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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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My Brother's Bar
My Brother's Bar occupies a building at 15th and Platte that's been serving drinks continuously since 1873, making it the oldest operating bar in Denver. It ran under other names for most of that history — including Paul's Place — before brothers Jim and Angelo Karagas bought it in 1970 and renamed it, the story going that vendors collecting payment would be told "don't look at me, it's my brother's bar" often enough that the name just took. A framed letter behind the bar ties the building directly into Beat Generation history: it was written in 1944 by Neal Cassady from the Colorado State Reformatory, asking his old high school counselor to cover his tab at "Paul's Place" — this same corner. Cassady, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg were all known to drink there, giving a genuinely unassuming Denver bar a direct line into the circle that produced On the Road. None of that history would matter much for a cheeseburger list if the food weren't good, and the burgers are the actual draw for most people walking in now. The JCB — a jalapeño cream cheese burger — and the Ralphie Burger, built on bison instead of beef, are the two most specifically ordered items on a menu that otherwise keeps things simple: classic sandwiches, pastrami on rye, and a newer weekend brunch service built around breakfast burgers. For a Denver cheeseburger list, My Brother's Bar is the essential "oldest bar in the city, with the history to prove it" entry — a 150-year-old building with a framed Beat Generation letter on the wall, still serving a jalapeño cream cheese burger and a bison patty to a crowd that's as likely to be there for the burger as for the history.
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