Pizza Bandit's Root Beer Float at Avanti Denver: Worth It?

Avanti has been a downtown Denver fixture long enough that most people have strong opinions about it. I'm one of them. So when I heard they'd refreshed the first floor and brought in new stalls, I was curious but not rushing out the door. Then I kept seeing this root beer float from Pizza Bandit come across my feed, and Westword went as far as calling it "perfection." That's a bold word. I had to go find out if it held up.

The Setup at Avanti

If you haven't been to Avanti since the refresh, the first floor has a different feel now with the new stall lineup in place. Pizza Bandit is one of those additions, and it's the reason I made the trip downtown. The space still has that open food hall energy — you order at the counter, you find a spot, you figure it out. Nothing about the experience is fussy, which honestly fits a root beer float better than a white tablecloth would.

What Makes This Float Different

Here's the thing about this root beer float: it's not a syrup-from-a-gun situation. Pizza Bandit is doing something more deliberate with it. The float uses custom ice cream and locally sourced ingredients throughout — the root beer itself is local, the ice cream is made specifically for this drink rather than pulled from a generic tub. When every component has actual intention behind it, you can usually taste the difference, and that's the case here.

The custom ice cream is what sets the texture apart. It's denser than soft serve, creamier than your standard scoop, and it holds up in the float longer without immediately turning into a watery mess. The root beer has that real herbal bite to it — you get the sassafras-forward flavor that a lot of commercial root beers have dialed way back over the years. Together, the two things actually complement each other instead of one just being a vehicle for the other.

Does It Live Up to the Hype

Westword calling something "perfection" is the kind of claim that sets you up to be disappointed, and I went in braced for that. I'd say it's legitimately good — one of the better versions of a root beer float I've had in Denver, and the local sourcing gives it a story that's easy to get behind. Whether it hits "perfection" probably depends on how seriously you take root beer floats as a category.

The one thing worth knowing is that this is still a food hall. You're not sitting down to a full dessert experience with someone refilling your water. You grab it, you find a table, maybe you share it, maybe you don't. The float travels reasonably well but it's better enjoyed on the spot. If you're the kind of person who wants to sit with it for a while and let it develop as the ice cream melts in, that actually works here — the flavors stay interesting as it shifts.

My Take

Pizza Bandit at Avanti is worth a visit if you're already heading downtown or if the float has been living in your head the way it was living in mine. I don't think you need to build a whole day around it, but if you're nearby and you want something that's a step above a typical dessert stop, this checks out. The local-everything approach isn't just a marketing angle — it actually shows up in what you're drinking. Pretty cool that a pizza stall in a food hall is putting out one of the more talked-about floats in the city right now. Avanti keeps finding ways to stay relevant, and this is a good example of why.