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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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Smashburger
Smashburger is a Denver original in the most literal sense: the chain was founded here in 2007 by Rick Schaden, a former owner of Quiznos, and Tom Ryan, a food scientist who had previously helped develop Pizza Hut's stuffed crust pizza and served as chief concept officer at McDonald's. The pair bought an existing Denver restaurant to test cooking and management techniques before opening the first official Smashburger in June 2007, backed by $15 million in outside capital and a genuinely research-heavy process that reportedly included a blind taste test of roughly 300 kinds of beef before settling on Angus. The name describes the technique exactly: a ball of fresh beef pressed hard onto a hot flat-top grill, searing the surface into a crisp, caramelized crust in a matter of minutes, a method the founders helped popularize nationally well before "smashburger" became the generic term it is today for the entire style. Ryan and Schaden's research-driven approach — treating burger development more like food science than short-order cooking — was unusual for a fast-casual chain at the time and became a big part of the brand's early identity. The bet paid off fast: Forbes named Smashburger to its "America's Most Promising Company" list in 2011, and again in 2014, as the chain expanded well beyond its original home market into a national and eventually international footprint. That growth hasn't erased its roots — the company still operates several Denver locations, including a longtime spot on East 35th Avenue, keeping the smash technique available in the city where two Denver entrepreneurs first built it into a business. For a Denver cheeseburger list, Smashburger is the essential "the format itself started here" entry — a thin, hard-smashed patty from the fast-casual chain that helped take the smashburger technique from a diner trick to a national category, launched in Denver in 2007 and still serving out of the city that built it.
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