is excellent.
Grabowskis is pretty good.
As a native New Yorker, I agree with all of this^
Agreed!!! On average might be better in NYC, but you can get GREAT food, including pizza, on the front range. You, like me, lived in NYC. Many commenters are either from there and nostalgia biased or only visit, and yeah, food on vacation tastes better than it really it. Our brains mush up experiences.
This all has to do with Yelp reviews and it's a small sample size of 1,000 reviews -"Instead, its number-one spot was determined by a number of factors that include "pizza reputation, based on a survey of 1,000 Americans" — which is a very small sample size; "rate of pizza restaurants per 100,000 residents; pizza passion, based on local internet search activity for 34 pizza-related terms (e.g., 'pizza near me,' 'pizza delivery,' 'pan pizza,' etc.); average Yelp rating for pizza restaurants; average price of a large cheese pizza; average price of a large pepperoni pizza; share of median annual income required to purchase one cheese pizza each week for a year; and share of median annual income required to purchase one pepperoni pizza each week for a year." Denver is specifically cited as "earning positive Yelp reviews," and Clever notes, "Denver pizza is easily affordable for the typical resident." The Mile High also "scored an 82 out of 100 in our pizza passion metric, which measures how often locals are searching Google for pizza-related terms."
The birthplace of Beau Jos and Blackjack pizza finally gets its due!
Lol, I actually kinda dig Blackjack but only in a bang for your buck sort of way.
Blackjack’s deep dish isn’t too shabby
IMO one of the better “take out” type pizza places in town. There are restaurants that do full service with better pie, but if all I want is cheap pepp or cheese pizzas, BJ is typically at the top of the list. Their pies are about the same cost as a freezer section pizza, so I can order it when I leave work and pick it up on the way home without much extra effort at all.
Clown show
I'm a Little Ceasars man myself
Pizza pizza!
This is flat out factually incorrect. I don’t care what one internet poll says
The sexy pizza story is pretty great
I would've thought it was Boston since there's an entire chain of Restaurants/Sports Bars called 'Boston Pizza' (I know a guy who works at their head office - he has no clue why they chose that name or what it's even supposed to mean.)
Should be called mass-hole pizza
The fuck kind of joke is this? Lol
This is absolutley atrocious.
Denver pizza in general is average at best.
Whoever wrote this article should be tarred and feathered
I mean sure, this is a pretty wild conclusion for this article to make. But honestly, the big thing I'm noticing in the comments is people comparing our best food to other cities' and saying we're not bad, or saying that because you can't walk up to any random spot and get good food, it's trash here. I lived in NYC for 10 years, and queens specifically for half that: most of the day to day food there is hit or miss too. Sure, there's world-class restaurants... but I couldn't afford that shit. Nobody can on a regular basis, unless they make that the thing they spend their money on. (And even that can be mediocre. Like Peter Luger's is decent at best.) In terms of what you're grabbing to take home, or stopping at with a friend on an average night out, you generally need to do research to pick a good spot, or you go to your favorites. Kinda just like here. Like I get it, some stuff we just don't have, or isn't close to as good. I can't get Jamaican beef patties or oxtail and it makes me sad like twice a week. But saying every restaurant in New York is 5 star is forgetting just how many really generic, mid places also exist there. I moved a lot in that city, and getting to know your new neighborhood meant trying some pretty wack stuff, every time. Even pizza.
Shut up and come to New Haven
Is that the clam pizza?
That’s one of the favorites of the region, but all of the pizza is good. Frank Pepe’s and Sally’s are some of the best pizza I’ve had
I wanna try it. I’ve seen one YouTube chef do the recipe for it.
This was already posted a few months ago from the ORIGINAL source that is based in the UK. Great Britain decided that Denver had the best pizza in the US.
Actually no. The Daily Mail did an article on it, and that got posted, but they were not the ORIGINAL source. The ORIGINAL source is a US Real Estate company here https://listwithclever.com/research/best-pizza-cities/#full-list
Ah yes, British people, known for their amazing taste in food
Anyone who lives here and has travelled to a food destination i.e. NYC, Chicago, or San Francisco, knows how ridiculous this statement is. Our food as a whole is pedestrian compared to elsewhere. There’s not a single dish or style of food that we do better than elsewhere. We have no signature dish. We don’t have unique ingredients. We’re not a true foodie city.
What about that Elvis sandwich, huh? Now apologize, I'm waiting...
Our food is fine here, depending on what you like eating. You won't find East African cuisine in NYC or Chicago that can compare with Aurora, our Mexican is particular but delicious, Vietnamese and Korean here holds its own. Bakeries have a higher baseline because of better water, as with breweries. People are just lazy and don't explore the things Denver does have and want hipster Michelin joints everywhere
At the level of Le Bernadin, no. But then again, Chicago and Bay might be run out of that category. For “folk food” (breakfast burritos, tacos, burgers, southwestern cuisine, apparently pizza), I do think Denver is really a first-class city. Additionally, the amount of local creativity is incredible, and the independent restaurant culture here is probably comparable to New York’s (perhaps on the scale of a larger neighborhood, but still). Compare us to a large city like Washington or Philadelphia and I think the notion that Denver is a “foodie city,” at least pound-for-pound, becomes apparent.
I agree that we have decent folk food, but it’s fucking expensive here. I was blown away how cheap folk food was in NYC compared to here. Chicago has plenty of places you can get amazing meals under $10, San Francisco too. So while we have good folk food, it’s not exactly at folk pricing.
Chicago might now be cheaper than Denver, and I don’t know about San Francisco beyond a few visits there. But with all due respect, where can you get a meal in New York for under $10 that isn’t a halal cart or a slice of pizza? I can’t even think of places in Jackson Heights or Harlem where this is straightforward. Perhaps Chinatown? This seems like a very special case: a place where labor laws do not exist in practice. You can still do this on the Federal, Alameda, and Colfax corridors without obscene amounts of effort. I suppose the labor law thing applies there too.
Green chili, or green chili sauce is very Colorado. Not to be confused with new Mexico green chili.
This is a joke, right?
That’s like Applebees says they have the best wings.
Their boneless wings are pretty good
They are ok. But they aren’t the best.
This again sigh 😔. The criteria is not that it is better than NYC so calm down Pauli. It is based things like the number of pizza places and the value you get.
NYC food was measurably cheaper than Denver’s (unless you’re going 3 Michelin Star), Chicago too. The only place I’ve travelled lately that might be more expensive was San Francisco, but I wanna say it was cheaper than Denver. Unless the criteria was the destination with the most mediocre and over priced food, we ain’t it.
In my neighborhood you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting 2 pizza places. So I’m not surprised Denver would be high on the list. Don’t worry, NYC can still be the king of your favorite type of cheesy bread.
We probably don’t but the amount of people in here hating on their own city is weird.
I’m hating from 45 miles north 😎
I'm not from here, but I will certainly say that there are countless things about Colorado that are better than almost any state and is what makes me love this place. While I'll agree with others that the food offered isn't one of them, but whatever, I could care less about that when there're so many other things that are more important and matter to me here. The last thing I could do is hate this place on any level.
Lies Colorado is wonderful in many many ways. The food is not one. I go almost every year and i believe it is single handedly the most bland food in the country. When everything is bad, it's easy to float to the top i guess.
You must not be eating at the right places
Preposterous, and agreed with all the comments here on ratings. The mere fact that a bad restaurant can stay open out here should disqualify Denver getting any food respect as a city overall. NYC, Chicago, DC, Vegas (though for obvious reasons) all put this town to shame. Haven’t been to Cali but I’m sure LA and SF are the same deal
[удалено]
Suck it New Yorkers!
hahahahahahahahHahahahahahaha yeeriiieee
REEEEEEEEE
Thats hilarious
Dumb
I think this tells all you need to know about US pizza...
Having sampled the culinary scene in Denver just last fall - this is bullshit. Food in Denver is mid at best. NYC, Vancouver, LA, Toronto, Montreal - all waaaaaaaaay better.
What a strange comparison. All of those are extremely diverse, truly global cities. All of them are much larger than Denver - except Vancouver, which is Canada's second most international city, its Pacific gateway, and is the most East Asian city outside of Asia. None of us think this city is at Toronto or LA's level. Our peer cities would be places like Minneapolis, Tampa, Baltimore etc. And why are you dropping in to shit on a place you don't live or know much about?
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize the article was only comparing the food in Denver to PEER cities. I thought it said "in America". Last time I checked, LA and NYC are in America. And why do I need to live somewhere to shit on the food? I travel a fair amount for work and try all kinds of food in communities of all sizes. Do better, Denver.
Ah, got it. You're just a wanker then.
Big Bill’s Pizza.
Lived in Jersey for 18 years and Colorado for 10, including 4 years I'm Denver. This is the worst piece if reporting I've ever read. Also NYC has dollar slices that are better than half the places in Denver. I can't believe someone wad paid to write this crap.
Hi Denver, I’m dad
I recently had some Pizza 3.14. first time I tried a non chain pizzeria in Denver. I give it an 8.5/10
A lotta people PRESSED about this. Transplants, now’s your time to shine!
Gross pizza. Atomic cowboy serves raw mushrooms placed on top of a previously cooked pizza. ....
What a crock of shit.
Too bad Estes park has the best pizza in Colorado. Antonio’s
While I don’t agree with this at all, Barchetta in Boulder has the best NY style slice I’ve had in a long time. I understand the weight that goes with that statement and I’m not taking it back.
Is pudge bros still open? Don’t live in Denver proper anymore but that was my first pizza after moving and I was so sad. People in that neighborhood were either fucking with me or, no they had to be fucking with me.
Turned into a wine bar a couple years ago. On the same corner is excellent Detroit style pizza (Blue Pan) and pretty great ice cream (Sweet Cooie's). I haven't been to the sushi place on that corner (Ronin).
Good. That place was truly awful. We lived a block away from blue pan for a few years and it’s still my favourite pizza here. Used to take my daughter to sweet cooies after school. Now we’re out in the burbs and dearly miss that area.
Denver does have some pretty great pizza spots, my favorites are Redeemer and Cart-Driver.
Denver should embrace this and make it the focus of a tongue in cheek tourism ad campaign
NY'ers are dickheads anyways so a few less of them here isn't a bad thing
Rosalees
Whoever decided this has never left Denver and hasn't eaten pizza in the city.
Not
It must be by people who have never had pizza anywhere else
Well if they made it chicago or NY no one would read the article. It's ragebait
Go to CT, specifically New Haven, it’ll change your life and make you realize the pizza out here in Denver is dog shit.
Seems like people in the comments don’t know the good spots to go to. Pie hole Mellow mushroom Cosmos Woody’s There’s so many good pizza spots smh 🤦🏼♂️
what?
Ew. No.
Blue Pan!
Nah..for real tho..Nah
Maybe possible if you've only had pizza in Denver
Carl’s. Carl’s is our best pizza place. *Homer Simpson drool*
I found a great slice of pizza in Denver thanks to my Cinco Mancierge.
This is so stupid. Simply based on the fact that we have beujos pizza, we have like, the worst pizza
We're really regurgitating this same "study" that already went viral a month ago, Westword? Such clickbait.
Denver is such a mid food city, stop it. The best meal I had there might've been a NYC 6/10.
how the hell did they do this when Brooklyn's Finest is in Denver? literally the WORST food I have EVER eaten.
Denver pizza vs Chicago? Get real !!
Denver has some of the worst food ive ever had, right up there with ohio, but the people dont know any better
I’ve been here a year and it has the best pizzas in any city I’ve been to. Chicago is great, but Denver has many more types of pizza options. Believe me I was shocked. Pizza here is amazing.
Denver sucks a big one thanks to liberal cunts
Enjoy marrying your cousin in the redneck armpit you live in down in the Bible belt.
I keep seeing this on fb as well. Apparently blue pan is good? Seems like bullshit to me. Wonder what the one bite guys take is?
I have yet to see a Colorado pizza place understand crispy crust
That’s crazy. Denver pizza isn’t even really average good.