RiNo Arts District Food Tour
If someone had told 10-year-old me that at some point I would be willing to explore the best food around various cities and not just plain hamburgers, Kraft mac and cheese, and pepperoni pizza with little sauce…I would’ve looked at them like they had two heads.
Recently, I had the pleasure to experience the RiNo Arts District Food Tour, a tour made possible by Delicious Denver Food Tours, a company that provides an array of food and beverage tours throughout Denver.
That day’s (March 3rd, 2023) tour was guided by local resident Austin Shrader who took me and four others to five unique and delicious restaurants around Denver’s historic RiNo Art District.
The RiNo (short for River North) art district is an area located towards the center of the Denver city area, it is an area filled with trendy restaurants, a charming atmosphere, and enough street and wall art to make it feel like an outdoor art museum.
The five restaurants that I was taken to during the food tour were all unique and outstanding and today I will be sharing what I saw and, more importantly, what I ate.
The first stop on the tour took us to a local Italian restaurant on the corner of Larimer Street and 26th Street, Il Posto. Il Posto focuses on the simple complexity that is Italian food and wine, and has enough fantastic dishes to make the Italian grandmother in me sing.
For a bit of sipping pleasure, we were first treated to one of the 10 most popular cocktails in America, an Aperol Spritz. A traditional Aperol Spritz is made with prosecco for sweetness, soda water, and Aperol, a bitter orange liquor similar to Campari but has a lower ABV percentage. All of which led to the perfect blend of sweet and bitter.
For the tasting, we were given a sample of one of the great appetizers that Il Posto has to offer, burrata. Burrata is a soft Italian cheese similar to fresh mozzarella, but has a creamy curdled inside that makes it like no other cheese.
At Il Posto, this burrata is served topped with a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar along with some basil leaves and a thin cracker known as lavash, made with flour, water, and salt.
There was nothing to not love about that dish. The soft, silky burrata on top of the crisp lavash, plus the fruity olive oil, made for a bite that I would go back to again and again and again.
To walk off that burrata, Austin then had us walk around some of the alleyways of the district so we could see some of the art on almost all of the walls and explain a bit about the artists that made them.
The art started out as graffiti, but over time evolved into something much more spectacular.
For our second stop, we were taken to a Japanese place that’s been serving up classic scratch-made ramen, Osaka.
Osaka, named after a city in Japan, serves up traditional Japanese ramen that would no doubt kick the behind of those cheap instant ramen packets that we all know from college.
While their ramen might be what put their name on the map, the food tour gave us a sampling of some of the best-fried chicken this side of the Mississippi. Karaage, or Japanese fried chicken, involves bite-size pieces of chicken thighs that are dusted in potato starch before being deep-fried.
The chicken is then topped with furikake, a seasoning blend made with sesame seeds, dried seaweed, and sugar, and served with spiced Japanese mayonnaise known as kewpie mayonnaise.
The result; tender, juicy chunks of chicken with a crackly, crispy exterior that’s full of flavor and is only heightened by the kewpie mayo for extra creaminess and depth.
To wash all of that chicken down, not that it was necessary, I was also given a locally brewed hard cider that was full of sweetness and apple flavor and was the perfect thing to lighten up the rich chicken.
And to balance out that chicken, we were also given a helping of some chilled green beans that were topped with sesame seeds and drizzled with a sweetened soy dressing. It was light, refreshing, and a nice way to give our stomachs some relief from that chicken.
Following a walk around a few blocks to walk off all of that chicken, stop #3 took us to a local pizza joint that has been putting its own creative spin on a classic wood-fired pie for years, Redeemer.
When I say creative, I really do mean it. Redeemer prides itself on taking local, seasonal ingredients and placing them on a pizza in a way that many folks haven’t even heard of, and are changing up the menu about once a month.
The slice of pie that I was served happened to be their pizza spin on a classic Cubano sandwich. Tender mojo pork, sliced ham, pickles (yes, I said pickles), gruyere cheese, and topped with a mustard drizzle.
Where do I begin with this incredible pizza? First off, the crust had a wonderful softness to it but also enough density to hold its shape and support all of the delicious toppings. It might not be anything you’d see in Italy, but it was a bite to remember, no doubt.
After letting that pizza settle in my stomach, and after taking a quick walk through the famous Denver Central Market, a topic for another article, stop #4 happened to be a Mexican restaurant a few blocks down from Il Posto, Los Chingones.
Los Chingones provides a fun, carefree atmosphere with an upstairs patio, a comfy lounge area, and unique spins on classic Mexican food that any foodie would love.
For a bit of sipping, we were treated to what must be Mexico’s national drink, the mighty margarita. I am a big margarita lover, and this one brought the balance of tequila, lime, orange liquor, and salt that made me feel like I was in a fiesta with one sip.
As nice as sipping on a margarita is, our tasting pleasure was one of their specialty chicken tacos, which was served on a corn tortilla and topped with house-made slaw, spiced ranch, and crushed Takis. Yes, I said Takis.
That taco might’ve been small, but it was big on flavor, spice, and texture, and may be a good reason to return to Los Chingones in the future.
Most of us were already quite stuffed from all of the previous food that we had eaten, so we were fortunate that are last stop on the tour…was right next door!
Dochi is both the name of a donut shop and also a style of donut that is made with a rice flour dough that leads to a light, soft, crisp, airy texture but also doesn’t absorb oil like regular donuts so it’s not as greasy.
We were given a sampler of 6 flavors of the delectable donuts that Dochi has to offer that day. The flavors were:
Ube glazed: Ube is a Japanese purple yam that has some nice sweetness and depth
Cinnamon toast crunch: Nice cinnamon spice with a slight crunch from a square of cereal on top.
Strawberry red velvet: Fruity strawberry flavor with a silky icing
Salted caramel: sweet and toasty
Taro pebbles: Taro being a purple root vegetable. It provides a nice sweet, nutty flavor with the texture of Fruity Pebbles.
Matcha Oreo: Grassy matcha flavor with a slight crunch of the crushed Oreo cookies
The flavors of each donut were outstanding, and the pillowiness of the dough made me want to take a dozen of them home right then and there.
All of the bites I had at the RiNo Arts District Food Tour were as outstanding as the ones I had on the Dever City Food Tour, and those five restaurants will be good to keep in mind the next time I come down to Denver.
