Il Posto Voted The Best Italian Restaurant In Denver

What makes a great Italian restaurant? For some it may be the antipasti, while for others it's the quality of the wines and pastas that's the sure-fire test. Holding up one dish is dangerous. Octopus? Lasagna? Cacio e pepe? Which one dish should be the barometer of a great Italian restaurant?

The steps we took to compile our most-recent ranking were as thorough and comprehensive as possible: we looked at restaurants that made it to our 101 Best Restaurants in America; we also recruited an illustrious panel of judges that included some of the country's top food writers, critics, and bloggers to submit their suggestions, which we supplemented with our own choices, including previous years' rankings as well as lauded newcomers. This list of hundreds of restaurants was then built into a survey that was sent out to more than 100 panelists, who voted for their favorites. The final ranking included a significant number of Italian restaurants, and to create this list we supplemented the Italian restaurants that made it into our final list of 101 with those that came in as runners-up and those that were featured on this year's list of the country's 50 best casual restaurants. Turns out there are many Italian restaurants worthy of renown in America, and two reside in Denver.

Il Posto means, "The Place" in Italian, and chef and owner Andrea Frizzi has largely backed up his contention that his breezy spot in City Park West is hot ― it's routinely mentioned as one of the city's best Italian restaurants for years now. Frizzi, originally from Milan, imports many Italian ingredients, incorporating them into a seasonal menu that changes on the chalkboard each day — "Cooking in the present," he calls it. "It can be a rainy day, sunny and dry, or windy, or snowing — we as people react differently with the weather, so too with food." Ah, Italians... poetry. And he may be right, but most don't react differently to Frizzi's food, especially his risotto, so don't miss it.

Frizzi's risotto (and everything else on his menu) is so good, it snagged the #24 spot on our roundup, beating out Luca D'Italia, who came in at #33. This means that – according to our experts – Il Posto is the best Italian restaurant in Denver.