CITY GUIDES | COLORADO
Where to Eat in Fort Collins, From Oysters to Aussie Pies
Fort Collins may still be beer country, but dinner here has grown into something far more interesting.
By Mei Chen
Updated June 27, 2026
Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar
AUTHOR BIO: Mei Chen has worked for nearly a dozen start-ups in as many years, taking her to several West Coast cities. While she’s sure her current day job is permanent, she also has her eye on Carmel.
Fort Collins makes it easy to plan a day around beer. There are bikes everywhere, patios that seem built for one more round, and enough taprooms to turn a simple afternoon into an itinerary. That reputation is part of the fun, but it’s not the whole meal.
The best restaurants in Fort Collins give you plenty of reasons to sit down before or after the brewery crawl. There are oysters at Jax, Creole brunch at Lucile’s, pie and steak inside the old grain mill at Ginger and Baker, and Australian meat pies from Waltzing Kangaroo, where savory pastry feels like exactly the right answer. Add in wine-bar dinners near CSU, polished comfort food at Jessup Farm, and vegetarian cooking at Tasty Harmony that actually has crunch and substance, and the city starts looking less like a drinking town with food nearby and more like a place worth eating through properly.
Here then are the best restaurants right now in Fort Collins, for before-and-after the beer drinking begins.
Bistro Nautile
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Mike and Kat Reeves spent years running Fish, the Old Town seafood market and restaurant, before opening Bistro Nautile with chef Ryan Damasky. The restaurant still has that seafood foundation, but the cooking moves more French bistro than fish house, with Colorado beef and poultry, local produce, fresh seafood, and enough care in the sourcing to make dinner feel specific to Fort Collins.
Best for: French-inspired seafood, local sourcing, and Old Town dinner
Cafe Vino
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Café Vino gives Fort Collins the kind of wine bar that can handle a date night, a grazing dinner, or a long glass of something better than what was open in the fridge. The bottle list runs past 200, and the food keeps to wine-friendly plates: bacon-wrapped dates with blue cheese, PEI mussels with vermouth and basil, burrata, arancini, and blistered shishitos with yuzu aioli.
Best for: Wine, small plates, and dinner near CSU
The Emporium
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The Emporium sits on the ground floor of The Elizabeth Hotel, which means it has to work for hotel guests who wandered downstairs and locals who have plenty of other Old Town options. Breakfast brings brioche French toast, omelets, lox, and smash browns; later in the day, the menu shifts into brasserie mode with steaks, burgers, seafood, cocktails, and enough polish to make it useful before a show or after checking in.
Best for: Brasserie cooking, hotel dining, and Old Town dinners
The Farmhouse
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The Farmhouse at Jessup Farm has the bones of a 19th-century farmhouse, but the restaurant itself is more polished than pastoral. Chef Michael Gillam’s menu runs through modern Colorado comfort food — think short rib, cast-iron chicken, steak frites, seasonal salads, and brunch plates that make good use of the old Jessup Farm setting without turning dinner into a hayride.
Best for: Modern farmhouse cooking, brunch, and polished casual dinners
Ginger and Baker
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Ginger and Baker took over a historic grain mill in the River District and filled it with the kind of things that please a crowd: pie, coffee, a market, a teaching kitchen, a café, and an upstairs restaurant called The Cache. Head upstairs for steaks, mussels, charcuterie, cocktails, and a version of dinner that feels a little more buttoned-up than the quite excellent bakery case downstairs.
Best for: Pie, steaks, and a full Fort Collins afternoon
Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar
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Jax has been selling Colorado on oysters since the 1990s, and the Fort Collins location keeps that coast-to-the-coastless idea moving under chef Chris Wall. Come for the raw bar, seafood towers, seasonal fish, and happy hour, especially if you’ve spent the day in beer country and want dinner that doesn’t involve another pretzel.
Best for: Oysters, seafood towers, and happy hour
Lucile's
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Lucile’s started in Boulder in 1980, when Fletcher Richards and his mother, Lucile Richards, built a breakfast-and-lunch restaurant around Creole cooking. The Fort Collins location still has the yellow-house charm and the menu that made the idea last: beignets, eggs Pontchartrain, shrimp and grits, gumbo, chicory coffee, and brunch cocktails that arrive before the day has fully made its case.
Best for: Creole brunch, beignets, and long breakfasts
Persimmon
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Raffi Jergerian built Persimmon around the sort of things that make a small restaurant useful at more than one hour of the day: good drinks, something to snack on, and a space that can handle coffee, cocktails, or a longer night downstairs. The food leans Mediterranean and mezze-minded, with dishes like beet hummus, dolmas, pomegranate-and-za’atar sandwiches, and baklava made from a family recipe, which is exactly the kind of detail that keeps a place from feeling assembled by committee.
Best for: Cocktails, mezze, and a low-key Old Town night
The Regional
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Chef Kevin Grossi brought The Regional to Fort Collins after building the American comfort-food concept at Avanti in Denver, and the move gave Old Town a restaurant with a little more backbone than the name lets on. The cooking runs through shrimp and grits, fried chicken, oysters, house-made pasta, and Colorado-minded comfort food without pretending dinner needs a thesis.
Best for: Comfort food, brunch, and chef-run Old Town dining
Tasty Harmony
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At Tasty Harmony, cauliflower gets fried until it actually crunches, seitan turns up in dishes built for people who came hungry, and the bowls are layered with enough sauce, grain, and texture that the vegetables don’t feel like a side argument. The Fort Collins vegetarian restaurant has been around since 2009, and it shows in the best way: the food is comfortable in itself, not trying to convince anyone it belongs.
Best for: Vegetarian comfort food, plant-based lunch, and casual dinners
Union Bar & Soda Fountain
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Union opened in 2018 with a simple Fort Collins proposition: diner food, cocktails, soda-fountain drinks, and alcoholic milkshakes between Old Town and the River District. The menu gives you green chile cheese fries, burgers, sandwiches, brunch, floats, and enough patio energy to make this less about fine dining and more about where people actually end up.
Best for: Burgers, boozy shakes, and patio drinks
Waltzing Kangaroo
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Steve Phillips grew up in Australia, where his father was a pastry chef, and later worked as a baker specializing in meat pies before opening Waltzing Kangaroo in Fort Collins with his wife, Aimée. The shop is compact and practical, built around handmade Aussie meat pies, pastries, coffee, frozen pies to take home, and sides like mashed potatoes, mushy peas, and salads.
Best for: Aussie meat pies, pastries, and casual takeout
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