The Michelin Guide is thinking bigger in the Rockies. On Monday, September 14, the institution born in Clermont-Ferrand unveiled its fourth annual Colorado selection, with one major change: for the first time since the guide launched in the state in 2023, inspectors didn’t stop at Denver, Boulder, Aspen, Vail and Beaver Creek. They covered the whole state, reaching Aurora, Avon, Breckenridge, Colorado Springs and Telluride.
The result: a selection now covering 63 restaurants across 22 cuisines. The big news in this year’s edition is Milpero, in Denver, which picks up its first Michelin Star. Three restaurants join the Bib Gourmand category, reserved for places offering good food at a fair price: Annette in Aurora, plus Pig and Tiger and Rougarou in Denver. Eleven more restaurants make the Recommended list, from Casa Juani in Boulder to The National in Telluride, including two new Colorado Springs additions, Four by Brother Luck and The Penrose Room.
The guide also handed out four awards to front-of-house professionals, a category that tends to get overshadowed by the stars: the Exceptional Cocktails Award for Kyle McNerney (Four by Brother Luck), the Sommelier Award for the duo Theo Adley and Jenessa Reiman (Heretik), the Outstanding Service Award for Joseph Freyre (The Penrose Room), and the Young Chef/Culinary Professional Award for Cameron Baker (Radicato).
“Colorado’s restaurants are the heart of our communities,” Governor Jared Polis said at the ceremony. Behind the line is a real calculation: the Colorado Tourism Office is banking on this wider coverage to pull food-focused travelers toward towns that were off the red guide’s radar until now, like Breckenridge or Telluride.
Michelin has been rolling out new US regional editions for a few years now: the American South and Boston in 2025, the Southwest (Arizona included) this summer, and the Great Lakes already announced for 2027. Not bad for a guide that started out covering just New York in 2005.