Incredible staff, strong drink, good food, and prime people-watching are the things that make a good bar great.  The Cheeky Monk on Colfax has those in spades.

As a long time patron of Paris on the Platte, one would think I would undoubtedly recommend this well-known coffee house to someone. However, I'm on the fence. If it wasn't for my long standing relationship with this particular coffee shop, and my addiction to the Midnight Express, I would personally never go back and I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Brasserie Felix is a great little French café.  The cute bistro on popular Tennyson Street in the Highlands is bright and cheery, with yellows, reds and classic French posters on the walls.  Little café tables sit up against the window so that you can people watch and bask in the sunshine.

Indochine represents Thai food at its best: vibrant colors and fragrances and exotic ingredients.  This family-owned restaurant in Parker is located in a comfortable, open space, with dark walls and light wood tables, which they moved to recently after gaining enough popularity with the locals to outgrow their old space a few blocks away.

New Age American comfort food in Cherry Creek.  Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

This New American cuisine is based around the sustainable farming of the freshest local ingredients; the even have their own farm and greenhouse, Fruition Farm of Colorado, which provides all their herbs and vegetables.

For those not in the know, tapas come to us from Spain.  They are small plates meant for sharing.  When you go to a tapas restaurant, the intent should be to order several plates and share it all.

I love Asian food, and happily take every opportunity I can to try some, so you can imagine my disappointment when 90% of the dinner menu turns out to be Chinese takeout-type options: crab cheese wontons, beef with broccoli, kung pao and the like.

A gastropub starts the same as a traditional one, featuring good beer, spirits and wine along with traditional pub fare. That is where the similarity ends, however.  Argyll Gastropub features exquisitely handmade European cuisine, painstakingly prepared in-house, with superb ingredients.