live-fire American, hotel restaurant · $$$ · since 2024
Ajax Downtown
Aspen's Ajax Tavern, transplanted into the Limelight hotel by Union Station.
Ajax Downtown opened in late summer 2024 in the Limelight Denver (the old Hotel Born), taking over the room where Citizen Rail had been the steakhouse of record for a few years. It is the first Ajax outside Aspen, and the kitchen, under Jared Becker, cooks almost everything over a Josper charcoal oven: coal-roasted beets, duck breast, a brisket-and-short-rib burger at happy hour, house sourdough from Boulder-milled grain. The bar leans into smoke too, down to a bourbon washed in ribeye fat. Breakfast starts at 7am daily, which hotel guests use and neighbors should.
Why go. A wood-fire dinner or a good hotel breakfast without leaving the Union Station block.
The 3-to-6pm après hour has the burger and fries at a fraction of dinner prices; sit at the bar and skip the reservation.
A short walk from Ajax Downtown
Limelight Denver
$$$The ski-company hotel behind Union Station, with Ajax Downtown on the ground floor.
LoDo · 1600 Wewatta St
Tavernetta
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Tupelo Honey Southern Kitchen & Bar
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Tattered Cover Book Store (Union Station)
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Snooze, an A.M. Eatery (Union Station)
$$The Denver-born pancake chain's Union Station room, and its longest line.
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