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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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Park Burger
Park Burger opened in 2010 on South Pearl Street in the Platt Park neighborhood, founded by Jean-Philippe Failyau on a straightforward premise: a scratch-built, quality-first burger served in a casual, family-friendly counter setting rather than a full-service restaurant or a late-night bar. The Pearl Street original has stayed the flagship as the concept expanded to additional Denver neighborhoods under parent company Gastamo Group. The approach is built around ingredient quality rather than novelty toppings or a signature gimmick — fresh, never-frozen beef, a compact list of well-executed builds, hand-cut fries, and milkshakes, all served fast enough to function as a genuine weeknight option rather than a destination meal. That focus has earned Park Burger a steady local reputation as one of the city's more consistently well-reviewed neighborhood burger counters, the kind of place regulars recommend without much fanfare because it simply delivers the same solid burger every time. Park Burger has also shown real staying power as a small local chain rather than a single beloved storefront — expanding from the original Platt Park location into other Denver neighborhoods over more than a decade, a genuinely difficult thing to do without diluting quality, in a city with no shortage of newer, flashier burger openings competing for the same customers. For a Denver cheeseburger list, Park Burger is the essential "reliable neighborhood counter" entry — a scratch-kitchen, family-friendly burger spot built on ingredient quality over spectacle, still running out of the same South Pearl Street storefront where Jean-Philippe Failyau opened it in 2010.
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