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Bastien's Restaurant
Bastien's has stood on East Colfax Avenue since 1937, when the Bastien family bought the Moon Drive Inn that previously occupied the site. The current building — a striking, curved-roof example of Googie architecture designed by a member of the Bastien family himself — replaced the original structure in 1958 and has been the restaurant's home for well over six decades since, making it one of the more architecturally distinctive steakhouse buildings anywhere in Denver. The restaurant's signature is actually a steak, not a burger — the "Sugar Steak," rubbed with a sugar-based seasoning before searing, is what most first-time visitors are told to order. But Bastien's has run a sugar-rubbed hamburger built on the same technique for just as long, applying the restaurant's defining flavor idea to a simpler, cheaper format for regulars who want the Bastien's taste without a full steak dinner. What's most notable about Bastien's now is how long it's stayed a genuine family business: it's currently run by a fourth generation of Bastiens, with Ryan Bastien in the kitchen as head chef, and the menu has stayed close to its 1958 form rather than chasing contemporary steakhouse trends. Diners describe it as loud and unpretentious rather than formal — an old-school Denver restaurant that's never tried to be quiet or precious about its own history. For a Denver cheeseburger list, Bastien's is the essential "steakhouse burger, done the same way for generations" entry — a sugar-rubbed hamburger from a nearly 90-year-old, family-run Colfax Avenue institution, served inside one of the city's most distinctive pieces of mid-century architecture.
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The Cherry Cricket
The Cherry Cricket has occupied the corner of 2nd and University in Cherry Creek since 1945, when it opened as Mary Zimmerman's Bar. Lloyd Page bought the place in 1950 and gave it the name that's stuck ever since, and the marquee sign he put up — still glowing over the sidewalk today — has become one of the most recognizable landmarks in a neighborhood that's otherwise filled with upscale shopping and condo towers built up around it. That contrast is a big part of the Cricket's identity: it's long described itself as the "black sheep of Cherry Creek," a genuinely divey, unpretentious bar that never got remodeled into something glossier as the surrounding blocks did. The burger is built for choice rather than a single fixed recipe — a hand-formed patty customers dress from a long list of toppings, from green chile and grilled onions to fried eggs and jalapeños, so that regulars tend to have a specific, personal build they order every time rather than a single "house" version everyone gets. National attention has followed the local reputation rather than the other way around: Food Network's Aaron Sanchez called his burger there "the best thing I ever ate," and Travel Channel's Man v. Food singled the Cricket out as one of the best burger joints in the country. The bar took a real hit when a kitchen fire closed it the night before Thanksgiving in 2016, but it reopened five months later with its character intact, and has since grown carefully to a handful of additional metro-area locations without losing the original Cherry Creek room's rough edges. For a Denver cheeseburger list, the Cherry Cricket is the essential "this is the one everyone already knows" entry — an 80-year-old dive bar burger, built to order from a genuinely long topping list, that's held its reputation through a fire, a neighborhood's total transformation around it, and decades of newer competition trying to take its place.
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