CITY GUIDES | COLORADO
The Best Colorado Springs Restaurants: Tacos, Pupusas, and Tasting Menus
Dinner in the Springs now runs from breakfast burritos and pupusas to a five-course tasting menu inside a food hall and the Broadmoor’s orbit of fine dining. Start here.
By Maria Rodriguez
Updated Oct. 15, 2026
Roth's Sea and Steak
AUTHOR BIO: With a day job that requires constant travel, Maria Rodriguez is likely a frequenter of your favorite restaurant. She’s reviewed restaurants since 2007 in publications from Barcelona to Bakersfield.
Colorado Springs has always eaten well in pockets—a pupuseria in Old Colorado City here, a burger with a skirt of fried cheddar there. What’s changed is the range, and how close together it all sits. Within a few downtown blocks you can start with breakfast burritos, sit down to a tasting menu inside a food hall, and end the night in a basement dining room pouring cocktails named for storybook drinks.
The best restaurants in Colorado Springs now include the city’s first Michelin-recognized kitchen, a steakhouse that opened beside the Ford Amphitheater in 2025, and rooms that have quietly held their neighborhoods for a decade. Here are the best Colorado Springs restaurants to book tonight.
503W
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503W isn’t just a gastropub—it’s a place where the dishes are as colorful as the cocktails they’re paired with. The Korean fried chicken, listed as Gangnum Crack Chicken, is panko-fried in a sweet soy glaze and lands with jasmine rice, sesame slaw, and kimchi pickles, and the Korean tacos wrap bulgogi in a steamed bao bun. The bar pours house cocktails and a short, well-chosen draft list. It’s lively, a little loud, and exactly where you want to be on a Friday night.
Best for: Asian-fusion dishes and house cocktails downtown
Ambli Global Cuisine
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Ambli is where you go when you want a passport without leaving Colorado Springs. The Fig Old Fashioned, built on bourbon infused with Turkish fig and toasted pecan, feels like Istanbul in a glass. The menu hops around the world—Indian curries and lobster shooters in a lemongrass coconut curry, a spicy seafood paella, and a newer Indo-Mex lean in the small plates—and the dining room manages to feel sophisticated without making you whisper. It’s the kind of spot you’ll want to linger, ideally with dessert and one more cocktail.
Best for: A globe-trotting dinner without leaving Colorado Springs
Bonny & Read
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Owner Joe Campana’s seafood house brings the coast inland, and does it with style. The fish is flown in fresh through Seattle Fish Co., whose certifications include the Marine Stewardship Council, and the menu runs from oysters and snow crab to lobster rolls and an Alaskan halibut that also shows up in fish tacos at lunch. Steaks hold down the other half of the menu, and cocktails keep the chandelier-lit room busy. When the craving is reliably fresh fish, this is where to head first.
Best for: A luxe seafood fix that makes landlocked Colorado feel coastal
Dos Dos
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Brothers Jason and Kris Wallenta launched Dos Dos as a fast-casual sibling to their original Dos Santos, with one goal in mind: handcrafted Mexican-inspired bites that feel both approachable and sharply delicious. Everything’s made from scratch daily, down to the handmade tortillas, and the menu runs from three-taco sets and burritos to a breakfast lineup built on combinations like birria, egg, and tater tots, or bacon, eggs, and tater tots, at nine bucks a wrap. Bright, flavorful, and never trying too hard—with a full bar when the night calls for it.
Best for: Breakfast burritos in the morning, tacos and margaritas at night
Ephemera
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Colorado Springs native Ian Dedrickson founded this inventive tasting-menu experience, tucked upstairs inside the CO.A.T.I. food hall, and he still cooks alongside a small team of chefs. The five-course tasting menu, $79 per person, evolves continuously—courses and plating shift so return guests get a new experience each visit—and the space feels like punk-rock fine dining, the restaurant’s own description, with local art rotating through the walls.
Best for: A chef-driven tasting menu that changes with the season
Four by Brother Luck
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Chef Brother Luck (yes, that’s actually his name) has built this downtown spot around the concept of four: four seasons, four sources (the hunter, the gatherer, the fisherman, and the farmer), and a seasonal four-course tasting menu that changes with what’s fresh and local. The kitchen, led by Ashley Brown, turns out Southwestern cooking with a signature blue cornbread served with wojapi, and in September 2026 the restaurant was named Michelin Recommended in the guide’s first Colorado Springs selection, with bar manager Kyle McNerney taking home Michelin’s Exceptional Cocktails Award. Every visit feels like a new chapter in Colorado’s culinary narrative, because the menu insists on it.
Best for: Ambitious four-course menus from talented chefs
Monse’s Pupuseria
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This family-owned Old Colorado City spot serves Salvadoran comfort food with sincerity and simplicity—handmade pupusas stuffed just right, from cheese and carnitas to the Pupusa Colorado. The whole menu is gluten-free, a point of pride for owners Tim and Monse Hines, and the vegetarian options don’t skimp on soul. Monse, who brought her family’s cooking from Chalchuapa, El Salvador, has since added a second location downtown. You discover the name, find yourself there, and leave planning your next visit.
Best for: Heart-and-handmade pupusas that hit like home
Odyssey Gastropub
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When locals talk about the downtown spots that made Colorado Springs feel like a real dining city, Odyssey always comes up. Owners Tyler and Jenny Sherman built it, back in 2014, around upscale pub food—a run of burgers from the Odyssey to the Bacon Jam and Drunken Onion, Korean BBQ pork belly bites, Baja shrimp tacos—paired with craft beer and cocktails that make lingering too easy. It’s the sort of place where happy hour stretches into dinner, and dinner turns into one more round.
Best for: Elevated comfort food and late-night cocktails downtown
The Rabbit Hole
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Walking in feels like slipping down a Wonderland rabbit hole—only the ceiling isn’t falling, it’s just dripping with weird, gothic charm. Tucked beneath downtown, the room pairs New American cooking with cocktails like the Duchess and the signature White Rabbit: the rabbit meatloaf the kitchen counts among its favorites, whiskey sticky ribs, bison lettuce wraps, and full entrées for anyone settling in. There’s an edge to it—dramatic, immersive, and the right end to a work trip, when you want the night to feel a little otherworldly.
Best for: A whimsical underground spot serving cocktails and late-night bites
Roth’s Sea & Steak
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Roth’s opened in November 2025 at the edge of the Ford Amphitheater and gave the city’s north side a proper fine-dining room, one that runs year-round whether or not there’s a show. Chef Ricky Biswas, whose training includes The French Laundry, built the menu around prime steaks—a 32-ounce dry-aged tomahawk, a 45-day wagyu ribeye—and seafood handled with the same care: A5 wagyu tartare, caviar service, a whole roasted turbot, veal Wellington. Colorado Springs native Dillon Tafoya leads the sushi program, up to a full omakase. Upstairs, the Brohan’s lounge pours from a wine list built by general manager and wine director Jeroen Erens around small estates; within months of opening it took a Silver Star for Best Newcomer in the Americas from Star Wine List.
Best for: Prime steaks, an omakase counter, and a serious wine list on the north side
Skirted Heifer
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Owners Kevin and Suzette Megyeri built something quietly brilliant: grass-fed, grass-finished burgers wrapped in a crispy skirt of cheddar, served on house-baked buns with in-house condiments. Their Hangover Burger—piled with cream cheese, bacon, and a Bloody Mary–spiked tomato sauce—earned Guy Fieri’s approval on Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives. Whenever I need comfort food that feels like a hug and a high-five, this burger joint pulls me in.
Best for: Cheeseburger fans craving cheesy theatrics with local flair
Sushi Row
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Downtown on Tejon, Sushi Row has become a reliable stop for sushi that balances playful creativity with solid technique. The menu stretches from classic nigiri and sashimi to the Rocco Roll—spicy tuna under garlic-buttered seared tuna—and tuna crispy rice, with a chef’s omakase and even a caviar service for bigger nights. It’s the kind of sushi bar where you’ll sit at the counter, order a roll too big to finish, and never regret it.
Best for: Creative rolls and Japanese plates in a sleek setting
Till
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Till runs on a farm-to-table ethos that feels less like a gimmick and more like an everyday practice—seasonal cooking built on local producers, in a low-lit downtown room. The current menu leans Italian-American in places: rigatoni with broken meatballs and a guanciale ragout, garlic and herb gnocchi with whipped ricotta and mushrooms, tallow-fried chicken with hot honey, and vegetarian dishes that actually stand up to the mains. It’s the kind of neighborhood spot where a weeknight dinner still feels considered, and rooted in the region.
Best for: Farm-to-table plates with a neighborhood hangout vibe
The Warehouse
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Housed in a restored warehouse just south of downtown, this restaurant is chef James Africano’s argument that wild game belongs in a white-tablecloth room. The menu runs to a grilled bison rib eye, a pan-seared elk strip loin, and a wild boar and Pueblo green chile stew, with Prohibition-era cocktails at the bar. The old gallery space next door has a second life now as the Warehouse Urban Grocer, a chef-driven market Africano opened in 2026—so dinner can end with shopping for the same cuts, elk and bison included.
Best for: Southwestern game dishes in a restored warehouse south of downtown
Zocalo
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Zocalo leans into modern Mexican cooking from chef Sergio, who hails from Mexico City, with a menu that feels both lively and familiar. Start with the quesabirria everyone talks about, or the El Macho—steak, chorizo, and avocado under a charred green salsa—then stretch the meal with an enchilada platter and a round of poke nachos. The margaritas are hand-squeezed and don’t skimp, and the room, vintage VW bus and all, is equal parts casual hangout and night-starter.
Best for: Modern Mexican food and margaritas with friends
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