Best Burgers in Denver Right Now: Local Picks Worth Trying

I put together a video covering 10+ standout burgers around Denver, and the goal was simple: go a level deeper. That means dive bar burgers, food trucks that have quietly built real followings, newer spots that haven't made every generic listicle yet, and some award-winners that people outside certain neighborhoods still haven't tried. Here's the rundown.

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The Cherry Cricket

I'd be doing a disservice to skip this one entirely, so here's where it lands for me. The Cherry Cricket is a legitimate Denver institution, and there's a reason it keeps showing up on lists — the burgers are solid, the portions are real, and the atmosphere is classic Denver bar. That said, if you've lived here more than a year and haven't branched out beyond Cricket, this article is specifically for you.

My Brother's Bar

My Brother's Bar on Platte Street is one of those places that has genuinely earned its reputation over decades, not just hype cycles. The vibe is low-key, cash-friendly, and the burgers are straightforward in the best way — no unnecessary stuff stacked on top, just a well-made burger in a place that doesn't try too hard. Worth knowing about if you're new to Denver, but also worth revisiting if it's been a while.

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Beyond those two anchors, the Denver burger scene has gotten noticeably more interesting in the last few years. There are food trucks that started with a single window and now have people tracking their location on Instagram. There are dive bars with kitchen setups that punch way above what the room would suggest. And there are newcomers doing things with smash patties, dry-aged beef, and regional styles that simply weren't part of the conversation here five years ago.

What I tried to do with my video was find the burgers that locals actually drive across town for — not just the ones that get mentioned because they're convenient to write about. A few patterns showed up across the best ones: good beef-to-bun ratio, some kind of house sauce that actually adds something, and a place that treats the burger like the main event rather than an afterthought on a menu that's trying to be everything.

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The dive bar category is one people underestimate. Denver has a handful of bars where the burger is genuinely the reason to go, not just a thing they happen to serve. These spots usually don't have a PR team or a presence on food media — you find out about them from a coworker or because you wandered in during a Broncos game and ended up staying for two hours. That's part of the appeal.

Food truck burgers are in a similar position. The overhead is lower, which sometimes means the operators are taking more creative swings. Some of the trucks I covered in the video have been around long enough to have a real fan base — people who plan their lunch around where the truck is parked that week. That kind of loyalty is usually a good sign.

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A few things I noticed while pulling this list together: the smash burger format has fully taken hold in Denver. Whether that's a good thing depends on your preference, but the best versions around the city are legitimately good — crispy edges, thin patties, fast execution. It's a different experience than a thick pub-style burger, and the best spots doing smash burgers here aren't just copying a national chain format. They're doing their own thing with local sourcing or specific sauce combinations that make the burger theirs.

On the other end of the spectrum, some of the award-winning burgers in Denver are more ambitious — dry-aged beef, house-made buns, ingredient combinations that take some thought. These arengers worth sitting down for, not grabbing through a window. Whether that's what you're in the mood for matters a lot when you're picking where to go.

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If you're visiting Denver and you want a burger recommendation that isn't just the first result on a search, the honest answer is that it depends on what neighborhood you're in and what kind of experience you're after. A quick smash burger at a food truck is a different afternoon than a full sit-down at a place with a real bar program. Both are worth doing.

For locals, my suggestion is to actually use the video as a checklist and work through spots you haven't hit yet. Denver has a habit of making it easy to stick to your five regular spots and never explore — the burger scene is a good reason to break that habit. Some of the places I covered are genuinely underrated relative to how good they are, which in a city that talks about food pretty constantly is kind of remarkable.

The full video is on YouTube if you want to see the actual burgers — it's a lot easier to judge a patty by looking at it than reading about it. But if you're planning a Denver trip or just trying to figure out where to go this weekend, this list covers the range of what the city is doing right now at the burger level, from the classics that earned their status to the newer spots that are starting to build their own version of that reputation.

Denver's burger scene is better than most people outside the city realize. It's also better than a lot of people inside the city realize, mostly because the best spots aren't always the loudest ones. That's kind of the point of the whole video.