RESTAURANT NEWS | COLORADO

Michelin Finally Goes Statewide in Colorado—and Barely Looks Around

The guide added one new star. For a state with this much good cooking, that feels like a quick scouting trip.

By Eric Barton
12:25 a.m. PT, Sept. 15, 2026

Pig and Tiger

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

The Michelin Guide finally covered all of Colorado this year. Then, after gaining an entire state of restaurants to consider, its inspectors handed out exactly one new star.

That star went to Milpero in Denver, the tasting-menu restaurant from chef Johnny Curiel. It is, without a doubt, a worthy addition. Curiel’s 18-course menu explores Mexican ingredients and regional cooking through dishes such as a bluefin tuna flauta with mole rosa and American wagyu with mole amarillo and ayocote beans.

The strange part is everything Michelin did after Milpero.

Inspectors awarded only three new Bib Gourmands, the designation for restaurants serving good food at a reasonable price. Annette in Aurora joined the list, as did Pig and Tiger and Rougarou in Denver. Eleven restaurants were added to the recommended category.

One star, three Bibs, and 11 recommendations. That was Michelin’s haul from its first chance to inspect restaurants from the Nebraska line to Utah.

Perhaps we can allow some grace here. Until this year, Michelin’s Colorado territory was limited to Denver, Boulder, Aspen, Snowmass Village, Vail, and Beaver Creek. Covering the entire state takes time, and anonymous inspectors can eat only so many dinners before the dry-cleaning bills become unmanageable.

Ephemera

Still, our own coverage of Colorado has found far deeper dining scenes than this year’s results suggest.

Our Colorado Springs pick would be Ephemera, where chef Ian Dedrickson serves a constantly changing tasting menu inside the CO.A.T.I. food hall. It is creative, distinctly personal cooking in a setting that asks diners to reconsider where a serious dinner can happen.

In Greeley, Birriería Doña María belongs in the conversation. Its crisp birria tacos arrive with deeply flavored consommé, and the broad menu gives Michelin an affordable, family-run counterpoint to all those elaborate tasting menus.

Birriería Doña María

For Fort Collins, we would nominate Bistro Nautile. Mike and Kat Reeves built the restaurant on years of seafood expertise, while chef Ryan Damasky moves through French bistro cooking, Colorado meats, local produce, and carefully sourced fish.

Bistro Nautile

Tofu Story

Aurora deserves more than two entries in the guide, and Tofu Story would be our next addition. The restaurant makes its tofu in-house, then puts it to work in bubbling Korean stews alongside banchan, grilled meats, and enough evidence to show that Aurora’s international restaurant culture cannot be dispatched in a couple of inspection notes.

Aspen already had a place on Michelin’s original Colorado map, but inspectors could still spend another evening at Cache Cache. Open since 1987, the restaurant draws on Colorado farms and chef Chris Lanter’s French technique, with a serious wine program and caviar served alongside house potato chips. Aspen has plenty of restaurants built for a visiting expense account. Cache Cache has spent nearly four decades earning local loyalty too.

Flagstaff House

Boulder has 10 restaurants in the guide, yet Flagstaff House remains an odd omission. The restaurant pairs chef Chris Royster’s tasting menus with one of Colorado’s great wine programs and a view that has been handling proposals, anniversaries, and other expensive declarations for generations. Michelin has inspected enough of Boulder to know where the city is. Next time, it should drive up the mountain.

Michelin has now drawn the map correctly. Next year, its inspectors need to spend more time driving it.