Restaurants in Commerce City

Amid rough-hewn stone walls and exposed wooden rafters, Belvedere fills plates with traditional Polish entrees. Each pierogi’s pillowy pocket hides meat or cheese, and gouda stuffs a homemade polish sausage. Roasted duck is served on a mound of sweet red cabbage, and veal schnitzel arrives slathered in hunter’s sauce, which actual hunters cover themselves in to hide from their prey. Lunchtime covers tables with sandwiches that include bacon-wrapped chicken, sliced meatballs, and kielbasa with sauerkraut.

The realization of a shared dream between two friends, Mile High Vienna Stand serves up Windy City–inspired eats at 5,280 feet, including Chicago-style hot dogs crowned Denver's best in 2011 and 2012 by the Denver Westword. After spending his boyhood summers in Chicago, where he never missed the chance to grab a dog before a ballgame, owner Sonny Jarock was unable to escape the scent that had defined his youth. Eventually, memories evolved into ideas, and ideas into reality in 2008, when Sonny and his buddy, Jeremy Williamson, transformed an abandoned Baker neighborhood building into the first MHVS location.

Since swinging open their doors in 2008, Sonny and Jeremy have expanded to a second location right outside Coors Field, the home ballpark of the Colorado Rockies. On the large patio with views of the first-base entrance, customers can munch on polish sausages, juicy Italian beef sandwiches, and Chicago-style hotdogs before heading into games. Both stands accompany meals with friendly staffers, who are available to dish out facts about Chicago-style food or help solve any pickle-spear-related riddles.

Pisco Sour Restaurant & Lounge's chefs dish out Peruvian cuisine that fuses traditional seafood, vegetarian, and meat dishes with contemporary American ingredients and authentic spices. To warm up taste buds for two varieties of ceviche that each build on foundations of fresh sea bass, chefs prep creative apps such as the papa rellena, which features potatoes scrubbed free of their tiny plastic lips and stuffed with seasoned beef, tomatoes, and raisins, all drenched in a spicy sauce.

They keep the stovetop warm during breakfast, lunch, and evening cocktail hours, when the bar pours out the eatery's namesake beverage—the pisco sour, a complex Peruvian blend of grape brandy, egg whites, and citrus. The buzzing dining room frequently welcomes a rotating variety of live entertainment, such as hip-hop, techno, and merengue music.

According to lore that has been passed down through the Lucio clan, one of the family progenitors was kidnapped from her native Chihuahua after Pancho Villa tasted her food and decided he needed her as his chef. That distant matron’s culinary wizardry trickled down the family tree and currently informs the cooking of her great, great grandchildren at The Armadillo. Chefs at the restaurants use those generations-old recipes while gently patting cornhusks into place around meal and shredded pork or simmering red-chili sauce for enchiladas. Since the Lucios converted The Armadillo from a tough-guy bar into a restaurant in 1972, they’ve opened six additional locations in the Front Range and one water park run by leprechauns in a dream.

Carved straight-backed chairs and hanging crimson lanterns cultivate a traditional Chinese vibe inside Golden Shanghai's spacious dining room. Nearby, a wall with strings of firecrackers and golden Buddha statues creates an exotic backdrop for family dinners or faked vacation photos. In keeping with the traditional décor theme, chefs plate MSG-free Chinese classics such as crispy duck and spicy Hunan beef as well as more adventurous specialties from a separate authentic-Chinese menu.

Elsewhere, however, the kitchen defies standard categories, bringing together the disparate cuisines of Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam for eclectic feasts. Tender morsels of Thai satay chicken share table space with Japanese sushi and udon, and chefs also stir up bowls of Vietnamese noodle soup. As they chomp their way through the tastes of the East, visitors can toast another year of not renewing their passport with glasses of tropical cocktails or frosty, thirst-quenching beers.