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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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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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